Trump avoids impeachment conviction in 57-43 Senate vote

WASHINGTON — The Senate voted Saturday to acquit former President Donald Trump on an impeachment charge of citing an insurrection that led to the violent attack on the Capitol that left five people dead and shocked the nation grappling with political division.

Seven Republicans joined Democrats in voting 57-43, failing to reach the two-thirds majority needed to convict Trump.

Trump lawyer Michael Van der Veen relished the victory. He said the case against Trump was a “political vendetta” by Democrats who fabricated evidence, calling it “fraud, flat out.”

But even Republicans denounced the violence of the Jan. 6 attack and the president’s role in inciting a mob of supporters to storm the Capitol and overturn an election that Trump lost and President Joe Biden won.

“There is no question, none, that President Trump is practically and morally responsible for provoking the events of the day,” Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell, R-Ky., said after his vote to acquit.

McConnell called Trump’s actions a “disgraceful dereliction of duty.”

But McConnell and other GOP senators said from the outset of the trial that they were unlikely to vote to convict in a “trial by combat.” Even before Saturday’s roll call vote, McConnell announced he would vote to acquit Trump, a move that gave other GOP lawmakers political cover to follow.

Rep. Joe Neguse, D-Colo., a House manager, told the Senate that the Trump lawyers have “given you a lot of distractions so you don’t have to consider these terrible acts.”

Neguse referenced the families of those who died that day.

“For some, there will be no end,” he said.

Trump, unrepentant, thanked his legal team in a statement and said his movement “has only just begun.” He slammed the trial as “yet another phase of the greatest witch hunt in the history of our Country.”

‘The president failed’

The seven GOP senators who voted with Democrats were Richard Burr of North Carolina, Bill Cassidy of Louisiana, Susan Collins of Maine, Lisa Murkowski of Alaska, Ben Sasse of Nebraska, Pat Toomey of Pennsylvania and Mitt Romney of Utah.

Nevada Sens. Catherine Cortez Masto and Jacky Rosen, both Democrats, voted to convict. Rosen, a former synagogue president from Las Vegas, questioned House impeachment managers during the proceedings about whether Trump knew that his rhetoric and tolerance for hate speech and support for the anti-Semitic Proud Boys would result in violence at the Capitol that day.

Democratic trial managers noted that Trump had encouraged certain anti-Semitic and white nationalist groups to join the demonstration on Jan. 6.

Rosen said Saturday that once the insurrection broke out, “the president failed to take action to defend the Capitol, his vice president, law enforcement or our democracy.”

“There must be consequences when a former president incites deadly violence against a coequal branch of government,” Rosen said.

Cortez Masto said that “when his supporters attacked, as he called on them to do, he violated his responsibility as president and commander in chief to preserve, protect and defend the Constitution and our republic.”

“It was obvious that Donald Trump was willing to use almost every measure at his disposal to gain and retain power, even if it meant overturning a free and fair election through violence,” Cortez Masto said. “For that reason, I voted to convict Donald Trump of inciting an insurrection.”

Cortez Masto and Rosen voted in 2020 to convict Trump on impeachment charges of abuse of office and obstruction of Congress in a case involving the president’s attempts to get Ukraine to announce an investigation into political rival Joe Biden.

Trump is the first president to be impeached twice, and twice acquitted by the Senate.

Romney, the only Republican senator to vote twice to convict Trump, voted with Democrats, saying the former president violated his oath of office, tried to coerce a Georgia official to overturn that state’s election result and tried to corrupt the presidential election.

During the proceedings on the floor of the Senate, Romney had a heated exchange with Sen. Ron Johnson, R-Wis., a Trump supporter who has remained loyal to the former president.

Asked by reporters what the exchange was about, Romney chuckled as he walked off: “Boxers versus briefs.”

Five-day trial

The House impeached Trump in mid-January with a bipartisan vote, and trial managers laid out their case before the Senate over nine hours this week during the five-day trial, with graphic video of violent mobs clubbing police and forcing their way into the Capitol.

House Democrats drove home the point that Trump assembled the crowd, incited the crowd and then gleefully watched the mayhem on television.

The crowd descended on the Capitol, where Vice President Mike Pence was officiating the House and Senate certification of state election results, the last formality in the presidential election process.

After the president told the crowd to “fight like hell” and repeated unfounded allegations that votes were being stolen, the Capitol was breached by his loyalists wearing Trump campaign hats and some in tactical gear and brandishing an array of weapons.

After the House voted to impeach Trump for actions against the government, the Senate was bound to hold a trial.

The former president’s lawyers and Republican senators argued that the Senate lacked jurisdiction because Trump was already out of office.

But the Senate voted to conduct the trial, finding it constitutional and within its jurisdiction.

Witness testimony

The final day of the trial got off to a surprising start on Saturday when House Democrats announced they wanted to call witnesses, prompting a 55-45 vote to approve witness testimony.

House managers wanted Republican Rep. Jaime Herrera Beutler of Washington, who was privy to a telephone call between Trump and House Minority Leader Kevin McCarthy, R-Calif., as the breach of the Capitol was unfolding.

Herrera Beutler, one of 10 House Republicans to vote for impeachment, said Trump dismissed McCarthy’s plea to call off the rioters.

After Trump lawyers concluded their defense Friday, Herrera Beutler tweeted out a call for others to step up and divulge what they knew had happened.

Democrats abandoned their witness request after a brokered deal allowed Herrera Beutler’s statement to be read into the trial record.

She said that after McCarthy pleaded with Trump on a call to make the rioting stop, Trump replied: “Well, Kevin, I guess these people are more upset about the election than you are.”

She said he refused McCarthy’s plea to tell the rioters to stop.

Instead, during the riot, when Pence was evacuated from the Senate, Trump tweeted an attack against the vice president that prompted insurrectionists to chant, “Hang Mike Pence,” lead House impeachment manager Jamie Raskin, D-Md., said.

“President Trump must be convicted for the safety of our democracy and the safety of our people,” Raskin said in closing arguments.

Van der Veen said the veracity of the Herrera Beutler statement remains in question.

In his closing, van der Veen called the trial a “charade from start to finish.” And even though seven Republicans defected from the caucus, providing the most bipartisan vote in history to convict a president of an impeachment charge, he called it a victory.

Following the acquittal, as van der Veen was exiting the Senate with the Trump legal team, he told reporters: “We’re going to Disney World.”

Contact Gary Martin at gmartin@reviewjournal.com. Follow @garymartindc on Twitter.