Giving away the ending
Early vote indicates Trump will be acquitted in impeachment trial:
CONSTITUTIONAL Everyone can see immediately why this is so dangerous. It’s an invitation to the president to take his best shot at anything he may want to do on his way out the door, including using violent means to lock that door, to hang on to the Oval Office at all costs and to block the peaceful transfer of power.
— Rep. Jamie Raskin (D-Md.)
Senate Republicans sent a strong signal Tuesday that former President Donald Trump’s second impeachment trial will end in acquittal, with an overwhelming majority of them voting that it’s unconstitutional.
Forty-four GOP members voted not to allow the trial to proceed after hearing about 3½ hours of arguments over whether lawmakers still have jurisdiction over Trump, who was succeeded by President Biden on Jan. 20.
The 56-44 vote marked the second time that Senate Republicans voted overwhelmingly against the constitutionality of the impeachment trial, with only Sen. Bill Cassidy (R-La.) breaking ranks since a 55-45 vote last month, to make it now six Republican defectors.
The move makes it highly unlikely that 17 GOP senators will join Democrats to comprise the two-thirds majority needed to convict Trump on a charge of “incitement of insurrection” in the deadly Jan. 6 storming of the US Capitol by his supporters.
Despite Day One of the trial being ostensibly devoted to the constitutionality question, lead House impeachment manager Jamie Raskin (D-Md.) started the session with a lengthy video montage that mashed together chilling scenes from the riot and segments from the speech Trump gave his supporters earlier that day.
“That’s a high crime and misdemeanor,” Raskin said after pointing to the screen.
“If that’s not an impeachable offense, then there’s no such thing.”
Raskin went on to repeatedly argue that there’s no “January exception” to impeachment, saying that the “vast majority of constitutional scholars” believe Trump can be tried despite having left office.
Raskin also got emotional while closing his remarks by recounting how he brought his family to the Capitol on Jan. 6 to watch Congress certify Biden’s victory, a day after the funeral for his son, Tommy, 25, who committed suicide on Dec. 31.
His daughter and son-in-law wound up barricaded in an office, Raskin said, “hiding under a desk” and thinking that “they were going to die.”
During the defense presentation, lead Trump impeachment lawyer Bruce Castor said countless former government officials could be subjected to impeachment proceedings if Trump’s trial went forward.
“If you go down the road Mr. Raskin asks you to go down, the floodgates will open,” Castor told the Senate.
“The political pendulum will shift one day. This chamber and the chamber across the way will change one day and partisan impeachments will become commonplace.”
Castor suggested politicians could wind up being elected to Congress by campaigning on the promise of impeaching controversial government figures, specifically mentioning former Attorney General Eric Holder and the botched “Fast and Furious” gun-running probe.
Castor — who appeared to deliver his remarks off the cuff and rambled at times — also said “the idea of January amnesty is nonsense.”
NOT CONSTITUTIONAL
. . . an impeachment trial of a private-citizen Trump held before the Senate would be nothing more nor less than the trial of a private citizen by a legislative body. An impeachment trial by the Senate of a private citizen violates Article I Section 9 of the United States Constitution, which provides that no bill of attainder shall be passed . . .
— Trump lawyer David Schoen
If Trump actually played a part in the Capitol riot, Castor said, “after he’s out of office, you go and arrest him.”
“The Department of Justice does know what to do with such people,” he said.
Castor noted that some of the people charged with breaking into the halls of Congress have been charged with conspiracy, but that “not a single one” has been charged with conspiring with Trump.
Another Trump lawyer, David Schoen, said trying Trump would “open up new and bigger wounds” and “tear this country apart, perhaps like we have only seen once before in our history.”
“A great many Americans see this process for exactly what it is: A chance by a group of partisan politicians seeking to eliminate Donald Trump from the American political scene and seeking to disenfranchise 74 million-plus American voters and those who dare to share their political beliefs and vision of America,” he said.
“They hated the results of the 2016 election and want to use this impeachment process to further their political agenda.”
Trump’s first trial last year, over a call in which he asked Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky to investigate Joe Biden and his son Hunter, ended in acquittal, with Sen. Mitt Romney casting the only GOP vote to convict.