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      How Democrats Could Have Made Republicans Squirm

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      #masthead-section-label, #masthead-bar-one { display: none }Campaign to Subvert the 2020 ElectionKey TakeawaysTrump’s RoleGeorgia InvestigationExtremist Wing of G.O.P.AdvertisementContinue reading the main storyOpinionSupported byContinue reading the main storyHow Democrats Could Have Made Republicans SquirmG.O.P. lawmakers were unlikely to convict Trump. But a different approach to impeachment would have been more difficult for them to ignore.Mr. McConnell, a former federal appeals court judge appointed by President George W. Bush, is a professor and the director of the Constitutional Law Center at Stanford Law School. He is the author, most recently, of “The President Who Would Not Be King: Executive Power Under the Constitution.”Feb. 13, 2021, 9:13 p.m. ETRepresentative Jamie Raskin, the lead impeachment manager, with colleagues after the Senate vote.Credit…Erin Schaff/The New York TimesProbably nothing could have moved enough Republican senators to vote to convict former President Donald Trump in his second impeachment trial.But the way the House chose to frame the article of impeachment made the prospect less likely. If the purpose of the proceeding was to produce a conviction and disqualification from future office, as opposed to mere political theater, the House should have crafted a broader and less legalistic set of charges.The sole article of impeachment was for “incitement of insurrection.” It focused on the afternoon of Jan. 6, when then-President Trump addressed an initially peaceful crowd of supporters and egged them on to go to the Capitol and to “fight like hell” against the recognition of an Electoral College victory for his opponent Joe Biden.Presumably, the drafters of the House impeachment resolution chose to frame their charge as incitement because this is an actual crime. The first impeachment of Mr. Trump was criticized (wrongly, in my view) for failing to allege a crime. But it is not necessary for an impeachment to be based on criminal conduct. As Alexander Hamilton explained in The Federalist No. 65, impeachment proceedings “can never be tied down by such strict rules” as “in the delineation of the offense by the prosecutors” in criminal trials. Rather, he said, the target of impeachment proceedings is “the abuse or violation of some public trust.”By charging Mr. Trump with incitement, the House unnecessarily shouldered the burden of proving the elements of that crime. This is not to say that senators may vote to convict only if those elements are proved, but that the terms of the impeachment article invited the defense to respond in the same legalistic terms presented by the House impeachment managers. They tried to broaden the focus during the trial, though not successfully.One element of the crime of incitement is the intent to induce imminent violence. The evidence shows that Mr. Trump was reckless and that violence was a foreseeable consequence of his incendiary speech, but a senator might reasonably conclude that it falls short of proving that he wanted his followers to assault members of Congress or to vandalize the Capitol.Moreover, the terms of the impeachment article opened the door for Mr. Trump’s defense team to play videos in which various Democrats said things that can be construed to encourage violence — a comparison that should be irrelevant but certainly muddied the waters.The House should have crafted its impeachment resolution to avoid a legalistic focus on the former president’s intent. This could have been done by broadening the impeachment article. The charges should have encompassed Mr. Trump’s use of the mob and other tactics to intimidate government officials to void the election results, and his dereliction of duty by failing to try to end the violence in the hours after he returned to the White House from the demonstration at the Ellipse.Whether or not Mr. Trump wanted his followers to commit acts of violence, he certainly wanted them to intimidate Vice President Mike Pence and members of Congress. That was the whole point of their “walk,” as Mr. Trump put it, to the Capitol. The mob was not sent to persuade with reasoning or evidence.Moreover, Mr. Trump’s actions on Jan. 6 were of a piece with attempts — nonviolent but no less wrongful — to intimidate other officials, such as Georgia’s secretary of state, to use their powers to thwart the election results. The Trump campaign had every opportunity to substantiate its claims of massive fraud in court and failed miserably to do so.By focusing the impeachment resolution on the charge of incitement of insurrection, the House made it easier for Mr. Trump’s supporters in the Senate to dismiss these acts of intimidation as irrelevant to the accusation on which they were voting.It should not be necessary to point out that the use of the presidential office to keep power after losing an election is the gravest possible offense against our democratic constitutional order — one that the authors of the Constitution specifically contemplated and sought to prevent. The violence of Jan. 6 was bad, but even if no one at the Capitol had been hurt that day, Mr. Trump’s attempts to mobilize a mob to impede the democratic process was still a high crime or misdemeanor.To make matters worse, Mr. Trump did nothing to stop the violence even when he was aware it was occurring. He did not deploy forces to the Capitol to put down the riot and protect members of Congress. He sent two messages to the rioters, but his appeals for peaceable behavior were tepid, and intermixed with words of support and affection for the rioters.Perhaps most egregious was his tweet that “Mike Pence did not have the courage to do what should have been done to protect our Country and our Constitution,” at a time when rioters were threatening to hang the vice president. We now know that a senator informed Mr. Trump of the danger to Mr. Pence — but Mr. Trump did not retract his tweet or lift a finger to protect Mr. Pence.This dereliction of his constitutional duty was wholly apart from any incitement and was an impeachable offense in itself. But it was not charged in the article of impeachment.It would be foolish to think that the vote on impeachment would come out differently if the charge had been differently framed. But if House was going to impeach, it should have framed the case to make it as difficult as possible for the Senate to acquit.It is far from clear that Mr. Trump incited the violence of Jan. 6 in a technical legal sense, but it is abundantly clear that he sought to intimidate members of Congress and other officials to block Mr. Biden’s election, and that he failed in his duty to do what he could to end the violence once it started. Those would be ample grounds for conviction, quite apart from whether Mr. Trump committed the crime of incitement.Michael W. McConnell, a former federal appeals court judge appointed by President George W. Bush, is a professor and the director of the Constitutional Law Center at Stanford Law School. He is the author, most recently, of “The President Who Would Not Be King: Executive Power Under the Constitution.”The Times is committed to publishing a diversity of letters to the editor. We’d like to hear what you think about this or any of our articles. Here are some tips. And here’s our email: letters@nytimes.com.Follow The New York Times Opinion section on Facebook, Twitter (@NYTopinion) and Instagram.AdvertisementContinue reading the main story More

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      Trump Acquitted of Inciting Insurrection, Even as Bipartisan Majority Votes ‘Guilty’

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      #masthead-section-label, #masthead-bar-one { display: none }The Trump ImpeachmentTrial HighlightsKey Takeaways From Day 5How Senators VotedTrump AcquittedAdvertisementContinue reading the main storySupported byContinue reading the main storyTrump Acquitted of Inciting Insurrection, Even as Bipartisan Majority Votes ‘Guilty’The verdict was unlikely to be the final word for former President Donald J. Trump, his badly divided party or the festering wounds the Jan. 6 riot that prompted the impeachment left behind.The House impeachment managers working in the Capitol on the last day of the impeachment trial against President Donald J. Trump.Credit…Erin Schaff/The New York TimesFeb. 13, 2021Updated 8:26 p.m. ETWASHINGTON — A Senate still bruised from the most violent attack on the Capitol in two centuries acquitted former President Donald J. Trump on Saturday in his second impeachment trial, as all but a few Republicans locked arms to reject a case that he incited the Jan. 6 rampage in a last-ditch attempt to cling to power.Under the watch of National Guard troops still patrolling the historic building, a bipartisan majority voted to find Mr. Trump guilty of the House’s single charge of “incitement of insurrection.” They included seven Republicans, more members of a president’s party than have ever returned an adverse verdict in an impeachment trial.But with most of Mr. Trump’s party coalescing around him, the 57-to-43 tally fell 10 votes short of the two-thirds majority needed to convict, and allow the Senate to move to disqualify him from holding future office.Among the Republicans breaking ranks to find guilty the man who led their party for four tumultuous years, demanding absolute loyalty, were Senators Richard Burr of North Carolina, Bill Cassidy of Louisiana, Susan Collins of Maine, Lisa Murkowski of Alaska, Mitt Romney of Utah, Ben Sasse of Nebraska and Patrick J. Toomey of Pennsylvania.The verdict brought an abrupt end to the fourth presidential impeachment trial in American history, and the only one in which the accused had left office before being tried. But it was unlikely to be the final word for Mr. Trump, his badly divided party or the sprawling criminal and congressional investigations into the assault.It left behind festering wounds in Washington and around the country after a 39-day stretch unlike any in the nation’s history — encompassing a deadly riot at the Capitol, an impeachment of one president, the inauguration of another and a brief but rancorous trial in the Senate.The House had charged Mr. Trump with a single count of “incitement of insurrection.”Credit…Doug Mills/The New York TimesIt took only five days to reach a verdict, partly because Democrats and Republicans were united in their desire to avoid a prolonged proceeding and partly because Mr. Trump’s allies made clear before it even began that they were not prepared to hold him responsible. Most of the jury of senators had themselves witnessed the events that gave rise to the charge, having fled for their own lives, along with the vice president, as the mob closed in last month while they met to formalize President Biden’s victory.Party leaders and even the president’s most loyal supporters in the Senate did not defend his actions — a monthslong campaign, seeded with election lies, to overturn his decisive loss to Mr. Biden that culminated when Mr. Trump told thousands of his supporters to “fight like hell” and they did. Instead, in the face of a meticulous case brought by nine House prosecutors, they found safe harbor in technical arguments that the trial itself was not valid because Mr. Trump was no longer in office.But their overriding political calculation was clear. After party leaders briefly entertained using the process to purge Mr. Trump from their ranks, Republicans doubled down on a bet made five years ago: that it was better not to stoke another open confrontation with a man millions of their voters still singularly embrace.Senator Mitch McConnell, Republican of Kentucky and the minority leader, embodied the tortured balancing act, denouncing Mr. Trump on Saturday, minutes after voting to acquit him, for a “disgraceful dereliction of duty.” In blistering remarks from the Senate floor, Mr. McConnell, who had openly considered voting to convict Mr. Trump, effectively argued that he was guilty as charged, while arguing that there was nothing the Senate could do about it.“There is no question — none — that President Trump is practically and morally responsible for provoking the events of the day,” Mr. McConnell said. “The leader of the free world cannot spend weeks thundering that shadowy forces are stealing our country and then feign surprise when people believe him and do reckless things.”But Mr. McConnell, who refused to call the Senate back into session to hold the trial while Mr. Trump was still in office, argued that he could not be convicted once he no longer was. Mr. McConnell said the only way to punish him now was through the criminal justice system. Mr. Trump, he said, “didn’t get away with anything yet.”Minutes after the verdict, Mr. Trump, barred from Twitter, broke an uncharacteristic silence he had maintained during the trial with a defiant statement issued from his post-presidential home in Florida, calling the proceeding “yet another phase of the greatest witch hunt in the history of our country.”He expressed no remorse for his actions, and strongly suggested that he planned to continue to be a force in politics for a long time to come.“In the months ahead, I have much to share with you, and I look forward to continuing our incredible journey together to achieve American greatness for all of our people,” Mr. Trump said.The “not guilty” verdict left him free to run for office again, but it remained unclear whether he could recover after he became the first president to seriously threaten the peaceful transfer of power. Public polling suggests Republicans have pulled their support in droves since the events of last month, but an acquittal is likely to empower Mr. Trump with the party’s activist base and further stoke the party’s gaping divisions.National Guard troops have remained at the Capitol since the deadly attack on Jan. 6.Credit…Alyssa Schukar for The New York TimesDemocrats, for their part, condemned the verdict but intended to quickly turn Washington’s focus to the new president’s ambitious legislative agenda and the coronavirus pandemic passing grim new milestones each day. The outcome promised to leave Mr. Biden, who took office pledging to “end this uncivil war,” with the monumental task of moving the nation past one of its most violent and turbulent chapters since the 19th century.But that did not mean party leaders were willing to forgo a potential political advantage. Speaker Nancy Pelosi quickly batted down the idea of a bipartisan censure resolution, saying it would let “cowardly senators” off the hook and constitute “a slap in the face of the Constitution.”“Five years ago, Republican senators lamented what might become of their party if Donald Trump became their presidential nominee and standard-bearer,” Senator Chuck Schumer, Democrat of New York and the minority leader, said moments after the vote. “Just look at what has happened. Look at what Republicans have been forced to defend. Look at what Republicans have chosen to forgive.”In a Capitol still ringed by fencing and barbed wire, the presiding officer, Senator Patrick J. Leahy of Vermont, set the question before senators shortly before 4 p.m.:“Senators, how say you? Is the respondent, Donald John Trump, guilty or not guilty?”Seated at mahogany desks defiled just weeks before by insurrectionists in search of material they could use to stop Mr. Biden’s victory, senators wearing masks to guard against spreading the coronavirus rose in alphabetical order to cast their votes.“It is, therefore, ordered and adjudged that the said Donald John Trump be, and he is, hereby acquitted of the charge in said article,” Mr. Leahy declared.The vote came hours after the trial briefly dissolved into chaos when House prosecutors made, then dropped, a surprise demand for witnesses who could reveal what the former president was doing as the assault unfolded. Instead, the two legal teams agreed to admit as evidence a written statement by a Republican congresswoman who has said she was told that the former president sided with the mob as rioters were attacking the Capitol.With the outcome a foregone conclusion, the trial itself became an illuminating and cathartic act for history, clarifying the scope of the violence that occurred.Representative Madeleine Dean hugging Representative Jamie Raskin, both impeachment managers, during the trial.Credit…Erin Schaff/The New York TimesIt could scarcely have been more different than Mr. Trump’s first trial a year ago. Then, the House tried to make its case around an esoteric plot to pressure Ukraine to smear Mr. Biden, and it failed largely on party lines.But over five days this week, the House managers put forward in harrowing detail an account of a horror that had played out in plain sight. Using graphic video and sophisticated visual aids, they made clearer than ever before how close the armed mob had come to a dangerous confrontation with Vice President Mike Pence and the members of the House and the Senate.All of it, the prosecutors argued, was the doing of Mr. Trump, who spread lies that the election had been “stolen” from him, cultivated outrage among his followers, encouraged violence, tried to pressure state election officials to overturn democratically decided results and finally assembled and unleashed a mob of his supporters — who openly planned a bloody last stand — to “stop the steal.” With no signs he was remorseful, they warned he could ignite a repeat if allowed to seek office again.“If that is not ground for conviction, if that is not a high crime and misdemeanor against the Republic and the United States of America, then nothing is,” Representative Jamie Raskin, Democrat of Maryland and the lead manager, said as he summed up his case. “President Trump must be convicted, for the safety and democracy of our people.”After stumbling out of the gate earlier in the week with meandering presentations, Mr. Trump’s legal team delivered the president a highly combative and exceedingly brief defense on Friday. Calling the House’s charge a “preposterous and monstrous lie,” they insisted over just three hours that the former president was a “law and order”-loving leader who never meant for his followers to take the words “fight like hell” literally, and could not have foreseen the violence that followed.Mr. Trump’s legal team, including Michael T. van der Veen, center, arriving at the Capitol on Saturday.Credit…Alyssa Schukar for The New York Times“They were not trying a case,” Michael T. van der Veen, a member of the hastily assembled legal team, said of Democrats in his own closing remarks. “They were telling a political tale, a fable, and a patently false one at that.”They also offered more technical arguments aimed at giving Republicans refuge for acquittal, arguing that it was not constitutional for the Senate to try a former president and that Mr. Trump’s election lies and bellicose words to his supporters could not be deemed incitement because the First Amendment protected his right to speak freely.The seven Republicans who rejected those arguments in favor of conviction were an ideologically diverse group at various stages of their political careers. Mr. Burr and Mr. Toomey plan to retire next year. Mr. Cassidy, Ms. Collins and Mr. Sasse were just re-elected, and Mr. Romney and Ms. Murkowski are among Mr. Trump’s most durable Republican critics.They appeared to draw strength from one another. Shortly before the vote, Mr. Cassidy walked a note to Mr. Burr. It read, “I am a yes,” he said later. Mr. Burr nodded back at him.Ms. Murkowski, who faces re-election next year in a state Mr. Trump won twice, said afterward she would not let her vote be “devalued by whether or not I feel that this is helpful for my political ambitions.”“This is not about me,” she told reporters. “This is really about what we stand for, and if I can’t say what I believe, what our president should stand for, then why should I ask Alaskans to stand with me?”After the attack and Republicans’ loss of the Senate, there had been a brief window in which it seemed as if the outcome might be different. Mr. McConnell privately told advisers that an impeachment conviction might be the only way to purge Mr. Trump from the party after four tumultuous years, and his openness to finding him guilty held out the possibility that a coalition of Republicans might follow his lead.But by the time the proceeding began, with Mr. Biden already in office, the party’s rank and file in Congress had made clear that Mr. Trump still had far too strong a pull among their voters to engage in a head-on fight. As the former president threatened to back primary challengers to the House Republicans who voted to impeach him, state parties across the country lined up votes to censure them or call for their resignations.Emily Cochrane More

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      Trump’s Lawyers Deny He Incited Capitol Mob, Saying It’s Democrats Who Spur Violence

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      #masthead-section-label, #masthead-bar-one { display: none }The Trump ImpeachmentFriday’s HighlightsDay 4: Key TakeawaysWhat Is Incitement?Trump’s LawyersAdvertisementContinue reading the main storySupported byContinue reading the main storyTrump’s Lawyers Deny He Incited Capitol Mob, Saying It’s Democrats Who Spur ViolenceThe former president’s legal team rested its case without using even a quarter of the 16 hours allotted to it.Michael T. van der Veen, one of former President Donald J. Trump’s lawyers, on Friday before presenting the defense’s case.Credit…Erin Schaff/The New York TimesPeter Baker and Feb. 12, 2021Updated 8:04 p.m. ETFormer President Donald J. Trump’s legal team mounted a combative defense on Friday focused more on assailing Democrats for “hypocrisy” and “hatred” than justifying Mr. Trump’s own monthslong effort to overturn a democratic election that culminated in last month’s deadly assault on the Capitol.After days of powerful video footage showing a mob of Trump supporters beating police officers, chasing lawmakers and threatening to kill the vice president and House speaker, Mr. Trump’s lawyers denied that he had incited what they called a “small group” that turned violent. Instead, they tried to turn the tables by calling out Democrats for their own language, which they deemed just as incendiary as Mr. Trump’s.In so doing, the former president’s lawyers went after not just the House Democrats serving as managers, or prosecutors, in the Senate impeachment trial, but half of the jurors sitting in front of them in the chamber. A rat-a-tat-tat montage of video clips played by the Trump team showed nearly every Democratic senator as well as President Biden and Vice President Kamala Harris using the word “fight” or the phrase “fight like hell” just as Mr. Trump did at a rally of supporters on Jan. 6 just before the siege of the Capitol.“Suddenly, the word ‘fight’ is off limits?” said Michael T. van der Veen, one of the lawyers hurriedly hired in recent days to defend Mr. Trump. “Spare us the hypocrisy and false indignation. It’s a term that’s used over and over and over again by politicians on both sides of the aisle. And, of course, the Democrat House managers know that the word ‘fight’ has been used figuratively in political speech forever.”To emphasize the point, the Trump team played some of the same clips four or five times in less than three hours as some of the Democratic senators shook their heads and at least one of their Republican colleagues laughed appreciatively. The lawyers argued that the trial was “shameful” and “a deliberate attempt by the Democrat Party to smear, censor and cancel” an opponent and then rested their case without using even a quarter of the 16 hours allotted to the former president’s defense.Representative Jamie Raskin, center, the lead House impeachment manager, on Friday at the Capitol with aides and other managers during a break in the trial.Credit…Erin Schaff/The New York TimesIn the process, they tried to effectively narrow the prosecution’s “incitement of insurrection” case as if it centered only on their client’s use of that one phrase in that one speech instead of the relentless campaign that Mr. Trump waged since last summer to discredit an election he would eventually lose and galvanize his supporters to help him cling to power.“They really didn’t address the facts of the case at all,” said Representative Jamie Raskin, Democrat of Maryland and the lead impeachment manager. “There were a couple propaganda reels about Democratic politicians that would be excluded in any court in the land. They talk about the rules of evidence — all of that was totally irrelevant to the case before us.”After the Trump team’s abbreviated defense, the senators posed their own questions, generally using their queries to score political points. The questions, a total of 28 submitted in writing and read by a clerk, suggested that most Republicans remained likely to vote to acquit Mr. Trump when the Senate reconvenes for final arguments at 10 a.m. Saturday, blocking the two-thirds supermajority required by the Constitution for conviction.Some of the few Republicans thought to be open to conviction, including Senators Mitt Romney of Utah, Susan Collins of Maine and Lisa Murkowski of Alaska, grilled the lawyers about what Mr. Trump knew and when he knew it during the attack. The managers have argued that it was not just the president’s words and actions in advance of the attack that betrayed his oath, but his failure to act more assertively to stop his supporters after it started.Responding to the senators, the defense lawyers pointed to mildly worded messages and a video that Mr. Trump posted on Twitter after the building was stormed calling on his supporters not to use violence while still endorsing their cause and telling them that he loved them. The managers repeated that Mr. Trump never made a strong, explicit call on the rioters to halt the attack, nor did he send help.Mr. Romney and Senator Bill Cassidy, Republican of Louisiana, zeroed in on Mr. Trump’s failure to exhibit concern for his own vice president, Mike Pence, who was targeted for death by the former president’s supporters because he refused to try to block finalization of the election. Even after Mr. Pence was evacuated from the Senate chamber that day, Mr. Trump attacked him on Twitter, saying that “Mike Pence didn’t have the courage to do what should have been done.”Senator Mitt Romney returning to the Senate chamber after a break in the trial on Friday.Credit…Brandon Bell for The New York TimesMr. van der Veen told the senators that “at no point was the president informed that the vice president was in any danger.” But in fact, Senator Tommy Tuberville, Republican of Alabama, told reporters this week that he spoke by telephone with Mr. Trump during the attack and told him that Mr. Pence had been rushed out of the chamber. Officials have said that Mr. Trump never called Mr. Pence to check on his safety and did not speak with him for days.The defense team struggled to avoid directly addressing what managers called Mr. Trump’s “big lie” that the election was stolen, which led his supporters to invade the Capitol to try to stop Congress from counting the Electoral College votes ratifying the result. Senator Bernie Sanders of Vermont, an independent who caucuses with the Democrats, challenged Mr. Trump’s lawyers to say whether they believe he actually won the election.“My judgment?” Mr. van der Veen replied derisively and then demanded: “Who asked that?”“I did,” Mr. Sanders called out from his seat.“My judgment’s irrelevant in this proceeding,” Mr. van der Veen said, prompting an eruption from Democratic senators. He repeated that “it’s irrelevant” to the question of whether Mr. Trump incited the riot.Senate Democrats dismissed the defense’s efforts to equate Mr. Trump’s actions with Democratic speeches. “They’re trying to draw a dangerous and distorted equivalence,” Senator Richard Blumenthal, Democrat of Connecticut, told reporters during a break in the trial. “I think it is plainly a distraction from Donald Trump inviting the mob to Washington.”But for Republicans looking for reasons to acquit Mr. Trump, the defense was more than enough. “The president’s lawyers blew the House managers’ case out of the water,” said Senator Ron Johnson, Republican of Wisconsin.Even Ms. Murkowski, who called on Mr. Trump to resign after the Capitol siege, said the defense team was “more on their game” than during the trial’s opening day this week, although by day’s end, she indicated to a reporter she was agonizing over the decision.“It’s been five weeks — less than five weeks — since an event that shook the very core the very foundation of our democracy,” she said. “And we’ve had a lot to process since then.”During the question period, senators closely watched for clues about where their colleagues stood. Although most lawmakers still guessed that only a handful of Republicans would vote to convict, an additional group of Republicans, including Senator Mitch McConnell of Kentucky, the minority leader, have said almost nothing to colleagues about the unfolding trial in private or during daily luncheons before it convenes, prompting speculation that they could be preparing to break from the party.Senator Mitch McConnell of Kentucky, the Republican leader, on the Senate subway before the trial on Friday.Credit…Alyssa Schukar for The New York TimesThe managers need 17 Republicans to join all 50 Democrats to reach the two-thirds required for conviction. While Mr. Trump can no longer be removed from office because his term has ended, he could be barred from ever seeking public office again.The former president had trouble recruiting a legal team to defend him. The lawyers who represented him last year during his first impeachment trial did not come back for this one, and the set of lawyers he initially hired for this proceeding backed out in disagreement over strategy. Bruce L. Castor Jr., the leader of this third set, was widely criticized for his preliminary presentation on Tuesday, including reportedly by Mr. Trump.Mr. Castor and David I. Schoen were largely supplanted on Friday by Mr. van der Veen, who has no long history with the president and in fact was reported to have once called Mr. Trump a “crook” with an expletive, a statement he has denied. Just last year, Mr. van der Veen represented a client suing Mr. Trump over moves that might limit mail-in voting and accused the president of making claims with “no evidence.”But Mr. van der Veen on Friday offered the sort of aggressive performance that Mr. Trump prefers from his representatives as he accused the other side of “doctoring the evidence” with “manipulated video,” all to promote “a preposterous and monstrous lie” that the former president encouraged violence.A personal injury lawyer whose Philadelphia law firm solicits slip-and-fall clients on the radio and whose website boasts of winning judgments stemming from auto accidents and one case “involving a dog bite,” Mr. van der Veen proceeded to lecture Mr. Raskin, who taught constitutional law at American University for more than 25 years, about the Constitution. The managers’ arguments, Mr. van der Veen said, were “less than I would expect from a first-year law student.”He and his colleagues argued that Mr. Trump was exercising his free-speech rights in his fiery address to a rally before supporters broke into the Capitol. The lawyers leaned heavily on Mr. Trump’s single use of the word “peacefully” as he urged backers to march to the Capitol while minimizing the 20 times he used the word “fight.”“No thinking person could seriously believe that the president’s Jan. 6 speech on the Ellipse was in any way an incitement to violence or insurrection,” Mr. van der Veen said. “The suggestion is patently absurd on its face. Nothing in the text could ever be construed as encouraging, condoning or inciting unlawful activity of any kind.”Bruce L. Castor Jr. and Mr. van der Veen arriving at the Capitol on Friday.Credit…Jason Andrew for The New York TimesSensitive to the charge that Mr. Trump endangered police officers, who were beaten and in one case killed during the assault, the lawyers played video clips in which he called himself a “law and order president” along with images of antiracism protests that turned violent last summer.They likewise showed video clips of Democrats objecting to Electoral College votes in past years when Republicans won, including Mr. Raskin in 2017 when Mr. Trump’s victory was sealed, comparing them with Mr. Trump’s criticism of the 2020 election. At the same time, those videos also showed Mr. Biden, then vice president, gaveling those protests out of order.Stacey Plaskett, a Democratic delegate from the Virgin Islands and one of the managers, objected that many of the faces shown in the videos of Democratic politicians and street protesters were Black. “It was not lost on me so many of them were people of color and women, Black women,” she said. “Black women like myself who are sick and tired of being sick and tired for our children.”The defense lawyers contended that Democrats were pursuing Mr. Trump out of personal and partisan animosity, using the word “hatred” 15 times during their formal presentation, and they cast the trial as an effort to suppress a political opponent and his supporters.“It is about canceling 75 million Trump voters and criminalizing political viewpoints,” Mr. Castor said. “That’s what this trial is really about. It is the only existential issue before us. It asks for constitutional cancel culture to take over in the United States Senate. Are we going to allow canceling and banning and silencing to be sanctioned in this body?”Emily Cochrane More

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      House Managers Rest Their Case Against Trump, but Most Republicans Are Not Swayed

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      #masthead-section-label, #masthead-bar-one { display: none }The Trump ImpeachmentTrial HighlightsReporter AnalysisDay 3: Key TakeawaysNew Footage of AttackWhat Is Incitement?Trump’s LawyersAdvertisementContinue reading the main storySupported byContinue reading the main storyHouse Managers Rest Their Case Against Trump, but Most Republicans Are Not SwayedTheir warning that the ex-president remains a danger to democracy and could foment still more violence if not barred from running for office again does not convince his fellow Republicans.Representative Jamie Raskin, the lead House impeachment manager, on Thursday before the start of the third day of former President Donald J. Trump’s Senate trial.Credit…Erin Schaff/The New York TimesPeter Baker and Feb. 11, 2021Updated 9:09 p.m. ETHouse impeachment managers wrapped up their emotionally charged incitement case against former President Donald J. Trump on Thursday by warning that he remains a clear and present danger to American democracy and could foment still more violence if not barred from running for office again.With the sounds of a rampaging mob still ringing in the Senate chamber, the managers sought to channel the shock and indignation rekindled by videos they showed of last month’s attack on the Capitol into a bipartisan repudiation of the former president who inflamed his supporters with false claims of a stolen election.“My dear colleagues, is there any political leader in this room who believes that if he’s ever allowed by the Senate to get back into the Oval Office, Donald Trump would stop inciting violence to get his way?” Representative Jamie Raskin, Democrat of Maryland and the lead impeachment manager, asked the senators. “Would you bet the lives of more police officers on that? Would you bet the safety of your family on that? Would you bet the future of your democracy on that?”The argument was meant to rebut Republicans who have said that holding an impeachment trial for a former president was pointless and even unconstitutional because he has already left office and can no longer be removed. But if Mr. Trump were convicted, the Senate could bar him from holding public office in the future, and the managers emphasized that the trial was aimed not at punishment but prevention.“I’m not afraid of Donald Trump running again in four years,” said Representative Ted Lieu, Democrat of California, another of the managers. “I’m afraid he’s going to run again and lose, because he can do this again.”In the final day of their main arguments, the managers also sought to pre-empt the defense that Mr. Trump’s legal team will offer on Friday by rejecting his claim that he was simply exercising his free-speech rights when he sent a frenzied crowd to the Capitol as lawmakers were counting Electoral College votes and told it to “fight like hell.” The First Amendment, managers said, does not protect a president setting a political powder keg and then lighting a match.“President Trump wasn’t just some guy with political opinions who showed up at a rally on Jan. 6 and delivered controversial remarks,” said Representative Joe Neguse, Democrat of Colorado and another manager. “He was the president of the United States. And he had spent months using the unique power of that office, of his bully pulpit, to spread that big lie that the election had been stolen to convince his followers to ‘stop the steal.’”Representative Joe Neguse, Democrat of Colorado and one of the impeachment managers, on Thursday at the Capitol.Credit…Erin Schaff/The New York TimesBut for all of the drama of the prosecution’s case, most Republican senators appeared unswayed and Mr. Trump seemed to retain enough support to block the two-thirds vote required under the Constitution for conviction on the single “incitement of insurrection” count. While a handful of Republican senators may break from the former president, others seemed to go out of their way on Thursday to express impatience with the trial, the second that Mr. Trump has faced.With Republican positions hardening and President Biden’s agenda slowed by the proceedings, Democratic senators began signaling that they had seen enough, too, and members of both parties were coalescing around a plan to bring a quick end to the trial with a vote on guilt or innocence as early as Saturday.Confident of acquittal, Mr. Trump was spotted on a golf course in Florida while his defense team prepared a truncated presentation to offer on Friday rather than take the full two days for arguments permitted by trial rules.After a much-panned preliminary appearance earlier this week, Mr. Trump’s lawyers planned to argue that he was being prosecuted out of partisan enmity, never overtly called for violence and was not responsible for the actions of his supporters.Republican senators exhibited little eagerness to defend Mr. Trump’s actions, instead explaining their likely acquittal votes by maintaining that it is unconstitutional and unwise to put a former president on trial and accusing Democrats who sometimes use fiery speech themselves of holding a political foe to a double standard. The Senate rejected the constitutionality argument on Tuesday on a 56-to-44 vote, allowing the trial to proceed, but Republicans said they were not obliged to accept that judgment.“My view is unchanged as to whether or not we have the authority to do this, and I’m certainly not bound by the fact that 56 people think we do,” said Senator Roy Blunt, Republican of Missouri. “I get to cast my vote, and my view is that you can’t impeach a former president. And if the former president did things that were illegal, there is a process to go through for that.”Senator Marco Rubio, Republican of Florida, offered similar reasoning. “What happened on Jan. 6 — I said it the moment it started — was unpatriotic, un-American, treasonous, a crime, unacceptable,” he said. “The fundamental question for me, and I don’t know about for everybody else, is whether an impeachment trial is appropriate for someone who is no longer in office. I don’t believe that it is.”A video of Mr. Trump that was to be played during the trial on Thursday.Credit…Erin Schaff/The New York TimesTo convict, at least 17 Republican senators would have to vote against the former president, a scenario that seemed implausible. But both sides were watching to see how many ultimately back prosecutors, which could still infuse the case with bipartisan credibility depending on the number.All eyes were on the six Republicans who voted with Democrats this week to reject Mr. Trump’s constitutional objection — Senators Bill Cassidy of Louisiana, Susan Collins of Maine, Lisa Murkowski of Alaska, Mitt Romney of Utah, Ben Sasse of Nebraska and Patrick J. Toomey of Pennsylvania.No other Republican has signaled readiness to vote for conviction. In fact, after sitting silent through the managers’ harrowing video presentation a day earlier, several of them on Thursday began to flaunt their fatigue with the trial as the managers made their latest arguments.Senator Rick Scott of Florida could be seen filling out a blank map of Asia. Senator Thom Tillis of North Carolina retreated to his party’s cloakroom to read on his phone. At points, a dozen or more Republican senators were away from their mahogany desks.“To me, they’re losing credibility the longer they talk,” Senator James M. Inhofe, Republican of Oklahoma, said of the managers.But the managers argued that the president’s actions posed a threat to democratic institutions, the culmination of months of incendiary lies about election fraud meant to generate support for his effort to hang onto power despite the will of the voters. In their presentations, the managers played clips showing Mr. Trump repeatedly telling backers that they had to stop the election from being finalized.They likewise made the case that Mr. Trump had shown a propensity for mob violence over the years, regularly encouraging supporters at rallies to “knock the crap” out of hecklers and praising a congressman who body-slammed a reporter as “my kind of guy.” The managers reminded the senators of Mr. Trump’s infamous comment that there were “very fine people on both sides” after a white supremacist march in 2017 in Charlottesville, Va., turned deadly and noted that he did nothing to discourage armed extremists who stormed Michigan’s statehouse last year.The Capitol has been surrounded by fencing since soon after the attack on Jan. 6.Credit…Jason Andrew for The New York TimesThey made the point that Mr. Trump not only incited the crowd on Jan. 6 but disregarded pleas from fellow Republicans to more explicitly call on the rioters to stop the attack, endangering his own vice president, Mike Pence, whom he blamed for not trying to overturn the election. Even as 16 members of his own administration quit in protest, Mr. Trump offered no remorse and defended his actions as “totally appropriate.”“President Trump perverted his office by attacking the very Constitution he was sworn to uphold,” Mr. Raskin said.Representative David Cicilline, Democrat of Rhode Island, quoted a police officer shaken by the Capitol siege and asking if this was still America.“Is this America?” Mr. Cicilline repeated, turning the query toward the senators. “What is your answer to that question? Is this OK? If not, what are we going to do about it?”In their days of presentations, the nine-member team of managers tried to apply lessons from last year’s impeachment trial of Mr. Trump. The team is generally younger with less experience in Congress — Mr. Neguse is just 36 — but collectively more polished. And they made a point of trying to avoid the endless repetition of last year’s presentations that turned off senators in both parties, keeping to a more rigorous division of labor to weave a tight narrative.Where last year’s trial allowed each side up to 24 hours over three days for arguments, this year’s managers used only about 10 of the 16 hours they were allotted. They were also less confrontational as they addressed Republican senators, who in response praised their performance even if it did not change their minds about the case. And unlike their predecessors, they had the advantage of video footage documenting the events at issue, which many of them lived through.Aware that senators want to wrap up the trial, Mr. Raskin’s team appeared unlikely to ask for witnesses, another departure from last year when a request for live testimony generated fierce debate and was eventually rebuffed by the Republican majority at the time.David I. Schoen, one of the former president’s lawyers, on Thursday at the Russell Senate Office Building.Credit…Anna Moneymaker for The New York TimesMr. Trump’s current legal team also seemed intent on trying not to tax the senators’ patience. David I. Schoen, one of the former president’s lawyers, said they would use just three to four of their 16 hours, allowing the senators to proceed to their own question-and-answer period later Friday and most likely a final vote by Saturday.Given that the senators lived through the Capitol siege, both sides indicated they were familiar enough with the issues to make a decision by the weekend.“It’s a pretty clear picture at this point,” said Senator Martin Heinrich, Democrat of New Mexico. “If you can live through that and see the totality of it in one place, and not think that these things are directly connected — that’s hard to imagine.”Emily Cochrane More

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      House Lays Out Case Against Trump, Branding Him the ‘Inciter in Chief’

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      #masthead-section-label, #masthead-bar-one { display: none }The Trump ImpeachmentTrial HighlightsDay 2: Key TakeawaysVideo of Jan. 6 RiotHouse ManagersTrump’s LawyersAdvertisementContinue reading the main storySupported byContinue reading the main storyHouse Lays Out Case Against Trump, Branding Him the ‘Inciter in Chief’The Democratic House impeachment managers opened their case against the former president with a narrative of his monthslong effort to overturn the election and raw footage of the Jan. 6 Capitol attack.Delegate Stacey Plaskett of the U.S. Virgin Islands, left, with House impeachment managers and staff on Wednesday during a break in former President Donald J. Trump’s Senate impeachment trial.Credit…Erin Schaff/The New York TimesFeb. 10, 2021Updated 9:48 p.m. ETWASHINGTON — The House impeachment managers opened their prosecution of Donald J. Trump on Wednesday with a meticulous account of his campaign to overturn the election and goad supporters to join him, bringing its most violent spasms to life with never-before-seen security footage from the Jan. 6 Capitol riot.Filling the Senate chamber with the profane screams of the attackers, images of police officers being brutalized, and near-miss moments in which Vice President Mike Pence and lawmakers came steps away from confronting a mob hunting them down, the prosecutors made an emotional case that Mr. Trump’s election lies had directly endangered the heart of American democracy.They played frantic police radio calls warning that “we’ve lost the line,” body camera footage showing an officer pummeled with poles and fists on the West Front of the Capitol, and silent security tape from inside showing Mr. Pence, his family and members of the House and Senate racing to evacuate as the mob closed in, chanting: “Hang Mike Pence! Hang Mike Pence!”All of it, the nine Democratic managers said, was the foreseeable and intended outcome of Mr. Trump’s desperate attempts to cling to the presidency. Reaching back as far as last summer, they traced how he spent months cultivating not only the “big lie” that the election was “rigged” against him, but stoking the rage of a throng of supporters who made it clear that they would do anything — including resorting to violence — to help him.The managers argued that it warranted that the Senate break with two centuries of history to make Mr. Trump the first former president to be convicted in an impeachment trial and disqualified from future office on a single count of “incitement of insurrection.”“Donald Trump surrendered his role as commander in chief and became the inciter in chief of a dangerous insurrection,” Representative Jamie Raskin, Democrat of Maryland and the lead manager, told the senators. They watched the footage in silence in the same spots where they had been when the mob breached the building last month.“He told them to ‘fight like hell,’” Mr. Raskin added, quoting the speech that Mr. Trump gave supporters as the onslaught was unfolding, “and they brought us hell on that day.”House managers watching the second day of the trial from an ante room off the floor of the Senate on Wednesday.Credit…Erin Schaff/The New York TimesThough the House managers used extensive video evidence of the Jan. 6 riot to punctuate their case, they spent just as much time placing the event in the context of Mr. Trump’s broader effort to falsely claim the election had been stolen from him, portraying him as a president increasingly desperate to invalidate the results.“With his back against the wall, when all else has failed, he turns back to his supporters — who he’d already spent months telling that the election was stolen — and he amplified it further,” said Representative Joe Neguse, Democrat of Colorado.After dozens of frivolous lawsuits failed, the managers said, Mr. Trump began pressuring officials in key battleground states like Michigan, Pennsylvania and Georgia to overturn his losses there. When that failed, he tried the Justice Department, then publicly attempted to shame Republican members of Congress into helping him. Finally, he insisted that Mr. Pence assume nonexistent powers to unilaterally overturn their loss on Jan. 6, when the vice president would oversee the counting of the electoral votes in Congress.“Let me be clear: The president was not just coming for one or two people, or Democrats like me,” said Representative Ted Lieu of California, looking out at senators. “He was coming for you.”At the same time, the managers argued, the president was knowingly encouraging his followers to take matters into their own hands. When an armada of his supporters tried to run a Biden campaign bus off the highway in October, Mr. Trump cheered them on Twitter. He began adopting increasingly violent language, they noted, and did nothing to denounce armed mobs cropping up in his name in cities around the country. Instead, he repeatedly invited them to Washington on Jan. 6 to rally to “stop the steal” as Congress met to formalize President-elect Joseph R. Biden Jr.’s victory.“When he saw firsthand the violence that his conduct was creating, he didn’t stop it,” Mr. Neguse said. “He didn’t condemn the violence. He incited it further and he got more specific. He didn’t just tell them to fight like hell. He told them how, where and when.”At times, the presentation, delivered by a group of Democrats with extensive courtroom experience, resembled a criminal prosecution — only in this case, the jury was made up of senators who were also witnesses struggling as they relived in graphic detail the trauma of that day.Delegate Stacey Plaskett of the U.S. Virgin Islands guided them through much of the video, including scenes of rioters inside the Capitol tauntingly calling for Speaker Nancy Pelosi and flooding into her office just after aides had raced to barricade themselves in a conference room and hid under a table.“Nancy! Oh, Nancy! Where are you, Nancy?” one of the invaders could be heard shouting in a singsong voice.“That was a mob sent by the president of the United States to stop the certification of an election,” Ms. Plaskett said. “President Trump put a target on their backs, and his mob broke into the Capitol to hunt them down.”Glued to their desks, some senators recoiled or averted their eyes from the hours of footage, including of their own evacuation as the mob closed in just down a corridor.“It tears at your heart and brings tears to your eyes,” said Senator Mitt Romney, Republican of Utah, who could be seen in one of the videos racing back toward the Senate for safety. “That was overwhelmingly distressing and emotional.”Senator Mitt Romney on Wednesday at the Capitol. “That was overwhelmingly distressing and emotional,” he said of the videos the House managers presented.Credit…Alyssa Schukar for The New York TimesSenator John Thune of South Dakota, the No. 2 Senate Republican, conceded that the managers had “done a good job connecting the dots” and recreating a “harsh reminder of what happens when you let something like that get out of hand.” Five people died in connection to the mayhem, including a Capitol Police officer, and more than 100 were injured.But for all of the power of their case, the managers’ task remained an exceedingly steep one, and it was unclear if they had made any headway. Senators voted narrowly to proceed with the trial on Tuesday, but only six Republicans joined Democrats in deeming it constitutional to judge an official no longer in office, foreshadowing Mr. Trump’s likely acquittal.Many of the same Republicans who had been hostile to hearing the case did not dispute on Wednesday the horror of the attack, but they suggested it was the rioters, not the former president who retains heavy sway over their party, who are culpable.“Today’s presentation was powerful and emotional, reliving a terrorist attack on our nation’s capital,” said Senator Ted Cruz, Republican of Texas. “But there was very little said about how specific conduct of the president satisfies the legal standard.”Short of persuading 34 Republicans to join Democrats to achieve the two-thirds majority necessary to convict, the Democratic managers directed their arguments at the American public and at history in an attempt to bury Mr. Trump’s popular appeal and lay down a clear marker for future presidents.The trial was proceeding at a blistering pace. Prosecutors were expected to take several more hours on Thursday before Mr. Trump’s lawyers will have two days to mount a defense. The Senate could render a verdict as soon as the weekend.Mr. Trump’s lawyers, who made a much-criticized debut on Tuesday, are expected to assert that the former president was not trying to incite violence or interfere with the electoral process. Rather, they will argue, he merely wanted to urge his supporters to demand general election security reforms, an argument that requires ignoring much of the evidentiary record.Though they have sought not to repeat Mr. Trump’s outlandish claims that the election was “stolen” from him, the lawyers will also insist they amount to constitutionally protected free speech for which the Senate cannot punish him.The House managers, though, argued that Mr. Trump clearly incited the attack, thus violating his oath of office to protect the Constitution. Prosecutors walked senators through his speech just before the mob closed in, playing again and again clips of him urging the thousands on hand to “fight like hell” alongside others, shot from the crowd, featuring a drastic response from the audience: “Take the Capitol.”A National Guard soldier in the Capitol Rotunda on Wednesday. Guard troops have been on patrol there since last month.Credit…Jason Andrew for The New York Times“This violent attack was not planned in secret,” Ms. Plaskett said. “The insurgents believed they were doing the duty of their president — they were taking his orders.”To bolster their analysis, the managers turned to an unlikely group: the hundreds of people already charged with executing the riot who in interviews and court records leave little doubt that they believed they were delivering to Mr. Trump what he asked for.But it was all a prelude to a vivid recreation of the attack itself meant to drive home the enormity of what the managers said Mr. Trump had unleashed. Mindful that individual lawmakers still had only a limited view of the day, they used a computer generated model of the Capitol to show in precise detail the mob’s movements over time relative to members of Congress.In one jarring scene, Senator Chuck Schumer, Democrat of New York and the minority leader at the time, was shown literally running with a security detail through the basement of the Senate in search of safety. Representative Eric Swalwell of California, another of the impeachment managers, told senators he had counted 58 steps between where senators could be seen scurrying toward a secure location and where armed extremists were massing.Instead of intervening to help as the Capitol fell, the managers asserted that Mr. Trump simply stood back and watched in a “dereliction of duty” as the second and third in line to the presidency were put in peril. Citing news reports and accounts from Republican senators themselves who contacted the White House desperate for the president to call off the attack or send in security reinforcements, the managers said the evidence suggested Mr. Trump refused because he was “delighted” with what he saw unfolding.“When the violence started, he never once said the one thing everyone around him was begging him to say,” Representative Joaquin Castro of Texas said. “‘Stop the attack.’”Emily Cochrane More

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      Why Bill Cassidy Broke With Senate Republicans and Backed Trump’s Trial

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      #masthead-section-label, #masthead-bar-one { display: none }The Trump ImpeachmentliveTrial HighlightsDay 2: Key TakeawaysVideo of Jan. 6 RiotWhat to Expect TodayWhat Is Incitement?Trump’s LawyersAdvertisementContinue reading the main storySupported byContinue reading the main storyWhy Bill Cassidy Broke With Senate Republicans and Backed Trump’s TrialThe Louisiana senator, usually a reliable conservative vote, angered Republicans by voting to continue with the impeachment trial. But he has increasingly shown an inclination toward pragmatism.Senator Bill Cassidy, Republican of Louisiana, voted this week to move forward with the Senate impeachment trial of former President Donald J. Trump.Credit…Alyssa Schukar for The New York TimesFeb. 10, 2021Senator Bill Cassidy of Louisiana did not just vote this week with Democrats to proceed with the impeachment trial of former President Donald J. Trump — he also effectively shamed his fellow Republican senators by voicing, and acting on, what many of them were surely thinking.Mr. Cassidy blistered Mr. Trump’s lawyers as “disorganized” and seemingly “embarrassed by their arguments,” explaining that their poor performance and the compelling case by the Democratic House impeachment managers had persuaded him to break from his party’s attempt to dismiss the proceedings on constitutional grounds.“If I’m an impartial juror, and one side is doing a great job, and the other side is doing a terrible job, on the issue at hand, as an impartial juror, I’m going to vote for the side that did the good job,” he told reporters on Tuesday. He did, though, emphasize on Wednesday that his view on constitutionality did not “predict my vote on anything else,” namely whether to convict Mr. Trump, saying only that he had an “open mind.”By becoming the only Senate Republican to switch his position from the one he held last month on a similar question about the constitutionality of holding an impeachment trial for a person no longer in public office, however, Mr. Cassidy delighted Louisiana Democrats, angered Republicans in his home state and presented himself as a one-man testimony of why Mr. Trump’s eventual acquittal is all but inevitable.“There is literally nothing that the Trump lawyers could do to change any of these other Republicans’ minds,” said Senator Brian Schatz, a Hawaii Democrat. “They couldn’t have tanked it on purpose any worse than they did, and they still only lost one.”That Mr. Cassidy was that sole senator to be lost, joining the five Republicans who also sided with Democrats in January on the constitutionality of the trial, may have seemed surprising at first glance. After all, he has been a fairly reliable conservative vote since being elected to the Senate in 2014, and Louisiana just handed Mr. Trump a 19-percentage-point victory over President Biden.Yet Mr. Cassidy, a 63-year-old physician, also has an iconoclastic streak and can be quirky. A devoted fan of his alma mater’s football program, Mr. Cassidy can rattle off the precise number of Louisiana State University football players who have left college early to be drafted into the N.F.L.One fellow Louisianian, former Representative Cedric Richmond, who in 2014 said that the “dude is weird,” put it more delicately on Wednesday. “He has always been independent,” said Mr. Richmond, a Democrat who served in Congress with Mr. Cassidy and is now a senior adviser to Mr. Biden, calling the senator’s vote a “profile in courage.”Mr. Cassidy is part of an increasingly vocal group of red-state Senate Republicans who, having spent more time in their careers confirming judges than legislating, are eager to work with Mr. Biden and their Democratic colleagues.Mr. Cassidy signaled his very public turn toward pragmatism less than a month after cruising to re-election last year by 40 points.First, he became the most prominent Louisiana Republican, and one of only a few G.O.P. senators in the South, to acknowledge in November that Mr. Biden had won the election.Then he left no doubt about his intentions with a decidedly Louisiana touch. He showed up at a Capitol Hill news conference in December bearing Mardi Gras beads to make the case for state and local aid in a coronavirus relief package, warning that cities like New Orleans were being financially battered without tourist dollars.In joining a bipartisan Senate “gang” after his landslide re-election to push for what eventually became the $900 billion measure that Mr. Trump signed in December, a seemingly liberated Mr. Cassidy indicated that he would use his next, and perhaps final, six-year term as a constructive force in Congress for a state confronting profound economic, public health and environmental challenges exacerbated by the pandemic.“I’m 63 years old, I am a senator because I love my country, I love my state, and I am going to work my hardest for my state and my country,” he said after that December news conference, adding with a shrug: “I want my state and my country to do well and what comes, comes.”If that approach makes for a sharp contrast with Senator John Kennedy — his fellow Louisiana Republican, who delights in dishing one-liners on cable television — it puts him in league with an emerging group of G.O.P. lawmakers more interested in accruing legislative accomplishments than Fox News appearances.This coalition includes some of the Republican senators who visited the White House to discuss the next virus package with Mr. Biden this month. Their ranks include not just moderate stalwarts like Susan Collins of Maine and Lisa Murkowski of Alaska but also more conservative lawmakers like Todd Young of Indiana, Shelley Moore Capito of West Virginia and Jerry Moran of Kansas.“We’re looking for solutions,” said Mr. Young, who until recently was the chairman of the Senate Republican campaign arm and is eager to turn back to policy.Mr. Schatz, who is friendly with some of these senators, put a finer point on their motivation: “If I’m going to suffer through the Trump era, then I may as well enact some laws.”In Louisiana, though, the thoroughly Trumpified Republican Party expects only continued fealty to the former president.Mr. Cassidy confronted immediate criticism for his vote and comments on Tuesday.“I received many calls this afternoon from Republicans in Louisiana who think that @SenBillCassidy did a ‘terrible job’ today,” Blake Miguez, the State House Republican leader, wrote on Twitter, repurposing Mr. Cassidy’s critique of Mr. Trump’s lawyers. “I understand their frustrations and join them in their disappointment.”Even a fellow member of the Louisiana congressional delegation, Representative Mike Johnson, weighed in. “A lot of people from back home are calling me about it right now,” noted Mr. Johnson, a Republican, who said he was “surprised” by Mr. Cassidy’s move.Perhaps he should not have been.As Stephanie Grace, the longtime political columnist for The Times-Picayune in New Orleans, wrote in a December piece anticipating Mr. Cassidy’s shift, he “has long been part of bipartisan efforts to solve problems, even if his solutions probably go too far for some Republicans and stop way short of what many Democrats want.”Mr. Cassidy, a former Democrat like Mr. Kennedy and many Southern Republicans their age, has long been less than dogmatic on health care, a viewpoint he formed working in his state’s charity hospitals. This has always been more than a little ironic to Louisiana political insiders, given that in 2014 he unseated Senator Mary Landrieu, a Democrat, thanks to conservative attacks on former President Barack Obama and the Affordable Care Act. (On Wednesday, Ms. Landrieu said of Mr. Cassidy, “Many people in Louisiana are proud of him, including me.”)Yet by 2017, during the heated debate over whether to repeal the health care law, Mr. Cassidy was warning that to kick people off their insurance or make coverage unaffordable would only shift costs back to taxpayers by burdening emergency rooms.“If you want to be fiscally responsible, then coverage is better than no coverage,” he said at the time, conceding that Congress had established “the right for every American to have health care.”Such remarks, like much else policy-related in the Trump era, were overshadowed by the incessant White House drama. But Mr. Cassidy’s turn toward the political middle isn’t lost on Louisiana Democrats now.“He seems to be developing this moderate, deal-making persona,” said Mandie Landry, a state representative from Louisiana. “Kennedy has become so out there and embarrassing that it gives Cassidy some space, especially if he’s not running again.”That was clear enough from the senator’s comportment on Wednesday morning, when he seemed to evoke the most memorable lyrics of the Louisiana-inspired song “Me and Bobby McGee”: “Freedom’s just another word for nothing left to lose.”Happily striding to the microphone set up for television cameras in the Capitol basement to take questions, Mr. Cassidy acknowledged that the reaction in Louisiana to his vote had been “mixed.”Then he continued.“It is Constitution and country over party,” he said of his approach. “For some, they get it. And for others, they’re not quite so sure. But that’s to be expected.”AdvertisementContinue reading the main story More

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      Why Trump's Second Impeachment Is a Visceral Reckoning

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      #masthead-section-label, #masthead-bar-one { display: none }The Trump ImpeachmentliveLatest UpdatesKey TakeawaysReporter AnalysisWhere Senators StandHouse ManagersTrump’s LawyersAdvertisementContinue reading the main storySupported byContinue reading the main storynews analysisThe First Trial Seemed Abstract. This One Is a Visceral Reckoning Over Trump.At issue will be many aspects that defined Donald Trump’s presidency: his relentless assaults on truth, his fomenting of divisions, his shattering of norms and his undermining of an election.House impeachment managers watching the prosecution’s display of video from the Jan. 6 assault on the Capitol during the trial on Monday. The video made clear how different this trial will be from the one a year ago.Credit…Erin Schaff/The New York TimesFeb. 9, 2021Updated 9:23 p.m. ETThis was no phone call transcript, no dry words on a page open to interpretation. This was a horde of extremists pushing over barricades and beating police officers. This was a mob smashing windows and pounding on doors. This was a mass of marauders setting up a gallows and shouting, “Take the building!” and “Fight for Trump!”As the United States Senate opened an unprecedented second impeachment trial of former President Donald J. Trump on Tuesday amid the echoes of history, the House managers prosecuting him played powerful video images of last month’s deadly assault on the Capitol that made abundantly clear how different this proceeding will be from the first.Where the case against Mr. Trump a year ago turned on what might have seemed like an abstract or narrow argument about his behind-the-scenes interactions with a far-off country, Ukraine, the case this year turns on an eruption of violence that Americans saw on television with their own eyes — and that the senators serving as jurors experienced personally when they fled for their lives.Rather than a judgment of where foreign policy turns into political excess, this sequel trial amounts to a visceral reckoning over Mr. Trump’s very presidency. At issue in the Senate chamber over the coming days will be many of the fundamental aspects that defined Mr. Trump’s four years in power: his relentless assaults on truth, his deliberate efforts to foment divisions in society, his shattering of norms and his undermining of a democratic election.Still, this trial may end up with the same verdict as the last one. On a test vote on the constitutionality of prosecuting a president after he leaves office, 44 Republicans on Tuesday stood by Mr. Trump, a measure of his enduring sway within his party and a signal that he most likely will win the 34 votes he needs for acquittal given the two-thirds supermajority required for conviction.But if the six Republicans who voted to proceed also vote to convict him for inciting an insurrection, it will be the most senators to break from a president of their own party in any impeachment trial in American history.“I would not have thought it when I was sitting on the Senate floor trying the first impeachment — it turns out that was just the opening act,” said Norman L. Eisen, a lawyer for House Democrats during last year’s trial on Mr. Trump’s pressure on Ukraine for political help. “The second one crystallizes all the anti-democratic elements that characterized Trump’s tenure and his Ukraine high crimes but brings them to an even higher pitch.”The emotional punch of this case was evident on the Senate floor on Tuesday. Sitting in what amounted to the crime scene, the same chamber they evacuated just a month ago moments before Mr. Trump’s supporters stormed in, some of the senators watched raptly as the scenes of violence played out on the screens before them. Others turned away.The lead House manager, Representative Jamie Raskin, Democrat of Maryland, choked up as he recounted bringing his daughter and son-in-law to the Capitol that day, just a day after burying his 25-year-old son, only to have them sending farewell texts and making whispered goodbye phone calls because “they thought they were going to die.”Damage from the mob attack remained at the Capitol even as the impeachment trial got underway. Credit…Alyssa Schukar for The New York Times“Make no mistake about it, as you think about that day, things could have been much worse,” said Representative David Cicilline, Democrat of Rhode Island, another of the managers. “As one senator said, they could have killed all of us.”Mr. Trump’s defense team recognized the power of the other side’s presentation, with one of his lawyers, Bruce L. Castor Jr., admitting that the managers had done a good job in offering their case and even acknowledging that voters rejected Mr. Trump. But they complained that the House team was playing to emotions rather than law or reason, trying to rile up senators with inflammatory images and then twisting his words to unfairly blame the violence on Mr. Trump.David I. Schoen, another of the former president’s lawyers, said the videotape was “designed by experts to chill and horrify you and our fellow Americans” as if an impeachment trial “were some sort of blood sport.”“It is again for pure, raw, misguided partisanship,” Mr. Schoen added. “They do not need to show you movies to show you that the riot happened here. We will stipulate that it happened and you know all about it.”There is, of course, a certain paradox in a lawyer for a reality-show president complaining about the power of visual images. The longtime star of “The Apprentice” appreciates better than most how to tell a story on television.There was no compelling video in the Ukraine case, just recordings of people testifying to events the viewers could not watch themselves. None of the senators who rendered last year’s verdict felt physically threatened by Mr. Trump’s telephone call with Ukraine’s president seeking help smearing his Democratic opponent, Joseph R. Biden Jr.“This impeachment is a more of a made-for-television event, which is something the former president surely understands,” said Michael D’Antonio, a Trump biographer. “Where the previous one involved many narrative strands, a long span of time and very little action, this one offers a compact story with escalating tensions and a violent conclusion.”It also raises a broader indictment of Mr. Trump, one that may not seem quite so removed to everyday Americans who had little interest in Ukraine or saw Mr. Trump’s interventions there as politics as usual.When House Democrats moved to impeach Mr. Trump the first time, they debated whether to advance as many as 10 articles of impeachment charging him with all sorts of crimes, including obstructing the Russia investigation, authorizing hush money for women to cover up sexual affairs, illegally diverting money to his border wall and profiting personally from his office.Instead, they opted for the more circumscribed case involving Ukraine because they thought it was easiest to prove.Even some Republican senators agreed by the end of last year’s trial that Democrats had proved the case — they just did not deem it significant enough to merit conviction and removal from office. As a result, Mr. Trump emerged emboldened by his acquittal.This time, other than his staunchest allies, most Republican lawmakers are not defending Mr. Trump’s actions nor arguing that they were not impeachable. Instead, they have focused on process or politics, maintaining that it is unconstitutional to try a former president or a distraction from serious issues like fighting the coronavirus pandemic.But the case that will play out over the next week will put the most aberrant elements of Mr. Trump’s presidency on display. For four years, he played to the crowd, stirring anger, whipping up us-against-them conflicts and at times encouraging violence. He peddled dishonest versions of reality to suit his political needs and told supporters not to believe anyone but him. He undercut faith in democratic institutions and pushed boundaries other presidents would not have.The House’s impeachment managers heading to the Senate chamber at the start of the trial.Credit…Doug Mills/The New York TimesAll of which played out in the months that led to the election on Nov. 3 and the Capitol siege on Jan. 6 and will now be scrutinized — how he promoted flagrantly bogus fraud complaints to try to cling to power even after voters rejected him, how he pressured state and local officials to subvert election results in his favor, how he revved up supporters to march on the Capitol by telling them their country was at stake.Michael W. McConnell, a conservative former appeals court judge and author of “The President Who Would Not Be King,” said the impeachment articles in the Ukraine case were weak. The abuse of power charge “stated a plausible ground” for removal but was “not so compelling,” while the obstruction of Congress article “was not legally sound” on its face.“This time, although the articles of impeachment were badly drafted, the charges are significantly more serious, unquestionably amounting to high crimes and misdemeanors,” he said. “I suspect that is why Mr. Trump’s defenders are desperately searching for a rationale for voting not to convict that is not based on defending or excusing what he did.”Mr. Trump benefits from the tribal nature of today’s politics. Much as they may not like him, most Republican lawmakers have stuck to their side of the fence — criticizing Mr. Trump’s actions was one thing, but joining hands with Democrats in a politically charged up-or-down verdict on his presidency is another. Similarly, polls show broad condemnation of Mr. Trump’s actions but only somewhat more support for conviction this time than last time.That is why Mr. Trump’s defense team played its own videos on Tuesday showing some Democrats calling for his impeachment almost from the minute he took office, arguing that their current drive is just the latest chapter in a campaign of retribution, a point intended to rally Republicans behind him again.And so while the Trump presidency is over, the struggle over the Trump presidency is not. For the next week, it will play out in gritty, angry, ugly words and images until its destined denouement.AdvertisementContinue reading the main story More