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Democrats defend decision not to call witnesses as tactic under scrutiny
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
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
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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With Trump's acquittal, it's hard to know what to be most angry about | Emma Brockes
There was something poignant on Saturday about the lengths gone to by some media organisations in the US to try to make the result less appalling. “Most bipartisan support for conviction in history,” declared the New York Times, clutching at the pitiful seven Republicans who voted in favour of impeaching Donald Trump, well short of the 17 needed to uphold a conviction. Four years ago, at a campaign stop in Iowa, Trump famously declared: “I could stand in the middle of Fifth Avenue and shoot somebody and I wouldn’t lose any voters.” Here we were, a month after five people died during the storming of the Capitol, living some version of that promise.It should have helped, perhaps, that the result was anticipated before the trial even got under way. There was no suspense, no surprise; the votes needed to convict were never there. Nor, seemingly, was the appetite for investigation: both sides agreed at the 11th hour not to call witnesses and draw this thing out, a lassitude mirrored across the electorate. What was the point of even watching the proceedings, stoking one’s outrage or being moved by the closing arguments of Congressman Jamie Raskin, the lead impeachment manager, when it was apparent that Trump would get off scot-free? Better to avoid and move on.There is a point, of course, which is to enter into public record a detailed, forensic account of what happened at the Capitol on 6 January, even if it didn’t result in conviction. This hurried process and hasty conclusion – the impeachment hearings took all of five days – instead felt like a shrug, an afterthought, leaving us with little more than a flat sense of disgust and latent fury with nowhere to go.What to be angry about most? Perhaps it was the absurdity of Mitch McConnell, the Senate minority leader who led a blistering attack on Trump minutes after voting to acquit him. This vote, said McConnell, was a result of what he labelled a period of “intense reflection”, which is certainly one way to describe political cowardice. On the other hand, he said: “There’s no question – none – that President Trump is practically and morally responsible for provoking the events of the day.”Or perhaps the most galling figure was Mitt Romney, who has never been able fully to commit to his self-image as a man of high morals. He was one of the seven Republicans voting against Trump, a stance less evident four years ago when he sucked up to him for a place in the cabinet, or more recently, when he voted to rush through confirmation of Amy Coney Barrett to the supreme court. If anything, the Republicans who voted with the Democrats on Saturday seemed worse than their Trump-supporting counterparts: these were the people who, one understood, had always had the measure of the man, but while it suited them had gone happily along with him.For the rest of us, the spectacle of Trump and his sons crowing about acquittal was just one more breach of normality. “It is a sad commentary on our times,” wrote Trump in a statement after the verdict, “that one political party in America is given a free pass to denigrate the rule of law, defame law enforcement, cheer mobs, excuse rioters and transform justice into a tool of political vengeance.” It was one, final expression of his role as America’s gaslighting spouse, fighting any accusation with the counter: “No, you did it.” Only Trump would hail surviving a second impeachment trial as a victory: the kind of behaviour that we have learned to understand does nothing to penetrate the reality of his base. The hurried trial and acquittal, designed to allow us to move on, will in all likelihood contribute to the survival of Trumpism.There isn’t much scope for closure or relief. In a political culture in which Twitter, Trump’s enabler, has taken more strident action against him than the US government, we are left only with the consolation of personal belief. When news of the acquittal came in on Saturday, I found myself defaulting to a childish form of vindictive speculation reserved for those who escape official censure. Look at Trump and his progeny, I thought, holed up at Mar-a-Lago, threats of bankruptcy on the horizon, imprisoned by their various delusions. How unhappy they must be. More
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Republican rebels who voted to convict feel Trumpists' fury
The seven Republican senators who broke rank by voting to convict former president Donald Trump at his impeachment trial faced immediate hostility and criticism from fellow conservatives revealing the potentially high cost of opposing Trumpism within the party.These senators – North Carolina’s Richard Burr, Louisiana’s Bill Cassidy, Maine’s Susan Collins, Alaska’s Lisa Murkowski, Utah’s Mitt Romney, Nebraska’s Ben Sasse, and Pennsylvania’s Pat Toomey – brought the total number of guilty votes to 57. That was not nearly enough to secure a conviction, but easily enough to ensure instant attack from fellow Republicans and others on the right.Thereaction was a powerful illustration of the strength of Trump’s grip on the Republican party even though he is out of office.“Let’s impeach RINOs from the Republican Party!!!” Trump’s son and conservative favorite Donald Trump Jr said on Twitter, using the insulting acronym for Republicans In Name Only.The instant backlash came from powerful rightwing media figures also.Conservative Fox News host Laura Ingraham commented: “Prediction: none of the Republicans who voted in the affirmative today will speak at the 2024 GOP convention.”For Cassidy, there was almost instant retribution in his own state. Jeff Landry, the Republican attorney general of Louisiana, tweeted: “Senator Bill Cassidy’s vote is extremely disappointing.”The local party agreed and its executive committee unanimously voted to censure Cassidy for his vote. “We condemn, in the strongest possible terms, the vote today by Sen. Cassidy to convict former President Trump. Fortunately, clearer heads prevailed and President Trump has been acquitted of the impeachment charge filed against him,” the Republican Party of Louisiana similarly said in a statement.Cassidy was not alone, as Burr’s state party in North Carolina also went immediately on the attack.Michael Whatley, North Carolina Republican Party chair, condemned his colleague in a statement, saying: “North Carolina Republicans sent Senator Burr to the United States Senate to uphold the Constitution and his vote today to convict in a trial that he declared unconstitutional is shocking and disappointing.”Even Republicans who voted to acquit Trump were not necessarily spared from conservative backlash, including Senate minority leader Mitch McConnell. The lawmaker said that he voted to acquit over a jurisdictional issue and because Trump was no longer in office, McConnell didn’t think impeachment was in its purview.However, McConnell also firmly criticized Trump following the acquittal, saying “there’s no question, none, that President Trump is practically, and morally, responsible for provoking the events of the day” and that he’s “still liable for everything he did while he’s in office. He didn’t get away with anything yet.”Trump’s circle was displeased at the lack of fealty, despite the vote to acquit.“If only McConnell was so righteous as the Democrats trampled Trump and the Republicans while pushing Russia collusion bullshit for 3 years or while Dems incited 10 months of violence, arson, and rioting. Yet then he just sat back and did jack shit,” said Trump Jr.These attacks come as party-line Republicans have ratcheted up their efforts to unseat dissenting conservatives in upcoming primaries. The ten House Republicans who voted to impeach Trump are already seeing primary opponents trying to unseat them and replace them with Trump loyalists.Matt Gaetz, a Florida Republican congressman and dogged Trump loyalist, even flew to Cheyenne, Wyoming in late January to hold a rally against senior Republican congresswoman Liz Cheney who backed impeachment.“Defeat Liz Cheney in this upcoming election,” Gaetz commented, “and Wyoming will bring Washington to its knees. How can you call yourself a representative when you don’t represent the will of the people?”Gaetz also described Cheney – the daughter of former vice-president Dick Cheney – as “a Beltway bureaucrat turned fake cow girl that supported an impeachment that is deeply unpopular in the state of Wyoming.” More
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Trump's acquittal shows paltry punch of impeachment process
Former president Donald Trump has repeatedly been called “Teflon Don” during his presidency – a moniker used for the late mob boss John Gotti to describe how consequences for his bad actions apparently don’t stick to him.While Gotti was ultimately convicted of 13 counts in 1992, Trump has fared far better in beating allegations of misconduct. He has now been acquitted twice by the US Senate – once under Republican control and under Democratic control. He has thus skipped being charged with inciting the deadly 6 January attack on the Capitol and prior to that allegations of abuse of power and obstruction of Congress.Both times the acquittals felt virtually inevitable, given Trump’s Republican allies remained largely loyal. But his second acquittal now speaks to something increasingly problematic about the American political system’s ultimate ability to curtail presidential abuses of power: for many the impeachment process no longer presents much of a threat or deterrent to bad, or even illegal, behavior by the most powerful figure in the land.During Trump’s second trial no witnesses were even called – spurring some commentators to condemn Democrats’ decision as a moral failure.“This is why I’m neither a Democrat nor a Republican … One side is a front business for a white nationalist terrorist organization and the other doesn’t feel threatened enough by white nationalists to actually wield power to make our multicultural democracy sustainable,” MSNBC contributor Jason Johnson said on Twitter when it was revealed witnesses wouldn’t be called.Historians believe the acquittals will have long-term impacts, some of which are not yet known, according to an Axios analysis. Historian Douglas Brinkley told the website that acquittal would show that the power of impeachment is virtually nil. “Impeachment is a political process, and we got a political result out of it,” Brinkley said.Meanwhile, Andrew Rudalevige, an expert on presidential power at Bowdoin College, told Axios: “Congress not even pushing back against a physical assault suggests that there’s a lot they will put up with.”Meanwhile, CNN commentator Doug Jones, a former Democratic Alabama US senator, wrote earlier this week that the evidence in the second impeachment trial appeared overwhelming.“In any trial, the accusing party must connect the dots between the words and actions of the defendant to the harm that occurred. Over the last two days, the House managers did just that,” he stated. “The House managers connected all of these dots to the video of Trump finally telling insurrectionists to leave but also that they were ‘special,’ that he loved them and that they should ‘remember this day forever’.”Jones concluded: “If Trump’s actions are not impeachable, then nothing is, and we may as well strike that provision from the constitution.”After the vote, Senate Republican minority leader Mitch McConnell, who predictably was among the 43 not guilty votes, gave a speech in which he seemed to condemn Trump while not addressing at all why he had also voted to find him not guilty.“There’s no question, none, that President Trump is practically, and morally, responsible for provoking the events of the day.” McConnell said and also remarked that Trump is “still liable for everything he did while he’s in office. He didn’t get away with anything yet.”Yet, when presented with a chance to find Trump guilty himself, McConnell chose to acquit.That seems to show that the impeachment process and trial in the Senate will lose its power of deterrence, as politics – not any judgment of law or right or wrong – is what actually informs its decisions. Therefore, Trump’s strong political power among Republicans was actually the deciding factor in the trial, not any legal argument or burden of proof of wrongdoing.That is not likely to instill a fear of impeachment for future presidents. In fact, it is likely to encourage strong-arm behaviour.Kurt Bardella, a onetime Republican congressional aide who changed to the Democratic party, recently told the Guardian: “It’s a demonstration that his status as the leader of the Republican party is unchanged, even though the results of the election have shown that his agenda is a losing agenda for the Republican party.”“If you send a signal that someone who vocally led a violent insurrection against American democracy can do so without consequence, you’re only sending the message that he should do this again, that it’s OK: you are condoning that behavior,” Bardella commented. More
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'White supremacy won today': critics condemn Trump acquittal as racist vote
The decision by 43 Republican senators to acquit Donald Trump in his second impeachment trial has been condemned by many observers as a racist vote which upholds white supremacy.
The former president was tried this week for his role in inciting the 6 January insurrection at the US Capitol, where his many of his followers waved Confederate flags and wore racist and antisemitic clothing and symbols while storming the building.
In his speech before the riot, Trump exhorted his followers to “fight” the vote and called his mostly white audience “the people that built this nation”. His efforts to overturn the election results concentrated in cities with large populations of Black voters who drove Biden’s win.
Kimberly Atkins, a senior opinion writer at the Boston Globe, tweeted that the mob was trying to stop the votes of Black people like her from being counted.
Atkins said: “When this is done at the urging of the president of the United States, the constitution provides a remedy – if members of the House and Senate abide by their oaths. A republic, if you can keep it. Is it a republic for me?”
The Washington Post’s global opinions editor, Karen Attiah, said: “White supremacy won today.”
“History will reflect that leaders on both sides of the aisle enabled white extremism, insurrection and violence to be a permissible part of our politics,” Attiah added. “America is going to suffer greatly for this.”
For Trump to be found guilty, 67 senators needed to vote for his conviction. The former president was acquitted in a 57 to 43 vote on Saturday afternoon. The Senate is 89% white.
After the vote, Senate majority leader Chuck Schumer addressed the chamber and said it was an “incontrovertible fact” that Trump was guilty and implored the audience to “remember the hateful and racist Confederate flag flying through the halls of our union” during the insurrection.
Trump’s lawyer, Michael van der Veen, in his closing statement equated the Capitol insurrection with Black Lives Matter protests last summer, repeatedly referring to those demonstrators as a “mob”.
“Black people can’t object to a knee on our necks or kids getting pepper-sprayed, but whiteness protects its own,” the Rev Jacqui Lewis tweeted after the vote. “This is who America is, and it’s who we’ve always been. And we need to decide if we want to be something different.”
A professor of history, race and public history at Harvard University, Khalil Gibran Muhammad, said Trump’s acquittal made Biden’s election look similar to Abraham Lincoln’s 1861 election win, which was followed by the civil war a few months later.
“Trump is now the head of the neo-Confederacy, formerly called the Republican party. This is a party made up of people whose ideological ancestors have always been well represented in all levels government, and society. Let’s be clear, this is an America that has always been,” Muhammad said.
Brittney Cooper, the author of Eloquent Rage: a Black Feminist Discovers her Superpower, said the impeachment trial reminded her of when white juries would rarely convict their peers for lynchings. “Those jurists are political ancestors of the modern GOP,” Cooper tweeted. “It’s shameful, not to mention enraging.”
“Also to the liberal white people frustrated as the House managers presented an air tight case against a white supremacist insurrection to no avail, I say: welcome,” Cooper added. “This is what it feels like to scream into the wind. Black folks know it well. As you can see, it truly sucks.” More
