Trial ends in Trump’s acquittal
Vote held after witness plans dropped
WASHINGTON — Former President Donald Trump on Saturday was acquitted of inciting the Jan. 6 attack on the U.S. Capitol, bringing an end to his second impeachment trial after Democrats abandoned plans to call witnesses in the face of GOP opposition.
Under the watch of National Guard troops still patrolling the historic building, a majority of senators supported finding Trump guilty of the House’s single charge of incitement of insurrection. That majority included seven Republicans, more members of a president’s party than have ever backed an adverse verdict in an impeachment trial.
But with most of Trump’s party coalescing around him, the 57-43 tally fell 10 votes short of the two-thirds majority needed to convict him and allow the Senate to move to disqualify him from holding future office.
Voting with the Democrats to find Trump guilty were Republican Sens. Richard Burr of North Carolina, Bill Cassidy of Louisiana, Susan Collins of Maine, Lisa Murkowski of Alaska, Mitt Romney of Utah, Ben Sasse of Nebraska and Pat Toomey of Pennsylvania.
Minutes after the verdict, Trump broke a silence he had maintained during the trial with a statement issued from his post-presidential home in Florida, calling the proceeding “yet another phase of the greatest witch hunt in the history of our country.”
He expressed no remorse
for his actions taken in the lead-up to the Jan. 6 insurrection, and he suggested that he planned to continue to be a force in politics for a long time to come.
“In the months ahead I have much to share with you, and I look forward to continuing our incredible journey together to achieve American greatness for all of our people,” Trump said.
Even after voting for Trump’s acquittal, Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell, R-Ky., condemned the former president as “practically and morally responsible” for the insurrection. Trump could not be convicted because he was out of office, McConnell contended.
The trial had been momentarily thrown into confusion when senators Saturday suddenly wanted to consider potential witnesses, particularly concerning Trump’s actions as the mob rioted. Prolonged proceedings could have been especially damaging to President Joe Biden, significantly delaying his emerging legislative agenda. Facing the covid-19 crisis, the Biden White House is trying to rush pandemic relief through Congress.
Biden has hardly weighed in on the trial proceedings and was spending the weekend with family at the presidential retreat in Camp David, Md.
The nearly weeklong trial delivered a grim and graphic narrative of the riot and its consequences in ways that senators, most of whom fled for their own safety that day, acknowledge they are still coming to grips with.
House prosecutors argued that Trump was the “inciter in chief” who stoked a monthslong campaign, orchestrating a pattern of violent rhetoric and false claims that they called the “big lie” that unleashed the mob. Five people died in the insurrection, including a rioter who was shot and a police officer.
In their closing arguments, the impeachment managers warned Republican senators of dire consequences if they spared Trump under the guise of uniting the country.
“If we can’t handle this together, as a people, all of us, forgetting the lines of party and ideology and geography and all of those things,” said Rep. Jamie Raskin, D-Md., the lead manager, “how are we ever going to conquer the other crises of our day? Is this America? Is this what we want to bequeath to our children and grandchildren?”
“Senators, we are in a dialogue with history, a conversation with our past, with a hope for our future,” said Rep. Madeleine Dean, D-Pa., one of the House prosecutors, in her closing arguments.
“What we do here, what is being asked of each of us here in this moment will be remembered.”
In closing arguments, lead defense attorney Michael van der Veen fell back on the procedural argument that Republican senators embraced in their own reasoning of the case, what he said is a “phony impeachment show trial.”
“Mr. Trump is innocent of the charges against him,” said van der Veen. “The act of incitement never happened.”
The House impeached Trump a week after the riot on the sole charge of incitement of insurrection, in the most bipartisan vote of a presidential impeachment.
The senators, announcing their votes from their desks in the very chamber the mob had ransacked, were not only jurors but also witnesses. Only by watching the graphic videos — rioters calling out menacingly for House Speaker Nancy Pelosi, D-Calif., and Vice President Mike Pence, who was presiding over the January certification tally — did senators say they began to understand just how perilously close the country came to chaos.
Many senators kept their votes closely held until the final moments on Saturday, particularly the Republicans representing states where the former president remains popular. Most of them ultimately voted to acquit, doubting whether Trump was fully responsible or if impeachment was the appropriate response.
“Just look at what Republicans have been forced to defend,” said Senate Majority Leader Charles Schumer, D-N.Y. “Look at what Republicans have chosen to forgive.”
The second-ranking Republican, Sen. John Thune of South Dakota, acknowledged afterward: “It’s an uncomfortable vote. I don’t think there was a good outcome there for anybody.”
WITNESS REQUEST
The drama earlier Saturday began when Raskin opened the day’s proceedings with an unexpected request to call Rep. Jaime Herrera Beutler, R-Wash., as a witness after reports of her account that Trump had refused the entreaties of House Minority Leader Kevin McCarthy, R-Calif., to call off the rioters.
Herrera Beutler described an expletive-laden phone call in which Trump falsely claimed that the rioters were members of antifa, the looseknit movement of sometimes violent liberal activists. He also accused McCarthy of caring less about Trump’s efforts to overturn Biden’s victory than the rioters did.
Schumer had told Democrats earlier Saturday that the decision about witnesses would be left to the House managers. So after Raskin’s request, the chamber voted 55-45 to allow witnesses, with five Republicans joining Democrats and with the chamber sliding into uncertainty as groups of senators huddled for hours to figure out what would come next.
The possibility of a protracted trial worried Repub- licans, with Sen. Lindsey Graham, R-S.C., shaking his head and resting his forehead on his hand as Raskin spoke. Separately, Sen. Ron Johnson, R-Wis., angrily pointed at Romney after the senator had voted for allowing witnesses. Trump’s lawyers threatened to call hundreds of witnesses, though they would not have been allowed to do so without Senate approval.
After nearly three hours of deliberations, the Senate came back to order and Raskin announced that he was willing to accept a compromise in which Herrera Beutler’s statement would be admitted as evidence — and that Trump and his lawyers would stipulate to its veracity.
It remained unclear, however, why the Democrats reversed themselves given that the compromise closed the door on additional testimony. One individual close to the House managers’ deliberations said getting Trump to agree that Herrera Beutler’s statement was true was an important victory. The person also said the “already overwhelming evidence” admitted in the trial had made the managers’ case “without the need for subpoena, deposition and other testimony.”
However, in his closing arguments, van der Veen said the former president and his lawyer were not stipulating to the “truthfulness” of Herrera Beutler’s statement.
MCCONNELL’S DECISION
McConnell said Trump’s actions surrounding the attack on Congress were “a disgraceful, disgraceful dereliction of duty.” He noted that Trump is now out of office, and he is still subject to the country’s criminal and civil laws.
“He didn’t get away with anything yet,” McConnell said.
McConnell had signaled last month that he was open to finding Trump guilty, which in itself was an eye-opening signal of his alienation from the former president. His decision on how he would vote was unclear until he sent a private email to GOP senators Saturday morning that said, “While a close call, I am persuaded that impeachments are a tool primarily of removal and we therefore lack jurisdiction.”
He expanded on his rationale on the Senate floor after the roll call vote but went even further, making clear his enmity toward Trump’s actions.
“There is no question, none, that President Trump is practically and morally responsible for provoking the event of that day,” he said.
Many had expected the minority senator to vote to clear Trump of the charge, based on McConnell’s history as a GOP loyalist who takes few major risks. But before Saturday, he had said little in public or private about his mindset, and no one was certain what he would decide.
McConnell jarred the political world just minutes after the Democratic-led House impeached Trump on Jan. 13, writing to his GOP colleagues that he had “not made a final decision” about how he would vote at the Senate trial.
McConnell had also told associates that he thought Trump perpetrated impeachable offenses and that he saw the moment as a chance to distance the GOP from the damage Trump could inflict on it, a Republican strategist told The Associated Press at the time, speaking on condition of anonymity to describe private conversations.
But since the trial began, McConnell had voted with a majority of Republicans against proceeding, on the grounds that Trump was no longer president.
RARE OCCURRENCE
Impeachment trials are rare, with senators meeting as the court of impeachment over a president only four times in the nation’s history, for Andrew Johnson, Bill Clinton and now twice for Trump.
Trump is the only U.S. president to have been impeached twice by the House, which last year handed down articles of impeachment for his attempts to pressure Ukraine in hopes of damaging his then-rival, Biden, who would go on to defeat him in the 2020 presidential election.
Unlike last year’s impeachment trial of Trump, a complicated charge of corruption and obstruction over his attempts to have the foreign ally dig up dirt on Biden, this one brought an emotional punch displayed in graphic videos of the siege that laid bare the unexpected vulnerability of the democratic system.
At the same time, this year’s trial carried similar warnings from the prosecutors pleading with senators that Trump must be held accountable because he has shown repeatedly he has no bounds. Left unchecked, he will further test the norms of civic behavior, even now that he is out of office but still commanding loyal supporters, the impeachment managers said.
“This trial in the final analysis is not about Donald Trump,” said Raskin. “This trial is about who we are.” Information for this article was contributed by Lisa Mascaro, Eric Tucker, Mary Clare Jalonick and Alan Fram of The Associated Press; by Amy Gardner, Mike DeBonis, Seung Min Kim, Karoun Demirjian, Rosalind S. Helderman, Paul Kane, Felicia Sonmez, John Wagner and Amy B Wang of The Washington Post; and by Nicholas Fandos of The New York Times.