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      Merrick Garland vows to target white supremacists as attorney general

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      At his Senate hearing on Monday, attorney general nominee Merrick Garland will pledge to prosecute “white supremacists and others” who attacked the US Capitol on 6 January, in support of Donald Trump’s attempt to overturn his election defeat.The pledge was contained in Garland’s opening testimony for the session before the Senate judiciary committee, released on Saturday night.“If confirmed,” Garland said, ‘I will supervise the prosecution of white supremacists and others who stormed the Capitol on 6 January – a heinous attack that sought to disrupt a cornerstone of our democracy: the peaceful transfer of power to a newly elected government.”Five people including a police officer died as a direct result of the attack on the Capitol, before which Trump told supporters to “fight like hell” against the result of the presidential election. Trump lost to Joe Biden by 306-232 in the electoral college and by more than 7m ballots in the popular vote. More than 250 participants in the Capitol riot have been charged. As NPR reported, “the defendants are predominantly white and male, though there were exceptions. “Federal prosecutors say a former member of the Latin Kings gang joined the mob, as did two Virginia police officers. A man in a ‘Camp Auschwitz’ sweatshirt took part, as did a Messianic Rabbi. Far-right militia members decked out in tactical gear rioted next to a county commissioner, a New York City sanitation worker, and a two-time Olympic gold medalist.”In his testimony, Garland made reference to his role from 1995 to 1997 in supervising the prosecution of the perpetrators of the Oklahoma City Bombing, a white supremacist atrocity in which 168 people including 19 children were killed.Trump was impeached for a second time on a charge of inciting an insurrection but was acquitted after only seven Republicans joined Democrats in the Senate in voting to convict, 10 short of the majority needed.“It is a fitting time,” Garland said, “to reaffirm that the role of the attorney general is to serve the rule of law and to ensure equal justice under the law.”The 68-year-old federal appeals judge was famously denied even a hearing in 2016 when Republican Senate leader Mitch McConnell blocked him as Barack Obama’s third pick for the supreme court.Biden’s selection of Garland for attorney general is seen as a conciliatory move in a capital controlled by Democrats but only by slim margins, the Senate split 50-50 with Vice-President Kamala Harris the tie-breaking vote.In his testimony, Garland said he would be independent from Biden, being sure to “strictly regulate communication with the White House” and working as “the lawyer … for the people of the United States”.Trump pressured his first attorney general, Jeff Sessions, to do his bidding, then saw his second, William Barr, largely do so, running interference on the investigation of Russian election interference and ties between Trump and Moscow. If confirmed, Garland will face sensitive decisions over matters including Trump, now exposed to criminal and civil investigation, and Hunter Biden, the new president’s son whose tax affairs are in question as he remains a target for much of the right.Some on the left have expressed concern that Garland might be too politically moderate. Black Lives Matter founder LaTosha Brown, for example, told the Guardian: “My concern is that he does not have a strong civil rights history … even when Obama nominated him, one of the critiques was that he was making a compromise with what he thought was a ‘clean’ candidate to get through.”In his testimony, Garland said justice department civil rights work must be improved.“Communities of colour and other minorities still face discrimination in housing, education, employment, and the criminal justice system,” he said, “and bear the brunt of the harm caused by pandemic, pollution, and climate change.”Garland is expected to be confirmed. More

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      Sanders confident of raising minimum wage as part of $1.9tn Covid package

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      Bernie Sanders said on Saturday he was confident Senate Democrats will be able to raise the US minimum wage to $15, a step firmly opposed by Republicans but a key part of the Biden administration’s $1.9tn coronavirus relief package.In a statement, the Vermont independent who caucuses with Democrats and chairs the Senate budget committee said he was “very proud of the strong arguments our legal team is making to the parliamentarian that raising the minimum wage to $15 an hour is not ‘incidental’ to the federal budget and is permissible under the rules of reconciliation”.Reconciliation allows legislators to bypass the 60-vote majority needed for most Senate legislation, for items linked to spending and taxation. When Donald Trump held the White House, Republicans used it to force through tax cuts. Under Barack Obama, Democrats used it to help pass the Affordable Care Act.Sanders is championing moves to more than double the federal minimum wage from $7.25 an hour, its level since 2009, over a five-year period. The move is a key part of the Biden coronavirus relief package, meant to tackle the devastating impact of a pandemic in which nearly 500,000 have died and unemployment has rocketed.“Half of our workers are living paycheck to paycheck and millions of people are working for starvation wages,” Sanders wrote on Twitter on Friday. “We need the minimum wage to be a living wage and that’s why we’re going to raise it to $15 an hour.”Public opinion is heavily in favour of the rise but Republicans are ranged against it, arguing that it would damage small businesses. Sanders counters that the gradual rise over five years should allay such concerns.The Vermont senator is an experienced operator. After a coordinated if symbolic Republican move against the wage rise earlier this month, one Sanders staffer said: “This isn’t Bernie’s first rodeo … we can still try to pass minimum wage through the reconciliation bill.”In his statement on Saturday, Sanders referred to two Republican priorities under Trump which could not reach 60 votes but which were pursued through reconciliation.“The [Congressional Budget Office] has found that the $15 minimum wage has a much greater impact on the federal budget than opening up the Arctic national wildlife refuge to oil drilling and repealing the [ACA] individual mandate penalties,” he said, “two provisions that the parliamentarian advised did not violate the Byrd rule when Republicans controlled the Senate.”The Byrd rule is named for Robert Byrd, a long-serving Democratic senator from West Virginia who died in 2010. According to the non-partisan Center on Budget and Policy Priorities, or CBPP, it “allows senators to block provisions of reconciliation bills that are ‘extraneous’ to reconciliation’s basic purpose of implementing budget changes”.The Senate parliamentarian, Elizabeth MacDonough, is the first woman to interpret and manage the rules of Senate procedure. She must decide if a minimum wage raise can be pursued through reconciliation.On Saturday, Sanders said he was confident McDonough would do so next week. More

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      Jamie Raskin derides 'explosive and deranged' tactics of Trump lawyers

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      The architect of Donald Trump’s second impeachment trial has blamed “explosive and deranged” tactics by the former president’s lawyers for obscuring the strength of the case presented by House Democrats.But the lead impeachment manager, Jamie Raskin, said the Democrats’ case appeared nevertheless to convince even Senate Republican leader Mitch McConnell of Trump’s guilt in inciting the Capitol riot.Two days after Trump escaped conviction, and as his supporters reveled in the prospect of his return to frontline politics, Raskin also told the Washington Post it was both “good and terrible to watch” McConnell’s post-verdict speech in which he excoriated Trump – but said he had voted to acquit because the trial was unconstitutional.It was telling, Raskin said, that many of the 43 Republicans who voted to acquit “felt the need to hang their hats” on that argument, which was rejected by constitutional scholars and twice by the Senate itself.Not even Trump’s lawyers attempted to defend what Democrats characterized as Trump’s “big lie”: that he won an election he actually lost by more than 7m popular votes and 74 electoral votes.They couldn’t get a summer internship with My Cousin VinnyNor did Trump’s legal team, led by a personal injury lawyer and a former county prosecutor who declined to pursue charges against Bill Cosby, succeed in freeing Trump from blame for the attack on the Capitol, judging by Republican senators’ speeches.Instead, Trump’s lawyers denied a copious and unambiguous record of what the former president said and did, while drawing false parallels between routine political speech and Trump’s coup attempt.In the final vote of the impeachment trial, seven Republicans voted with Democrats to convict Trump – a 53-vote tally 10 short of the total required.In an indication of how the Republican party has diverged from the popular will, almost six in 10 Americans – 58% – believe Trump should have been convicted, according to a new ABC News-Ipsos poll.Raskin and his fellow House managers were widely praised for their work. Their case featured extensive use of video of events at the Capitol on 6 January, when supporters told by Trump to “fight like hell” to overturn his election defeat broke in, some hunting lawmakers to kidnap or kill. Five people died as a direct result of the riot.Raskin took on the lead role despite his son having killed himself in December. He told the Post he “told managers we were going to make a lawyerly case but would not censor the emotion”.There has been criticism among Democrats, after the managers persuaded the Senate to vote to call witnesses but then agreed to avoid that step, which could have lengthened the trial. On Sunday, Raskin said witnesses would not have changed any minds.“These Republicans voted to acquit in the face of this mountain of un-refuted evidence,” he told NBC. “There’s no reasoning with people who basically are acting like members of a religious cult.”The Virgin Islands delegate Stacey Plaskett, also widely praised for her role in the trial, told CNN: “We didn’t need more witnesses, we needed more senators with spines.”[embedded content]More evidence of Trump’s alleged wrongdoing may yet be unearthed. Members of Congress from both parties have called for a bipartisan 9/11-style commission to investigate why government officials and law enforcement failed to stop the attack on the Capitol.Trump lawyers Michael van der Veen, Bruce Castor and David Schoen celebrated their client’s acquittal but faced widespread ridicule for a case built on flimsy arguments about freedom of speech and scattershot whataboutism concerning Democratic attitudes to protests against racism and police brutality.“They couldn’t get a summer internship with My Cousin Vinny,” Raskin told the Post, perhaps a deliberate reference to a bizarre and famously sweaty press conference given in November by another Trump lawyer, Rudy Giuliani, amid the former president’s failed attempts to prove mass fraud in his election defeat by Joe Biden.My Cousin Vinny is an Oscar-winning 1992 comedy about a hapless lawyer played by Joe Pesci. Giuliani said it was his “one of my favorite law movies, because he comes from Brooklyn”.Trump, who comes from Queens, refused to testify in his own defence. Raskin called him “a profile in absolute cowardice” and said: “He betrayed the constitution, the country and his people.“Trump’s followers need to understand he has no loyalty to them … Donald Trump is the past. We need to deal with the future.” More

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      Democrats defend decision not to call witnesses as tactic under scrutiny

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      Democrats defended their prosecution of Donald Trump’s impeachment trial on Sunday and hinted at the possibility of criminal charges, after failing to convince enough senators the former president was guilty of inciting the deadly Capitol attack.The 57-43 vote for a conviction, which fell short of the two-thirds majority required, was still the biggest bipartisan impeachment vote in US history and amounted to “a complete repudiation” of Trump’s conduct, lead House manager Jamie Raskin insisted. Seven Republicans crossed party lines to vote with every Democratic and independent senator after the five-day trial.But the tactics of Raskin and his team have come under scrutiny, with some Democrats asking if the decision not to seek witness testimony, after senators voted early on the trial’s final day to allow it, was a mistake.Specifically, evidence was not heard from the Washington congresswoman Jaime Herrera Beutler about a call between Trump and Republican House leader Kevin McCarthy during the 6 January riot showing that the president would not call off his supporters.“Well Kevin, I guess these people are more upset about the election theft than you are,” Beutler said Trump replied when the House minority leader pleaded for him to recall the mob who overran the Capitol in support of the president’s false claims of a stolen election.On Sunday, the Washington Post reported that the question of whether to call witnesses sparked lengthy debate among the House managers, who ultimately agreed to a deal to accept Beutler’s statement as a written record. The decision diverted the likelihood of the trial extending days, if not weeks as both sides deposed witnesses.“I know that people are feeling a lot of angst, and believe that maybe if we had this, the senators would have done what we wanted,” Stacey Plaskett, a congressional delegate from the Virgin Islands and impeachment team member, told CNN’s State of the Union.“We didn’t need more witnesses, we needed more senators with spines. We believe that we proved the case, we proved the elements of the article of impeachment. It’s clear that these individuals were hardened, that they did not want to let the [former] president be convicted, or disqualified.”Raskin concurred.“These Republicans voted to acquit in the face of this mountain of unrefuted evidence,” he told NBC’s Meet the Press. “There’s no reasoning with people who basically are acting like members of a religious cult.”Among the 43 senators to vote to acquit Trump was Mitch McConnell, the Senate minority leader who nonetheless followed his “not guilty” vote with a fiery and contradictory post-trial speech on the Senate floor, in which he condemned Trump for a “disgraceful dereliction of duty”.“There’s no question, none, that President Trump is practically and morally responsible for provoking the events of the day,” McConnell said. “No question about it.”“President Trump is still liable for everything he did while he was in office as an ordinary citizen,” the Kentucky Republican added, raising the prospect of criminal charges for the 45th US president over the riot. “He didn’t get away with anything. Yet.”Neither Raskin nor Madeleine Dean, an impeachment manager who told ABC’s This Week McConnell was “speaking out of two sides of his mouth”, ruled out criminal prosecution for Trump, saying the decision would be up to others.Larry Hogan, the Republican governor of Maryland and a frequent Trump critic, went further.“There was yesterday’s vote, but there’s still a number of potential court cases that I think he’s still going to face, in criminal courts and the court of public opinion,” he told CNN. “This is not over and we’re going to decide over the next couple of years what the fate of Donald Trump and the Republican party is.”Prosecutors in Georgia are investigating calls by Trump and an ally, Lindsey Graham, in which state Republican officials were pressured to overturn Biden’s victory.Chris Murphy, a Democratic senator for Connecticut, said Trump’s acquittal proved he was still firmly in charge of the Republican party, and that trial witnesses would not have swayed any more senators.“They weren’t going to get any more Republican votes than they had and I think they made the right decision to move to closing arguments,” he told CNN. “I don’t know that they would have lost votes, I just am pretty confident they were at their high watermark yesterday morning. I know that [among the] Senate Republican caucus, I can’t figure out who their eighth or ninth vote was going to be.“Donald Trump’s going to be in charge of their party for the next four years. As they were deathly afraid of him for the last four years, they are going to continue to be afraid of him for the next four years.”Bill Cassidy, a Louisiana senator who was among the Republican dissidents, expanded on his reasoning for his vote after declaring on Saturday it was simply “because [Trump] is guilty”.“We can see the president for two months after the election promoting that the election was stolen,” he told ABC. “He scheduled the rally for 6 January, just when the transfer of power was to take place. And even after he knew there was violence taking place, he continued to basically sanction the mob being there. And not until later did he actually ask them to leave.”Cassidy said he was unconcerned by a backlash in Louisiana, where the state GOP has censured him and the chair of the Republican caucus warned him not to expect a warm welcome back.“I have the privilege of having the facts before me and being able to spend several days deeply going into those facts,” he said.“As these facts become more and more out there, and folks have a chance to look for themselves, more will move to where I was. People want to trust their leaders, they want people to be held accountable.” More

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      Trump triumphant – but senior Republicans still see battles ahead

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      Donald Trump emerged from his second impeachment trial almost completely politically intact. But amid widespread laments (or celebrations, depending on the affiliation of the speaker) about the former president’s grip on the Republican party, some prominent voices suggested a changing of the guard may still be due.“Losing the bully pulpit is a big difference,” Senator John Cornyn of Texas told the Hill, of Trump’s ejection from the White House and from major social media platforms, in the aftermath of the US Capitol attack.“I think that [we’re] already beginning to see some groundwork being laid by other people who aspire to succeed him.”By a vote of 57-43, the Senate voted to convict Trump on the charge that he incited the mob assault on the Capitol on 6 January. Seven Republicans joined every Democrat and independent in a verdict which would have barred Trump from running for office again. But the vote did not pass the two-thirds votes required.Only one Republican, Mitt Romney, defected in Trump’s first impeachment trial last year. But as Trump’s supporters brushed off the stronger show of opposition inside the party, so did Trump himself.The former president will be 78 in 2024 and has not committed to running again. But his post-acquittal statement did preview a resumption of a more visible role in US politics in the coming months.“Our historic, patriotic and beautiful movement to Make America Great Again has only just begun,” Trump said. “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. There has never been anything like it!”In interviews on Sunday, Republicans who dared to turn against Trump were asked about the likely consequences of their votes.In Louisiana, the state Republican party voted to censure Senator Bill Cassidy, who the chair of the Louisiana Republican Caucus warned not to “expect a warm welcome when you come home to Louisiana!”Speaking to ABC’s This Week, Cassidy said: “I’m attempting to hold President Trump accountable and that is the trust that I have from the people who elected me and I am very confident that as time passes people will move to that position.”Trump’s allies argued that he remains the center of the Republican universe.“Donald Trump is the most vibrant member of the Republican party,” Senator Lindsey Graham of South Carolina, a close Trump ally, told Fox News Sunday. “The Trump movement is alive and well.”Jason Chaffetz, a former congressman from Utah, framed the impeachment as a quixotic Democratic failure.“I don’t think history will treat this very well,” he told Fox. “It didn’t have the legitimacy that Democrats hoped it would. They really didn’t sway anybody. I think it was a complete waste of time and now Democrats are 0 for 2 and America wants to move on.”At the same time, there are indications that unity remains elusive within Republican ranks. In an interview with Politico, Mitch McConnell of Kentucky, the Senate minority leader who excoriated Trump after the impeachment trial but nonetheless voted for acquittal, indicated he would wade into primaries in which a Trump-backed candidate seemed set to win.“My goal is, in every way possible, to have nominees representing the Republican party who can win in,” McConnell said. “Some of them may be people the former president likes. Some of them may not be. The only thing I care about is electability.”McConnell added: “I’m not predicting the president would support people who couldn’t win. But I do think electability – not who supports who – is the critical point.”Graham indicated how McConnell’s Senate speech had gone down among Trump supporters.“He got a load off his chest,” he said, “obviously, but unfortunately he put a load on the back of Republicans. That speech you will see in 2022 campaigns.[embedded content]“I would imagine if you’re a Republican running in Arizona or Georgia, New Hampshire, where we have a chance to take back the Senate, they may be playing Senator McConnell’s speech and asking you about it as a candidate. And I imagine if you’re an incumbent Republican, they’re going to be people asking you, ‘Will you support Senator McConnell in the future?’”Close allies of Trump are running for major offices in those next midterms. In Arkansas, former White House press secretary Sarah Sanders is vying for the Republican nomination for governor. In North Carolina, Graham suggested, Lara Trump, the former president’s daughter in law, may well run for Senate to replace Richard Burr, the retiring senator who voted to convict Trump.There is also talk that Ivanka Trump could run for Senate in Florida, challenging Marco Rubio.Prominent anti-Trump figures see conflict ahead. Larry Hogan, the governor of Maryland who is widely expected to mount a presidential run in 2024, said anti-Trump sentiment would continue to grow.“We’re only a month in to the Biden administration,” Hogan told CNN’s State of the Union. “I think the final chapter of Donald Trump and the Republican party hasn’t been written yet.” More

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      Lindsey Graham: Burr impeachment vote boosts Lara Trump Senate hopes

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      Richard Burr’s vote to convict Donald Trump did not bring down the former president but it may have made Lara Trump “almost certain” to be nominated for the US Senate, key Trump ally Lindsey Graham said on Sunday.“Certainly I would be behind her because she represents the future of the Republican party,” the South Carolina senator said of the former president’s daughter-in-law, adding that the future should be “Trump-plus”.Burr, a former chair of the Senate intelligence committee, will retire as a senator from North Carolina at the end of his current term.On Saturday, he and six other Republicans voted to convict Trump on a charge of insurrection linked to the US Capitol attack. It made Trump’s second impeachment the most bipartisan ever but he was acquitted nonetheless.Burr’s state Republican party condemned what it called his “shocking and disappointing” vote.Lara Trump is married to Eric Trump, the former president’s second son. She has been reported to be interested in running for Senate in her native state.“The biggest winner I think of this whole impeachment trial is Lara Trump,” Graham told Fox News Sunday. “My dear friend Richard Burr, who I like and I’ve been friends to a long time, just made Lara Trump almost a certain nominee for the Senate seat in North Carolina to replace him if she runs.“Now certainly I would be behind her because she represents the future of the Republican party.”In 2016, Graham famously predicted Trump would “destroy” the GOP if he was made its nominee for president. Once Trump won power, the senator switched to become one of his biggest boosters.On Sunday, in an interview in which he occasionally spoke directly to the former president, he said his party should be “Trump-plus”, because “the most potent force in the Republican party is President Trump”.“And at the end of the day I’ve been involved in politics for over 25 years,” Graham said. “The president is a handful and what happened [at the Capitol] on 6 January was terrible for the country. But he’s not singularly to blame. Democrats have sat on the sidelines and watched the country being burned down for a year and a half and not said a damn word, and most Republicans are tired of the hypocrisy.”On Saturday, Graham first voted against the calling of witnesses in the impeachment trial, then switched to support it. After a deal was done to avoid that step, he voted to acquit.Other Trump family members have been linked to runs for office. For example, the Florida senator Marco Rubio is widely expected to face a primary challenge from Ivanka Trump, the former president’s oldest daughter.Lara Trump, 38, is a former personal trainer and TV producer who became a key campaign surrogate. Among other controversies, she claimed Joe Biden was suffering “cognitive decline” and mocked his stutter. She earned widespread rebuke.“These words come without hesitation,” Chesley “Sully” Sullenberger, the airline pilot and all-American hero who also stuttered as a child, wrote in the New York Times.“Stop. Grow up. Show some decency. People who can’t have no place in public life.” More

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      Republicans did not just acquit Trump – they let themselves off too | Lawrence Douglas

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      “I have lost tons of sleep thinking he may get away with what he did,” the South Carolina senator Lindsey Graham said. “Impeachment is not about punishment. Impeachment is about cleansing the office. Impeachment is about restoring honor and integrity to the office.”The “he” who vexed Senator Graham’s sleep was not Donald Trump. It was Bill Clinton. And Graham worked to make sure Clinton would not get away with lying under oath about his little affair, voting, in 1999, to convict the president and remove him from office.On Saturday, Graham reached a different conclusion. In joining 42 of his Republican colleagues in voting to acquit Donald Trump of inciting a violent insurrection, Graham commented: “I think most Republicans found the presentation by the House managers offensive and absurd.”Whatever else we might think about the Republicans’ vote of acquittal, it answers a question that millions of Americans have been pondering since Donald Trump took office four years ago. At what point would congressional Republicans say “enough”? Having first indulged and then endorsed Trump’s trampling of constitutional norms and abuse of the presidency, when would Republican lawmakers say, “No more”?McConnell’s argument brings to mind Robert Jackson’s observation that ‘the US constitution is not a suicide pact’Now we have our answer. Never. If Trump’s act of inciting a mob to attack the Capitol in an attempt to subvert the certification of a fair and democratic election does not constitute impeachable conduct, then it’s hard to imagine what does. Still, history will record that the vast majority of Republican senators voted to acquit, a group that included eleven lawmakers who, two decades ago, agitated for Clinton’s removal.True, seven Republicans voted to convict Trump, led by the stalwart and principled Mitt Romney, who, a scant eight years ago, was the party’s standard bearer. And among those voting to acquit, there appeared to be a handful who agonized over their vote, most notably Mitch McConnell, until recently the Senate majority leader.In a remarkable speech delivered on the heels of the trial’s conclusion, McConnell sounded like a late addition to Jamie Raskin’s formidable team of House managers. Indignantly demolishing the absurd claim by Trump’s lawyers that the president was simply the victim of a “constitutional cancel culture,” McConnell accused Trump of a “disgraceful dereliction of duty” in provoking the violence of 6 January.All the same, McConnell voted to acquit on jurisdictional grounds, insisting that the constitution’s impeachment clause does not authorize the conviction of a former president, now a “private person”. The argument is not silly: the text is ambiguous and past practice does not offer a particularly clear guide. Such precedents as there are – most notably the impeachment trial of William Belknap, Ulysses S Grant’s former secretary of war, after Belknap had resigned his post – never resulted in a conviction.But McConnell’s argument does bring to mind US supreme court Justice Robert Jackson’s observation that “the US constitution is not a suicide pact”. For that is how McConnell would have us read the impeachment clause. According to McConnell, the constitution empowers the US Senate to remove a sitting president and to disqualify them from holding future office, but it does not permit the disqualification of a disgraced former president from seeking a return to power. By McConnell’s peculiar logic, only if Trump should run again in 2024 and win, could he be convicted for his actions of 6 January 2021.McConnell would leave the constitution powerless to check a sitting president, who, like Trump, is prepared to attack the peaceful transfer of power. Either the would-be authoritarian is successful, in which case they need not worry about impeachment, having effectively smashed democracy, or they will fail in their putsch and be spared any form of constitutional reckoning.McConnell’s insistence the Senate lacks the power to convict a “private person” also misleadingly characterizes Trump’s present status. Were Trump now merely a private person, Republican senators would not be bending over backwards to appease him. It is precisely because Trump continues to control the base of the party – with millions viewing him as the rightful president in exile – that Republican lawmakers remain unwilling to cross him.Finally, while McConnell was surely right to hold Trump responsible for the violence of 6 January, his insistence that Trump bore “sole” responsibility rings almost facetious. Aiding and abetting the president were the likes of Missouri senator Josh Hawley, pumping his fist in solidarity with the insurrectionists; Texas senator Ted Cruz, smoothly insisting that the Senate shouldn’t certify Biden’s victory so long as millions of Americans bought into the myth of stolen election that the senator had helped spread; and even McConnell himself, who spent years feeding the beast. Republican senators didn’t just acquit Trump yesterday; they also voted to let themselves – Trump’s co-conspirators – off the hook.Lawrence Douglas is the James J Grosfeld Professor of Law, Jurisprudence and Social Thought, at Amherst College, Massachusetts. His book on the 2020 election, Will He Go? was published by Hachette in 2020. He is also a contributing opinion writer for the Guardian US More