In a biography scheduled for release just a week before the election, Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell (R-KY) expressed support for Jack Smith and stated that former President Donald Trump should “pay a price” for the January 6 Capitol protests, according to a report from Axios.

Although McConnell has had several disagreements with Trump in the past, this new book is expected to present his most comprehensive critiques to date.

“If he hasn’t committed indictable offenses, I don’t know what one is,” McConnell, now 82, told journalist Michael Tackett in an interview for the new book after Biden DOJ-appointed Special Counsel Jack Smith brought charges against Trump in August 2023.

“From the start, McConnell thought the charges brought by federal prosecutors against Trump had merit,” Tackett writes in “The Price Of Power.”

In reference to January 6 — a minor riot and mostly peaceful protest in which the only casualties were Trump supporters — McConnell said there was “no doubt who inspired it” and “I just hope that he’ll have to pay a price for it.”

The book will delve into how close McConnell came to voting to convict then-President Trump during his second impeachment trial, which occurred despite Trump’s calls for supporters to “remain peaceful” before and after the unrest, Axios noted.

To date, the federal government has not disclosed the number of undercover agents present in the crowd, although former Capitol Police Chief Steven Sund believes there were dozens.

Footage uncovered by a January 6 defendant also revealed that undercover D.C. Metropolitan Police officers were seen encouraging the crowd and urging them to enter the Capitol Building. Based on several oral interviews with the senator, McConnell seriously contemplated a vote to convict, which could have resulted in the U.S. Senate preventing Trump from running again.

“I’m not at all conflicted about whether what the president did is an impeachable offense. I think it is,” McConnell said in the oral history interview provided to Tackett.

McConnell repeated Democrat talking points about the mass trespassing event being an “insurrection,” which was “about as close to an impeachable offense as you can imagine,” McConnell added. The longtime Senate GOP leader ultimately voted to acquit, arguing that Trump was not eligible for conviction since he was no longer in office. 

“We have a criminal justice system in this country. We have civil litigation. And former presidents are not immune from being accountable by either one,” McConnell said after the vote.