VERDICT: NOT GUILTY, AGAIN
Senate acquits on 57-43 vote; Trump says he’s ‘only just begun’ Pa. Sen.: Weight of evidence was overwhelmingly in favor of guilt Toomey breaks with GOP to join 6 other Republicans for conviction McConnell: Trump ‘practically and morally responsible’ fo
Republican Pennsylvania Sen. Pat Toomey voted to convict former President Donald Trump in his second impeachment trial. Toomey is one of seven Republican senators who voted “guilty” on the charge of inciting an insurrection at the U.S. Capitol on Jan. 6.
All 50 Democratic senators voted to convict, including Pennsylvania’s Sen. Bob Casey. But without the 67 votes needed to convict, the Senate has acquitted Trump by a vote of 57-43.
Toomey was undecided heading into the trial, he told reporters after its conclusion Saturday.
“I can’t point to one moment or one piece of evidence or one argument that made the difference,” he said. “It was really the accumulation of the weight of all the evidence I think overwhelmingly argued in favor of a conviction.”
A year ago, when Trump was impeached for the first time, Sens. Toomey and Casey found themselves on opposite sides. Toomey voted to acquit the president for allegedly withholding foreign aid from Ukraine to pressure officials there to investigate his rival, Joe Biden. Casey, a Democrat, voted to remove Trump from office.
Toomey, who is not seeking reelection in 2022, always maintained some distance from Trump but explicitly condemned the former president’s
claims of election fraud in the 2020 election. He called on Trump to resign after the assault on the Capitol and was one of just six Republican senators who found the former president could be impeached after leaving office.
Joining Toomey in voting to convict Trump were Republican Sens. Richard Burr of North Carolina, Bill Cassidy of Louisiana, Susan Collins of Maine, Lisa Murkowski of Alaska, Mitt Romney of Utah, and Ben Sasse of Nebraska.
On a conference call with reporters after the vote, Toomey said the summation of Trump’s conduct after losing the 2020 election amounted to an impeachable attempt to hold on to power, preventing a peaceful transfer for the first time in American history.
“Lawless attempt to retain power by a president was one of the Founders’ greatest fears, motivating the inclusion of the impeachment authorities in the U.S. Constitution,” he said.
Toomey recounted Trump’s effort to convince supporters that he won, his failed legal challenges, and his attempts to pressure state and local election officials into rejecting results.
“And when all these efforts failed, President Trump summoned thousands of people to Washington, D.C., enflamed their passions by repeating disproven allegations about widespread fraud,” he said. “He urged that mob to march on the Capitol for the explicit purpose of preventing Congress and the vice president from formally certifying the results of the presidential election.”
Toomey declined to comment on his Republican colleagues’ not-guilty votes.
“I don’t second-guess my colleagues,” he said. “That’s their decision to make, and they made it.”
Asked whether more should be done to hold Trump accountable for his actions, Toomey said Trump will continue to be remembered in history as the only president to have been impeached twice.
“That is an extremely powerful rebuke, and that doesn’t go away, and the American people are aware of what he did,” he said.
Toomey, who said he voted for Trump in the November presidential election, said it’s important that Republicans come to distinguish between what Toomey called the policy successes of the Trump administration, and Trump’s “completely unacceptable” behavior after he lost.
“I hope that we get to the point where we can come together as a party and recognize those things,” Toomey said.
That seemed unlikely, at least in the short term. The Pennsylvania Republican Party chairman, Lawrence Tabas, said in a statement Saturday that Trump’s impeachment trial “was an unconstitutional theft of time and energy that did absolutely nothing to unify or help the American people.”
Tabas added: “I share the disappointment of many of our grassroots leaders and volunteers over Sen. Toomey’s vote today.”
Casey, like most Democratic senators, had said Trump was guilty of high crimes against the country. The day after the Capitol attack, Casey joined a host of other politicians and called on then-Vice President Mike Pence to invoke the 25th Amendment to remove Trump from power. The president, he said in a series of tweets, inspired and emboldened domestic terrorists to attempt a coup against the U.S. government.