Missouri Senate Censures Lawmaker Who Hoped For Donald Trump's Assassination

The Missouri Senate has formally censured one of its own for the first time in history. The Democrat had refused bipartisan calls for her resignation last month, after she published a Facebook post hoping for the assassination of President Donald Trump.

“I hope Trump is assassinated!” state Sen. Maria Chappelle-Nadal wrote on her private Facebook page at the time, in response to frustration over Trump’s refusal to condemn a violent white supremacist rally in Charlottesville, Virginia.

Though she quickly deleted the post, a screenshot of it nevertheless went viral.

Chappelle-Nadal’s fellow state senators voted 28-2 Wednesday in favor of the formal reprimand. She’s also been stripped of her committee assignments.

Republicans in the chamber initially wanted to expel Chappelle-Nadal, but lacked the votes to do so, reports the St. Louis Post-Dispatch.

The second-term senator adamantly resisted initial calls for her resignation, though she conceded she should have never published the post.

In a conversation Wednesday with St. Louis Public Radio, Chappelle-Nadal acknowledged she may have erred morally, but she appeared to stand by the legality of her act.

“What I said politically and spiritually was wrong,” she said. “When it comes to the Constitution and when it comes to the First Amendment, that’s a different matter.”