The US Senate voted Saturday to call in witnesses in Donald Trump’s impeachment trial, after a shock report on a conversation between the former president and House Minority Leader Kevin McCarthy during the attack on the US Capitol on January 6.
There were 55 senators who voted to debate the motion to subpoena, including Republican Sen. Lindsey Graham, who changed his vote in the middle of the count.
The move was expected to extending proceedings that just hours earlier had seemed to be speeding to a swift conclusion and up-or-down vote over whether the former president incited the deadly Capitol siege.
The last-minute fight over witnesses followed Friday night revelations from a Republican House lawmaker about a heated phone call on the day of the riot between Trump and House Minority Leader Kevin McCarthy that Democrats say establishes Trump’s indifference to the violence.
The proceedings came to abrupt halt Saturday morning, with even senators seemingly confused about next steps. Senators were huddling on floor of the chamber as leaders spoke to the clerks at the dais.
Rep. Jaime Herrera Beutler, who was one of 10 GOP House members who voted to impeach Trump, reported on the conversation to CNN.
She described the call as “expletive-laden” when McCarthy asked Trump to publicly “call off the riot” and told him the violent mob was made up of Trump supporters, not far-left antifa members as the president was insisting.
According to lawmakers, McCarthy told lawmakers the president said: “Well, Kevin, I guess these people are more upset about the election than you are.”
That comment set off what was described as a shouting match between Trump and McCarthy. The House Minority leader told Trump that rioters were breaking into his office through the windows and said to the then-president: “Who the fuck do you think you are talking to?”
Impeachment trials are rare, especially for a president, and the rules are negotiated for each one at the outset. For Trump’s trial, the agreement said if senators agreed to hear witnesses, votes to hear additional testimony would be allowed.
Earlier the US Senate’s top Republican Mitch McConnell said he would vote against convicting Donald Trump, as the impeachment trial of the former president nears its conclusion with a likely acquittal.
While describing the vote on whether to convict as a “close call,” he told colleagues in a letter that “I am persuaded that impeachments are a tool primarily of removal and we therefore lack jurisdiction.”
“I will vote to acquit,” McConnell added, leaving it highly likely that the Senate will fail to reach the two-thirds majority necessary to convict Trump on the single charge of incitement of insurrection.
While most Democrat are expected to convict the former president, acquittal already appeared likely in the chamber that is split 50-50 with Republicans. A two-thirds majority is required for conviction.
The outcome of the raw and emotional proceedings is expected to reflect a country divided over the former president and the future of his brand of politics. The verdict could influence not only Trump’s political future but that of the senators sworn to deliver impartial justice as jurors.
Barely a month since the deadly riot on January 6, closing arguments had been set to be made for the historic trial in a rare Saturday session, held under the watch of armed National Guard troops still guarding the iconic building.
But the Democratic move to call witness will likely delay those arguments.
The nearly weeklong trial has delivered a grim and graphic narrative of the riot and its consequences in ways that senators, most of whom fled for their own safety that day, acknowledge they are still coming to grips with.
Acquittal is expected in the evenly-divided Senate. That verdict could heavily influence not only Trump’s political future but that of the senators sworn to deliver impartial justice as jurors.
House prosecutors have argued that Trump’s rallying cry to go to the Capitol and “fight like hell” for his presidency just as Congress was convening January 6 to certify Joe Biden’s election victory was part of an orchestrated pattern of violent rhetoric and false claims that unleashed the mob. Five people died, including a rioter who was shot and a police officer.
Trump’s lawyers countered in a short three hours Friday that Trump’s words were not intended to incite the violence and that impeachment is nothing but a “witch hunt” designed to prevent him from serving in office again.
Only by watching the graphic videos — rioters calling out menacingly for House Speaker Nancy Pelosi and Vice President Mike Pence, who was presiding over the vote tally — did senators say they began to understand just how perilously close the country came to chaos. Hundreds of rioters stormed into the building, taking over the Senate. Some engaged in hand-to-hand, bloody combat with police.
While it is unlikely the Senate would be able to mount the two-thirds vote needed to convict, several senators appear to be still weighing their vote.
McConnell did not pressure his GOP colleagues and told senators to vote their conscience.
Many Republicans representing states where the former president remains popular doubt whether Trump was fully responsible or if impeachment is the appropriate response. Democrats appear all but united toward conviction.
Trump is the only president to be twice impeached and the first to face trial charges after leaving office.
Unlike last year’s impeachment trial of Trump in the Ukraine affair, a complicated charge of corruption and obstruction over his attempts to have the foreign ally dig up dirt on then-campaign rival Biden, this one brought an emotional punch over the unexpected vulnerability of the US tradition of peaceful elections. The charge is singular, incitement of insurrection.
On Friday, Trump’s impeachment lawyers accused Democrats of waging a campaign of “hatred” against the former president as they wrapped up their defense.
His lawyers vigorously denied that Trump had incited the riot and they played out-of-context video clips showing Democrats, some of them senators now serving as jurors, also telling supporters to “fight,” aiming to establish a parallel with Trump’s overheated rhetoric.
“This is ordinarily political rhetoric,” said Trump lawyer Michael van der Veen. “Countless politicians have spoken of fighting for our principles.”
But the presentation blurred the difference between the general encouragement that politicians make to battle for health care or other causes and Trump’s fight against officially accepted national election results, and minimized Trump’s efforts to undermine those results. The defeated president was telling his supporters to fight on after every state had verified its results, after the Electoral College had affirmed them and after nearly every election lawsuit filed by Trump and his allies had been rejected in court.
Democratic senators shook their heads at what many called a false equivalency to their own fiery words. “We weren’t asking them ‘fight like hell’ to overthrow an election,” said Senator Richard Blumenthal.
Democrats say that Trump was the “inciter in chief” whose monthslong campaign against the election results was rooted in a “big lie” and laid the groundwork for the riot, a violent domestic attack on the Capitol unparalleled in history.
“Get real,” said the lead prosecutor, Representative Jamie Raskin, at one point. “We know that this is what happened.”
The Senate has convened as a court of impeachment for past Presidents Andrew Johnson and Bill Clinton and now twice for Trump. But the unprecedented nature of the case against an out-of-office president has provided Republican senators one of several arguments against conviction.
Republicans maintain the proceedings are unconstitutional, even though the Senate voted at the outset of the trial on this issue and confirmed it has jurisdiction.
Six Republican senators who joined Democrats in voting to take up the case are among those most watched for their votes.
Early signals came Friday during questions for the lawyers.
Senators Susan Collins and Lisa Murkowski asked the first question, Two centrists known for independent streaks, they leaned into a point the prosecutors had made, asking exactly when Trump learned of the breach of the Capitol and what specific actions he took to end the rioting.
Democrats had argued that Trump did nothing as the mob rioted.
Another Republican who voted to launch the trial, Senator Bill Cassidy of Louisiana, asked about Trump’s tweet criticizing Pence moments after the then-president was told by another senator that Pence had just been evacuated.
Van der Veen responded that at “no point” was the president informed of any danger. Cassidy told reporters later it was not a very good answer.
Header: Then-US president Donald Trump speaks during a rally protesting the electoral college certification of Joe Biden as president, shortly before the assault on the US Capitol, Wednesday, January 6, 2021, in Washington. (AP Photo/Evan Vucci)
Source: TOI