Mitch McConnell privately said Democrats would 'take care of the son of a bitch for us' by impeaching Trump for the January 6 riot: book

• The New York Times published previously unreported private remarks from Mitch McConnell on Thursday.
• After January 6, McConnell reportedly said impeachment would "take care" of Trump.

Senate Republican leader Mitch McConnell privately supported Democrats impeaching former President Donald Trump for a second time despite McConnell's decision to vote for his acquittal, according to The New York Times.

"The Democrats are going to take care of the son of a bitch for us," McConnell said of the House's 2021 impeachment proceedings, according to Times reporters Alex Burns and Jonathan Martin.

The reporting comes from Burns and Martin's forthcoming book, "This Will Not Pass: Trump, Biden and the Battle for America's Future," which is based on hundreds of interviews with lawmakers and federal officials, as well as contemporaneous documents through the 2020 election up through the aftermath of the January 6 insurrection.

McConnell was furious about the insurrection. His wife, Transportation Secretary Elaine Chao, resigned on January 7, citing what she said was a "traumatic and entirely avoidable event."

"I want to say to the American people the United States Senate will not be intimidated," McConnell thundered on the floor in the early hours of January 7 as workers were still cleaning up the remnants of the riot. "We will not be kept out of this chamber by thugs, mobs or threats. We will not bow to lawlessness or intimidation."

According to the book, McConnell and other top Republicans had a brief window during which they thought they could force Trump out. House Minority Leader Kevin McCarthy went so far as to suggest that he would privately tell Trump that it was time to resign, becoming a modern-day Barry Goldwater.

"If this isn't impeachable, I don't know what is," McConnell told two of his long-time aides over Chick-fil-A back in Kentucky on January 10, according to Burns and Martin.

But in the end, the GOP leaders felt that their party's base would stand behind Trump. McCarthy slowly backed himself away from his remarks saying Trump "bears responsibility" for the Capitol riot. While McConnell supported Sen. Rand Paul of Kentucky's argument that a former president could not be impeached.

"I didn't get to be leader by voting with five people in the conference," McConnell said, according to the Times.

McConnell wasn't done though. Soon after voting to acquit Trump for inciting the insurrection, the top Senate Republican suggested that the criminal justice system would have the final word on Trump's actions.

"In one light, it certainly does seem counterintuitive that an officeholder can elude Senate conviction by resignation or expiration of term," McConnell said on the Senate floor on February 14, 2021. "But this just underscores that impeachment was never meant to be the final forum for American justice."

"President Trump is still liable for everything he did while he was in office, as an ordinary citizen, unless the statute of limitations has run, still liable for everything he did while in office, didn't get away with anything yet – yet," he went on.

A former top aide to McConnell previously told Insider that the combination of losing the Senate majority and the January 6 attack shattered Trump and McConnell's relationship. But in a sign of his party loyalty, McConnell has said he would still support Trump if he became the Republican Party's presidential nominee in 2024.

"I think I have an obligation to support the nominee of my party," McConnell recently told Axios' Jonathan Swan. "That will mean that whoever the nominee is has gone out and earned the nomination."