Senate acquits Trump of incitement charge in impeachment trial
The final vote was 57 guilty and 43 not guilty
By Jerusalem Post Staff, February 13, 2021
US President Donald Trump speaks at the Joint Base Andrews, Maryland, US, January 20, 2021.
(photo credit: CARLOS BARRIA / REUTERS )
Donald Trump on
Saturday was acquitted by the US Senate in his second impeachment trial
in 12 months, as his fellow Republicans shielded him from
accountability for the deadly assault by his supporters on the US
Capitol, a shrine of American democracy.
The
Senate vote of 57-43 fell short of the two-thirds majority needed to
convict Trump on a charge of incitement of insurrection after a five-day
trial in the same building ransacked by his followers on Jan. 6 shortly
after they heard him deliver an incendiary speech.
In the vote, seven of the 50 Senate Republicans joined the chamber's unified Democrats in favoring conviction.
Following the vote, Trump released a statement, claiming that the impeachment trial had been another phase of the "greatest witch hunt in the history of our country."
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
also saved Trump in the Feb. 5, 2020, vote in his previous impeachment
trial, when only one senator from their ranks - Mitt Romney - voted to
convict and remove him from office.
Romney voted for impeachment on Saturday along with fellow
Republicans Richard Burr, Bill Cassidy, Susan Collins, Ben Sasse, Pat
Toomey, and Lisa Murkowski.
Senate
Majority Leader Mitch McConnell, who voted "not guilty," offered
scathing remarks about the former president after the verdict.
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 at the ballot box on Nov. 3, 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.
Democrats forged ahead with impeachment despite knowing it could overshadow critical early weeks of Biden's presidency.
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."
During
the trial, nine House lawmakers serving as trial managers, or
prosecutors, urged senators to convict Trump to hold him accountable for
a crime against American democracy and to prevent a repeat in the
future. They played searing video of rioters swarming inside the Capitol
and making violent threats toward politicians including House Speaker
Nancy Pelosi and then-Vice President Mike Pence. The House managers said
Trump summoned the mob to Washington, gave the crowd its marching
orders and then did nothing to stop the ensuing violence.
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 and that his remarks were protected by the constitutional
right to free speech. The words Trump used, they argued, were no
different than those regularly employed by Democrats.
In
his previous impeachment trial, the Senate voted to acquit Trump on two
charges - abuse of power and obstruction of Congress. That impeachment
arose from Trump's 2019 pressure on Ukraine to investigate Biden as he
sought foreign aid to sully a domestic political rival.
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 US 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."
Impeachment,
once a rare occurrence, has become more commonplace during America's
era of poisonous political polarization in recent decades. In the 209
years after the first US president, George Washington, took office in
1789, there was only one impeachment.
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.
Trump's
acquittal does not end the possibility of other congressional action
against him such as a censure motion. Republicans seemed dead set
against an idea floated by Democrats of invoking the Constitution's 14th
Amendment provision barring from public office anyone who has "engaged
in insurrection or rebellion" against the government.
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.
Sputnik One says: This outcome was highly predictable & it has proved two things:- 1) The Democrats are vindictive scumbags & do not have the American peoples best interest at heart 2) The Swamp Creatures in the Republican party need to be thrown out of the GOP ASAP !
The American people deserve better than Biden, Harris, Pelosi, Schumer, Clinton, Kerry, Rice, Jarrett , Obama Soros, AOC, Sanders & all the other billionaire Marxist and criminal elements that now govern America. I pray that Biden will be a one term president & that either Donald Trump or another Republican is elected POTUS in 2024 because if Biden & Harris are not ousted then America is finished as a free nation under God!
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