In the vote, seven of the 50 Senate Republicans joined the chamber’s unified Democrats in favoring conviction.
Trump left office on Jan. 20, so impeachment could not be used to remove him from power. But Democrats had hoped to secure a conviction to hold him responsible for a siege that left five people including a police officer dead and to set the stage for a vote to bar him from ever serving in public office again. Given the chance to hold office in the future, they argued, Trump would not hesitate to encourage political violence again.
Republicans saved Trump in the Feb. 5, 2020, vote in his first impeachment trial, when only one senator from their ranks – Mitt Romney – voted to convict and remove him from office.
Romney voted for impeachment today along with fellow Republicans Richard Burr, Bill Cassidy, Susan Collins, Ben Sasse, Pat Toomey, and Lisa Murkowski.
“There is no question that President Trump is practically and morally responsible for provoking the events of the day,” he said. “The people who stormed this building believed they were acting on the wishes and instructions of their president.”
The drama on the Senate floor unfolded against a backdrop of gaping divisions in a pandemic-weary United States along political, racial, socioeconomic and regional lines. The trial provided more partisan warfare even as Democratic President Joe Biden, who took office on Jan. 20 after defeating Trump in the November election, called for healing and unity after his predecessor’s four turbulent years in power and a caustic election campaign.
Trump, 74, continues to hold a grip on his party with a right-wing populist appeal and “America First” message. The wealthy businessman-turned-politician has considered running for president again in 2024.
Trump is only the third president ever to be impeached by the House of Representatives – a step akin to a criminal indictment – as well as the first to be impeached twice and the first to face an impeachment trial after leaving office. But the Senate still has never convicted an impeached president.
The House approved the single article of impeachment against Trump on Jan. 13, with 10 Republicans joining the chamber’s Democratic majority. That vote came a week after the pro-Trump mob stormed the neoclassical domed Capitol, interrupted the formal congressional certification of Biden’s victory, clashed with an overwhelmed police force, invaded the hallowed House and Senate chambers, and sent lawmakers into hiding for their own safety.
‘FIGHT LIKE HELL’
Shortly before the rampage, Trump urged his followers to march on the Capitol, repeated his false claims that the election was stolen from him through widespread voting fraud, and told them that “if you don’t fight like hell, you’re not going to have a country anymore.”
The defense lawyers accused Democrats not only of trying to silence Trump as a political opponent they feared facing in the future but of attempting to criminalize political speech with which they disagreed and aiming to cancel the voices of the tens of millions of voters who backed him.
Trump’s lawyers argued the trial was unconstitutional because he had already left office. The words Trump used, they argued, were no different than those regularly employed by Democrats.
A common theme in the charges at the heart of the two impeachments was Trump’s abandonment of accepted democratic norms to advance his own political interests.
The U.S. Constitution sets out impeachment as the instrument with which the Congress can remove and bar from future office presidents who commit “treason, bribery or other high crimes and misdemeanors.”
Since 1998, there have been three, including Trump’s two. Andrew Johnson was impeached and acquitted in 1868 in the aftermath of the American Civil War and Bill Clinton was impeached in 1998 and acquitted in 1999 of charges stemming from a sex scandal.
Richard Nixon resigned in 1974 rather than face impeachment over the Watergate scandal.
The impeachment proceedings also can be viewed in the context of a battle for the future of the Republican Party. Some Republicans – mostly moderates and establishment figures – have voiced alarm at the direction Trump has taken their party. Detractors have accused Trump – who had never before held public office – of undermining the institutions of democracy, encouraging a cult of personality and pursuing policies built around “white grievance” in a nation with a growing non-white population.
Comments
On the bright side this means that there would be no fear of reprisal from the American white nationalist who chooses to exterminate non-whites for their new world order of white supremacy. African-American brothers have taken exile in GT because they do not feel safe in America.
It’s because the white nationalists are cheering for the acquittal tonight rather than committing genocidal terrorist attacks as retribution.