Manchin: I’ve ‘moved on’ from Trump sexual misconduct allegations

Sen. Joe Manchin (D-W.Va.) said early Monday that he won’t call for an investigation into President Trump over sexual misconduct allegations, adding that he has “moved on.”

“I’m not going to make that determination because he went through an election process,” Manchin told CNN’s “New Day” when asked if the president should be investigated.

The remark from Manchin, a red-state Democrat who is up for reelection in 2018, places him at odds with several of his Democratic colleagues in the Senate who have called on Trump to resign over the accusations. 

“I’ve moved on. I really have moved on,” Manchin added in the interview.

Manchin is up for his first Senate reelection next year in a state that Trump won by more than 40 points in the 2016 presidential election. 

Manchin again diverted from his Senate colleagues, arguing that Sen. Al Franken (D-Minn.) should not resign from his seat in the upper chamber over allegations of inappropriate sexual behavior. 

“I definitely think he should not resign,” Manchin, who has said Franken deserves due process, told CNN.

Manchin did not join more than half of the Democratic caucus earlier this month in calling for Franken’s resignation. Franken announced his plans to resign one day after more than two dozen Democrats urged him to do so.

Manchin recently told Politico in an interview that his colleagues’ calls for Franken to resign were “atrocious.” 

“I hope they have enough guts. If they had enough guts and enough conscience and enough heart to say, ‘Al, we made a mistake asking prematurely for you to leave,’” Manchin told the Politico podcast, Off Message.

During his Monday morning interview on CNN, Manchin contended that Franken should be afforded an Ethics Committee investigation before a judgment is made.

“The political rancoring here is just unbelievable to me,” Manchin said. “How you can destroy a human being’s life and his family and everything that they stand for without giving them another chance?”