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      Key moments as Senate votes in favour of Donald Trump’s second impeachment trial – video

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      After nearly four hours of debate, a divided US Senate voted 56 to 44 to proceed with the historic second impeachment trial of Donald Trump. House Democrats opened the trial with a chilling and dramatic video of the Capitol siege. The House impeachment managers warned that allowing Trump to escape punishment would establish a ‘January exception’ for presidents to betray their oaths of office. In their rebuttal, Trump’s defence team argued that the trial was not only unconstitutional but would ‘open up new and bigger wounds across the nation’ and was based on the Democrats not wanting ‘to face Donald Trump as a political rival in the future’
      Trump impeachment: Senate votes to proceed with trial
      ‘He just rambled’: Republicans unimpressed by Trump’s impeachment lawyers More

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      Senator Raskin breaks down recounting Capitol breach – video

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      Democrat senator Jamie Raskin fought back tears as he recounted his experience of the Capitol breach which happened the day after the death of his son.
      Raskin’s 24-year-old daughter and his son-in-law were hiding in his office during the attack. ‘People died that day,’ the senator continued, ‘this cannot be our future’
      Trump second impeachment: live updates More

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      in US Politics

      Trump's impeachment trial starts with graphic Capitol assault footage – video

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      Donald Trump’s second impeachment trial opened in the Senate with graphic video of the attack on the Capitol on 6 January and his comments that spurred a rally crowd to become a mob.
      The lead House prosecutor told senators the case would present ‘cold, hard facts’ against Trump, who is charged with inciting the siege of the Capitol to overturn the election he lost to Joe Biden
      Trump second impeachment: live updates More

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      in US Politics

      Trump prosecutors pitch to the public in made-for-TV impeachment trial

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      The lethal Capitol invasion by Donald Trump supporters that is at the heart of the former president’s second impeachment trial happened more than a month ago. But Democrats leading the prosecution of Trump are counting on an element of surprise.Surprise, the impeachment prosecutors are calculating, because while most Americans understand the broad outlines of what happened during the 6 January attack on the Capitol, relatively few have come to grips with the shocking audio and video footage from that day – portraying a cauldron of violence, vandalism, bloodlust and fear.And in what is shaping up as history’s first made-for-TV impeachment trial, Democrats are planning to make some of these surreal scenes the centerpiece of their case against the only president ever to be impeached twice.A police officer crushed in a doorway. A woman wearing a Trump flag shot in the neck. Mobs in Trump gear breaking doors and smashing glass, and hunting the halls of legislature for members to tear “into little pieces”. Staffers for the House speaker, Nancy Pelosi, huddled under a conference table, sending texts for help, as rioters pound on the doors. A woman trampled to death as her friend begs for space.And the chants: “The steal is real!”, “Hang Mike Pence!” and “USA! USA! USA!”A Senate split 50-50 will act as jury at the trial, and Trump is expected to retain enough Republican support to avoid conviction and a ban on his holding future office.But the prosecutors’ case as previewed this week is not principally directed at lawmakers. Instead, it is unmistakably pitched to the public.Impeachment managers led by Representative Jamie Raskin of Maryland are expected to draw on hours of previously unseen footage from body cameras worn by police, from the media and from live streams captured by the insurrectionists themselves to produce what is shaping up as a shocking inside account of the Capitol attack.With unique access to evidence gathered by law enforcement officers in nearly 140 cases related to the invasion so far, the prosecutors will try to break through calcifying versions on both sides of the political aisle of what happened, and to provoke a new reckoning with how close the country came to an act of mass violence inside the halls of government.That realization, they think, could jolt a reconsideration of Trump’s guilt for the article of impeachment with which he has been charged: incitement of insurrection.The Huffington Post politics reporter Igor Bobic was inside the Capitol that day – but outside either legislative chamber – and captured some of the most notable footage of the invasion.“One month since the attack and I’m still learning harrowing details about the day,” he tweeted at the weekend. “Staffers I haven’t seen since recalling how they barricaded themselves in offices in terror. Members telling me how they followed my feed on their phone while in the chamber in disbelief. Reporters still trying to make sense of it all. All of us still coping.”Last month Representative Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, who was forced into hiding during the invasion, described hearing threats from insurrectionists and told thousands of followers on Instagram Live: “I thought I was going to die.”Trump’s defense team seemed to sense the danger to their case that the video scenes represented, and in a brief submitted on Monday they floated multiple pre-emptive responses.Heatedly condemning the attack on the Capitol and denying Trump’s complicity, the defense accused Democrats of “a brazen attempt to further glorify violence” by presenting the facts of the case. In a footnote, the lawyers went so far as to suggest that the crowd was a mix of pro-Trump and anti-Trump elements.Trump’s quotes were expected to be juxtaposed with scenes of violence at the CapitolBut the footage may make plain what no legal argument might deny. The crowd proceeded from a rally at which Trump spoke and arrived at the Capitol wearing red hats and Trump 2020 flags, mixed in with militia patches, white supremacy group insignia, Confederate flags and illegal firearms and knives.In an initial brief submitted last week, the impeachment managers described Trump’s “singular responsibility for the assault”, mustering dozens of quotations in which the former president spread the falsehood of a stolen election, demanded intervention, then “summoned a mob to Washington, exhorted them into a frenzy, and aimed them like a loaded cannon down Pennsylvania Avenue”.Trump’s quotes were expected to be juxtaposed with scenes of violence at the Capitol, as prosecutors hope to make a case that will drive home their charges against the former president.“We cannot, for a moment, treat the attack of 1/6 as something normal that happened,” tweeted Andy Kim, a Democratic representative from New Jersey. “It was a truly dark day in our nation’s history and it deserves a response of that magnitude.”It may be history’s first made-for-TV impeachment. But as for President Joe Biden, his press secretary, Jen Psaki, said his attention would be elsewhere: “He will not spend too much time watching the proceedings.” More

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      Democrats to open Trump impeachment trial by recounting Capitol attack

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      House impeachment managers will open their prosecution of Donald Trump for “incitement of insurrection” by recounting the deadly assault on the US Capitol in harrowing and cinematic detail, rekindling for senators the chaos and trauma they experienced on 6 January.The historic second impeachment trial will open on Tuesday, on the Senate floor that was invaded by rioters, with a debate over the constitutionality of the proceedings. In a brief filed on Monday, Trump’s lawyers assailed the case as “political theater” and argued that the Senate “lacks the constitutional jurisdiction” to try a former president after he has left office – an argument Democrats promptly rejected.Exactly one week after the Capitol assault, Trump became the first president to be impeached twice by the House of Representatives. This week, he will become the first former president to stand trial. It would take 17 Republicans joining all Democrats in the Senate to find Trump guilty, making conviction highly unlikely.Nevertheless, when opening arguments begin later this week, House Democrats will try to force senators to see the assault on the Capitol as the culmination of Trump’s long campaign to overturn the result of the election he lost to Joe Biden. Relying on video and audio recordings, impeachment managers, led by the Maryland congressman Jamie Raskin, will try to marshal the anger and outrage many members of Congress expressed in the aftermath of the riot, which sought to prevent them from counting electoral college votes and thereby to disrupt the transition of power.In a 78-page brief submitted to the Senate on Monday, Trump’s lawyers laid out a two-pronged rebuttal, also arguing that his rhetoric was in no way responsible for the Capitol attack.The senators will grapple with the constitutional question on Tuesday, when they are expected to debate and vote on the matter. Though scholars and a majority of senators say they believe the trial is constitutional, many Republicans have seized on the technical argument that a former president cannot be tried for “high crimes and misdemeanors” as a way to justify support for acquitting Trump without appearing to condone his behavior.In their own pre-trial filing on Monday, the House managers dismissed the arguments laid out by Trump’s lawyers and vowed to hold Trump accountable for the “most grievous constitutional crime ever committed by a president”.“Presidents swear a sacred oath that binds them from their first day in office through their very last,” they wrote. “There is no ‘January Exception’ to the constitution that allows presidents to abuse power in their final days without accountability.”In a vote last month, all but five Republican senators voted to dismiss the trial as unconstitutional. Yet Charles Cooper, a leading conservative lawyer, rejected that view in a Wall Street Journal op-ed published on Sunday.Because the constitution also allows the Senate to disqualify former federal officials from ever again holding public office, Cooper wrote, “it defies logic to suggest that the Senate is prohibited from trying and convicting former officeholders”.The trial begins just more than a year after Trump was first impeached, for pressuring Ukraine to investigate Joe Biden’s family. He was acquitted by the Senate.Americans are now more supportive of convicting Trump, according to an ABC News/Ipsos poll released on Sunday. It found that 56% of Americans believe the Senate should convict Trump and bar him from future office.Though the exact framework of the trial remains uncertain, subject to negotiations between the Senate majority leader, Chuck Schumer, and the chamber’s Republican leader, Mitch McConnell, it is expected to move much faster than Trump’s first trial.Under a draft agreement between the leaders, obtained by the New York Times, opening arguments would begin on Wednesday, with up to 16 hours for each side. At the request of Trump’s attorneys, the proceedings will break on Friday evening for the Jewish Sabbath and resume on Sunday.The House managers are expected to forgo calling witnesses, a major point of contention during Trump’s first trial. The former president declined their request to testify, a decision Raskin said “speaks volumes and plainly establishes an adverse inference supporting his guilt”.The managers have indicated that they intend to lay out a comprehensive case, tracing Trump’s extraordinary efforts to reverse his defeat, including a call in which he pressured the Georgia secretary of state to “find” enough votes to overturn Biden’s victory there. When it became clear that all other paths were closed, they will argue, Trump turned his attention to the certification vote on Capitol Hill, encouraging supporters to attend a rally held to protest against the result.At that event, Trump implored them to “fight like hell” and march to the Capitol to register their discontent – words his defense team will argue are protected under the first amendment.The House managers contend that “it is impossible to imagine the events of 6 January occurring without President Trump creating a powder keg, striking a match, and then seeking personal advantage from the ensuing havoc”. More

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      Peer is asked to investigate the activities of extreme right and left

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      The government has reportedly ordered an investigation into the extreme fringes on both ends of the political spectrum, with a peer tasked with offering recommendations to the prime minister and home secretary.The review will be led by John Woodcock, the former Labour MP who now sits in the upper chamber as Lord Walney and was appointed as the government’s independent adviser on political violence and disruption last November.Announcing the review in an interview with the Telegraph, the unaffiliated peer cautioned that the UK must take notice of the rise of far-right groups in the US following the storming of the Capitol building last month.Woodcock stressed that there was “not an equivalence of threat between the far-left and the far-right” in the UK, with the latter a far bigger issue.In September, Home Office data showed that right-wing extremists now make up almost a fifth of terrorists in jail, rising from 33 in 2018/19 to 45 in the year to 30 June 2020 in England and Wales.Furthermore, last year’s annual figures for the government’s controversial Prevent scheme showed that the largest number of referrals related to far-right extremism.James Brokenshire, the security minister, warned that far-right terror posed “a growing threat”, which had been accelerated by the amplification of conspiracy theories online during the pandemic. Of the cases ultimately referred to the government’s Channel programme for specialist support, 302 (43%) were referred for rightwing radicalisation.Walney told the Telegraph that there had also been isolated incidents of some leftwing causes “overstepping the mark into antisocial behaviour”, and the activities of these groups would also be investigated.He said: “There have been a number of, at the moment isolated, examples of climate change activist groups, particularly Extinction Rebellion, overstepping the mark into antisocial behaviour. I think there’s been a recognition that, even among that movement, they have at times risked undermining their own cause.“I’m coming at this with an open mind, but with an understanding that there is clearly a potential for groups to develop into increasingly problematic areas.”The home secretary, Priti Patel, has previously claimed Extinction Rebellion activists are “so-called eco-crusaders turned criminals” who threaten key planks of national life.In a speech to the annual conference of the Police Superintendents’ Association last September, Patel said XR was “attempting to thwart the media’s right to publish without fear nor favour”, and claimed their campaign of civil disobedience was “a shameful attack on our way of life, our economy and the livelihoods of the hard-working majority”. More

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      The martyrdom of Mike Pence

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      After Donald Trump had exhausted all of his claims of voter fraud and could contrive no more conspiracy theories that the 2020 presidential election was stolen from him, and after his revolving menagerie of legal mouthpieces had all of their motions tossed out of every venue up to the supreme court, and after his reliable enabler, Attorney General William Barr, informed him his accusations were false and he had reached the end of the line, and resigned, Trump came as a last resort to rest his slipping hold on power on his most unwavering defender and ceaseless flatterer, who had never let him down: his vice-president, Mike Pence.
      Nobody was more responsible for fostering the cult of Trump. The evangelical Pence had been Trump’s rescuer, starting with his forgiveness for the miscreant in the crisis during the 2016 campaign over Trump’s Access Hollywood “grab them by the pussy” tape and then over the disclosure of the “Individual One” hush money payoff to a porn star about a one-night stand to shut her up before election day – AKA “the latest baseless allegations”. Pence was the indispensable retainer who delivered the evangelical base, transforming it through the alchemy of his faith into Trump’s rock of ages. After every malignant episode, from Charlottesville (“I stand with the president”) to coronavirus (“The president took another historic step”), the pious Pence could be counted on to bless Trump for his purity of heart and to shepherd the flock of true believers.
      “Trump’s got the populist nationalists,” Stephen Bannon, Trump’s pardoned former senior adviser, remarked. “But Pence is the base. Without Pence, you don’t win.”
      Withstanding the howling winds of narcissism, the unshakably self-abasing Pence upheld the cross over Trump. On the evening of 3 May 2017, Trump welcomed his evangelical advisory board for dinner in the Blue Room of the White House.
      “I’ve been with [Trump] alone in the room when the decisions are made,” Pence testified to the assembled pastors. “He and I have prayed together. This is somebody who shares our views, shares our values, shares our beliefs.”
      Nobody more than Pence had modeled adulation of Trump to become the standard for sycophantic imitation. At the first meeting of members of Trump’s cabinet, on 12 June 2017, the president called on each to offer praise.
      “I’m going to start with our vice-president. Where is our vice-president?” Trump asked. “We’ll start with Mike and then we’ll just go around, your name, your position.”
      “This is just the greatest privilege of my life,” Pence said, setting the tone for the others. More