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US senators voted to go ahead with the impeachment of Donald Trump on the charge of inciting the deadly assault on Capitol Hill, rejecting a claim that the procedure was unconstitutional after viewing graphic video of the January attack.
The Senate voted 56-44 to proceed with the former president’s trial, a historic first, rejecting largely in line with the party the argument of its defense attorneys that a president cannot face trial after leaving the party. White House.
Democrats hope to disqualify Trump from holding public office again.
Video presented by the team of nine House Democrats showed Trump supporters breaking down barriers and beating police officers on Capitol Hill.
It also showed the moment when protester Ashli Babbitt was shot dead by the police guarding the Chamber chamber. Five people, including a police officer, were killed in the riot.
The video interspersed images of Capitol violence with snippets of Trump’s incendiary speech before a crowd of supporters moments earlier urging them to “fight like hell” to reverse their electoral defeat.
The mob attacked police, sent politicians to fight for safety, and disrupted President Joe Biden’s formal Congressional certification of victory after Trump spent two months challenging election results based on false claims of widespread voter fraud. .
“If that’s not a crime of impeachment, then it doesn’t exist,” Democratic Congressman Jamie Raskin, who led the indictment, told the assembled senators, who are serving as jurors, after showing the video.
In another scene, a troublemaker can be heard sifting through the contents of a politician’s desk saying, “There must be something here that we can use against the bastards.”
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Trump impeachment trial: what to expect
Trump was indicted by the Democratic-led House on January 13 of inciting an insurrection.
It seems likely that he will be acquitted thanks to the support of his fellow Republicans in the Senate, which is narrowly divided.
Convicting him would require a two-thirds majority, meaning that at least 17 Republicans would have to join the Senate’s 48 Democrats and two independents to vote against Trump. That is a difficult task.
Trump is the only president to go to trial in the Senate after leaving office and the only president to be indicted twice.
The trial took place in extraordinary security around the Capitol after the siege, including armed security forces and a perimeter of fences and barbed wire.
Trump’s defense has argued that he was exercising his right to free speech under the First Amendment to the Constitution when he addressed his supporters before the attack on Capitol Hill.
“We cannot suggest that we punish people for political speeches in this country,” said Bruce Castor, one of Trump’s attorneys, as the defense team began its presentation.
“We are here,” Castor said, because the Democrats who control the House do not want to face Trump as a political rival in the future and because Democrats fear that American voters will want Trump to return to the presidency in 2024.
Castor said the assault on the Capitol “must be denounced in the strongest terms” and that the rioters should be prosecuted to the fullest extent possible, reflecting the defense’s claim that “a small group of criminals” does not Trump, were responsible for the violence.
“Presidents cannot ignite the insurrection in their final weeks and then walk away like it’s nothing. And yet that’s the rule that President Trump asks them to adopt,” Democratic Congressman Joe Neguse told senators.
Most of the senators at the trial were present on Capitol Hill on January 6, when many politicians said they feared for their own safety.
Democrat Raskin wept as he recounted how family members he brought to the Capitol that day to witness voter certification had to take refuge in an office near the House floor, saying, “They thought they were going to die.
Raskin said his 24-year-old daughter never wants to return to the building.
Republican Senator Bill Cassidy called the Democrats’ speeches “a very good opening.”
“The arguments they gave were solid arguments,” said Cassidy, one of the Republican senators who voted last month that a post-presidential impeachment would be unconstitutional.
Most legal experts have said that it is constitutional to have impeachment after an official has left office.
The trial could provide clues about the direction of the Republican Party following Trump’s tumultuous four-year presidency.
Strong divisions have emerged between Trump loyalists and those who hope to move the party in a new direction.
Meanwhile, Democrats worry the trial could hamper Biden’s ability to move quickly on an ambitious legislative agenda.
A year ago, the then Republican-controlled Senate cleared Trump of charges of obstruction of Congress and abuse of power for pressuring Ukraine to launch an investigation into Biden and his son Hunter in 2019.
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