{"id":107023,"date":"2021-02-13T21:51:25","date_gmt":"2021-02-13T21:51:25","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/fin2me.com\/?p=107023"},"modified":"2021-02-13T21:51:25","modified_gmt":"2021-02-13T21:51:25","slug":"senate-votes-to-acquit-donald-trump-for-inciting-insurrection","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/fin2me.com\/politics\/senate-votes-to-acquit-donald-trump-for-inciting-insurrection\/","title":{"rendered":"Senate Votes To Acquit Donald Trump For Inciting Insurrection"},"content":{"rendered":"
WASHINGTON \u2015 The Senate acquitted former President Donald Trump on Saturday for the second time, letting him off the hook for inciting his supporters to march on the U.S. Capitol a little more than five weeks ago, leading to an insurrection that left five people dead and imperiled the lives of his vice president, countless lawmakers, staffers, and Capitol Police officers.<\/span><\/p>\n A majority of senators voted to convict Trump, including seven Republicans and every Democrat, but that still fell far short of the necessary two-thirds of the chamber required.<\/p>\n The final vote was 57 to 43.\u00a0The Republicans to vote for conviction were Sen. Richard Burr (N.C.), Bill Cassidy (La.), Susan Collins (Maine), Lisa Murkowski (Alaska), Mitt Romney (Utah), Ben Sasse (Neb.) and Pat Toomey (Pa.).<\/p>\n Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer (D-N.Y.) hailed the result in a speech afterward as \u201cthe largest and most bipartisan vote in any impeachment trial in history.\u201d<\/p>\n Because Trump was not convicted, he will be eligible to run for office again \u2015 and <\/span>provoke violence again<\/span>, Democratic impeachment managers warned before the vote on Saturday. It would also set a dangerous precedent for the future, they said.<\/span><\/p>\n \u201cThe stakes could not be higher,\u201d impeachment manager Rep. Joe Neguse (D-Colo.) said. \u201cBecause the cold, hard truth is that what happened on Jan. 6 can happen again. I fear, like many of you do, that the violence we saw on that terrible day may be just the beginning.\u201d<\/p>\n The Senate wrapped up the dramatic proceedings in less than a week, with two days of arguments from House Democratic impeachment managers and less than three hours of arguments from Trump\u2019s legal team. It was the shortest impeachment trial in history.<\/span><\/p>\n The result was preordained from the start: Most Senate Republicans called the proceedings unconstitutional because Trump was already out of office by the time of the trial, although he was still president when the House <\/span>voted to impeach<\/span> him in January. The Senate rejected that argument in a bipartisan vote before the trial, affirming its constitutional power to try \u201call\u201d impeachments, but many GOP senators clung to process to oppose Trump\u2019s conviction anyway.<\/span><\/p>\n Burr, who is retiring next year, rejected his GOP colleagues\u2019 efforts to sidestep Trump\u2019s actions by citing procedural objections.<\/p>\n \u201cThe Senate is an institution based on precedent, and given that the majority of the Senate voted to proceed with this trial, the question of constitutionality is now established precedent,\u201d Burr said in a statement.<\/p>\n Trump, Burr added, \u201cbears responsibility for these tragic events. … The evidence is compelling that President Trump is guilty of inciting an insurrection against a coequal branch of government.\u201d<\/p>\n Senate Republicans had already acquitted Trump in his first impeachment trial in 2020 for his efforts to pressure the president of Ukraine to investigate President Joe Biden, who was at the time a Democratic presidential candidate. But the gravity of the Jan. 6 attack on the Capitol \u2015 and the fact that the senators-turned-jurors experienced it firsthand \u2015 made this impeachment different. In the House, 10 members of the president\u2019s own party voted in favor of impeachment, a record.<\/span><\/p>\n On that day, Trump spoke to supporters at a \u201cstop the steal\u201d rally, following weeks of claiming the election had been stolen from him. He encouraged his supporters to go to the Capitol and \u201cfight like hell.\u201d Trump\u2019s defense team <\/span>said that he was not encouraging<\/span> literal fighting, but his supporters <\/span>have said they were acting on his orders<\/span> when they stormed the building to stop Congress from certifying electoral votes for Biden.<\/span><\/p>\n \u201cIf that\u2019s not ground for conviction, if that\u2019s not a high crime and misdemeanor against the republic and the United States of America, then nothing is,\u201d impeachment manager Rep. Jamie Raskin (D-Md.) said during closing remarks on Saturday. \u201cPresident Trump must be convicted for the safety and security of our democracy and our people.\u201d\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n After the insurrection, numerous Republican senators criticized Trump. Senate Republican Leader Mitch McConnell (R-Ky.) <\/span>said on Jan. 6<\/span> that the mob was \u201cprovoked by the president and other powerful people.\u201d\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n On Saturday morning, however, McConnell <\/span>told colleagues<\/span> that while it was \u201ca close call,\u201d he would vote to acquit Trump because he believed the Senate lacked jurisdiction. Notably, McConnell was majority leader at the time of the House impeachment vote, but signaled that he would not begin a trial while Trump remained in office.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n The final acquittal vote on Saturday took place after a few hours of chaos in the morning, when Democratic impeachment managers unexpectedly announced they wanted to call in a witness, Rep. Jaime Herrera Beutler (R-Wash.), and the Senate voted to approve witnesses in the trial.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n Herrera Beutler, one of 10<\/span> House Republicans who voted for impeachment, issued a statement on Friday night corroborating a <\/span>CNN report<\/span> about a call between Trump and House Minority Leader Kevin McCarthy (R-Calif.) during the insurrection.<\/span><\/p>\n \u201cWell, Kevin, I guess these people are more upset about the election than you are,\u201d Trump said as McCarthy urged him to call off his supporters, according to lawmakers McCarthy told about the call afterward, CNN reported.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n Democratic impeachment managers argued that the call showed Trump cared more about himself than he did about stopping the violence.<\/span><\/p>\n \u201cHe chose retaining his own power over the safety of Americans,\u201d Rep. David Cicilline (D-R.I.) said. \u201cI can\u2019t imagine more damning evidence of his state of mind.\u201d\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n Trump\u2019s legal team threatened to call in hundreds of witnesses. This wouldn\u2019t have happened; each witness subpoena would have required a majority vote, which Republicans likely did not have. Still, debating each witness could have eaten up precious time, and any potential testimony wasn\u2019t likely to change the outcome anyway. Senators from both parties were eager to wrap the trial ahead of a weeklong recess.<\/span><\/p>\n Ultimately, <\/span>both sides agreed<\/span> to enter Herrera Beutler\u2019s statement into the record and move on. A senior aide to Democratic impeachment managers told reporters that adding the statement would supplement plentiful evidence against Trump, the strongest being his \u201cown public statements on that day and his own deafening refusal to say \u2018stop the attack.\u2019\u201d<\/span><\/p>\n There were <\/span>several revelations<\/span> from the trial. Democratic impeachment managers laid out how close Vice President Mike Pence and lawmakers were to danger. (Some insurrectionists chanted about wanting to hang Pence as they walked through the Capitol.) Sen. Tommy Tuberville (R-Ala.), a Trump ally, <\/span>told reporters<\/span> that he spoke to the president on Jan. 6 and said Pence had been evacuated from the floor. Soon after, Trump sent out a tweet attacking Pence for not objecting to the electoral results \u2015 meaning he likely did so while knowing Pence was in danger.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n Trump\u2019s defense team <\/span>refused to answer questions<\/span> about when Trump learned of the attack and what he did to stop it, although it insisted that he was unaware that Pence was in danger when he criticized him.<\/span><\/p>\n Trump lawyer Michael van der Veen also pushed conspiracy theories to the end, including a suggestion that the Jan. 6 rally was hijacked by people \u201con the left and right,\u201d repeating on his past suggestions that antifa was heavily involved in the riot. There is no evidence of this, but ample evidence of Trump supporters\u2019 involvement.\u00a0<\/p>\n Van der Veen also claimed that Democrats had encouraged violence last summer during Black Lives Matter protests \u2014 even though many Democrats, Biden included, condemned such violence \u2014 and insisted that the Jan. 6 riot was actually Democrats\u2019 fault.<\/p>\n \u201cHow did we arrive at this place where rioting and pillaging would become commonplace?\u201d he said. \u201cI submit to you that it was month after month of political leaders and media personalities, blood thirsty for ratings, glorifying civil unrest and condemning the reasonable law enforcement measures that are required to quell violent mobs.\u201d<\/p>\nRELATED…<\/h3>\n