WASHINGTON—In an expression of pity for the man who had been slowly pacing the hallway for over an hour, House committee members taking impeachment depositions reportedly let Sen. Lindsey Graham (R-SC) into their meeting Friday after it became clear he had come to storm the room all by himself. “We figured it wouldn’t hurt to let just one more person in, and to be honest, we all felt pretty bad for the sad sack,” said House Foreign Affairs Committee chair Eliot Engel, who added that aides had spotted the lone senator outside the Capitol’s Sensitive Compartmented Information Facility struggling to set up a Facebook livestream and checking the batteries in a bullhorn he couldn’t get to work. “You could hear him out there rehearsing his little speech to himself over and over right before he ran up and knocked on the door. When we opened it, he started sputtering and sweating and couldn’t get any words out, so after a while [Rep.] Ted [Deutch] just said, ‘Hey, Lindsey, you can come in. It’s fine.’ He sat down and mumbled something about how three or four other Republicans had told him they might be showing up later to join his protest, but no one ever did.” According to sources, Graham later announced he had more important places to be and accidentally exited through the wrong door, finding himself in a broom closet where, to avoid further embarrassment, he stayed quiet and perfectly still through the remaining six hours of the hearing.

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