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US senators are ready to vote on whether Donald Trump will be responsible for inciting the horrific attack on Capitol Hill after a speedy trial that exposed the violence and danger to their own lives and the fragility of the national tradition of a peaceful handover of the presidential office. can.
Just a month after the deadly riot, the final arguments for the historic impeachment trial are set as senators arrive for a rare Saturday session, all under the watch of the armed National Guard troops still guarding the iconic building.
The outcome of the quick, raw and emotional procedures is expected to reflect a nation divided over the former president and the future of his kind of politics in America.
“What is important about this trial is that it is actually directed to some extent at Donald Trump, but it is more directed at a president that we don’t even know in 20 years,” said Senator Angus King, the independent from Maine, weighing his vote. . .
The trial, which lasted nearly a week, has provided a grim and graphic narrative of the January 6 riots and its aftermath for the nation in a way that senators, most of whom fled for their own safety that day, acknowledge. they are still fighting.
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Absolution is expected in the evenly divided Senate, a verdict that could heavily influence not only Trump’s political future, but also that of senators who vowed to provide impartial justice as jurors when casting their votes.
House prosecutors have argued that Trump’s rallying cry to go to Capitol Hill and “fight like hell” for his presidency just as Congress was meeting on January 6 to certify Joe Biden’s election was part of an orchestrated pattern of violent rhetoric and false claims that sparked the mob. . Five people were killed, including a rioter who was shot and a police officer.
AP
Donald Trump is the only president of the United States who has been indicted twice.
Defense attorneys responded within a brief space of three hours Friday that Trump’s words were not intended to incite violence and that the impeachment is nothing more than a “witch hunt” designed to prevent him from occupying the office again. post.
Just by watching the graphic videos, the rioters shouting menacingly for the Speaker of the House of Representatives, Nancy Pelosi, and Vice President Mike Pence, who was presiding over the vote count, did senators say that they began to understand how dangerously close the country was. of chaos. Hundreds of rioters stormed the building, seized the Senate, and some engaged in bloody hand-to-hand combat with the police.
While the Senate is unlikely to get the two-thirds of the votes necessary to convict, several senators appear to be still weighing their vote. Senate Republican Leader Mitch McConnell will be widely watched for clues, but he’s not pushing his side of the aisle and telling senators to vote conscientiously.
Uncredited / AP
This video image shows one of the many slides presented by Democrats processing the impeachment of former President Donald Trump.
Many Republicans representing states where the former president remains popular doubt whether Trump was fully responsible or whether impeachment is the appropriate response. Democrats seem almost united by conviction.
Trump is the only president to have been indicted twice and the first to face trial charges after leaving office.
Unlike Trump’s impeachment trial last year in the Ukraine case, a complicated charge of corruption and obstruction over his attempts to get the foreign ally to unearth dirt on then-rival Biden, this one brought an emotional blow to the country’s unexpected vulnerability. tradition of the nation. of peaceful elections. The charge is unique, incitement to insurrection.
Uncredited / AP
Several people died during the riots in the United States Capitol.
On Friday, Trump’s impeachment lawyers accused Democrats of waging a “hate” campaign against the former president as they concluded his defense, sending the Senate to a final vote in his historic trial.
The defense team strongly denied that Trump had incited the deadly riot and played video clips out of context showing Democrats, some of them senators now serving as jurors, and also telling supporters to “fight”, with the aim to draw a parallel with Trump’s overheated rhetoric.
“This is normally political rhetoric,” declared Trump’s attorney, Michael van der Veen. “Countless politicians have spoken of fighting for our principles.”
But the presentation blurred the difference between the general encouragement politicians make to fight for health care or other causes and Trump’s fight against officially accepted national election results, and downplayed Trump’s efforts to undermine those election results. The defeated president was telling his supporters to keep fighting after all states had verified their results, after the Electoral College confirmed them, and after nearly all electoral demands brought by Trump and his allies had been rejected in the courts.
Susan Walsh / AP
Few Republicans are expected to vote to convict Donald Trump.
Democratic senators shook their heads at what many called a false equivalency to their own fierce words. “We were not asking them to ‘fight like hell’ to overthrow an election,” said Senator Richard Blumenthal, a Democrat from Connecticut.
Democrats say Trump was the “chief inciter” whose months-long campaign against the election results was based on a “big lie” and laid the groundwork for the mutiny, a violent internal attack on the Capitol without parallel in history.
“Be real,” the chief prosecutor, Jamie Raskin, a Democrat, said at one point. “We know this is what happened.”
The Senate has sat as a court of impeachment for former Presidents Andrew Johnson, Bill Clinton, and now twice for Trump, but the unprecedented nature of the case because he is no longer in the White House has provided Republican senators with one of several arguments against the conviction.
Uncredited / AP
In this image from the video, Bruce Castor, an attorney for former President Donald Trump, speaks during the second impeachment trial.
Republicans maintain that the proceedings are unconstitutional, despite the fact that the Senate voted early in the trial on this issue and confirmed that it has jurisdiction.
Six Republican senators who joined Democrats in voting to take up the case are among the most watched for their votes.
The first signals came on Friday during questions to the lawyers. Sen. Susan Collins, R-Maine, and Sen. Lisa Murkowski, R-Alaska, asked the first question, the two centrists known for their independent streaks. They leaned toward a point prosecutors had raised by asking exactly when Trump learned of the Capitol breach and what specific actions he took to end the unrest.
Democrats had argued that Trump did nothing as the crowd rioted.
Another Republican who voted to initiate the trial, Senator Bill Cassidy of Louisiana, asked about Trump’s tweet criticizing Pence moments after another senator told him that the vice president had just been evacuated.
Van der Veen replied that “at no time” was the president informed of any danger. Cassidy later told reporters that it was not a very good answer.
