Proclaiming Trump's innocence, defense lawyer Michael van der Veen told the Senate that "the act of incitement never happened" and that rioters acted alone.Īfter the trial, House Speaker Nancy Pelosi, who was openly targeted by rioters and was evacuated from the Capitol on January 6, laid into the "cowardly" Republican senators who voted to acquit. "He didn't get away with anything yet."īuilding their case over two days, Democratic impeachment managers described how Trump first encouraged, then refused to call a halt to the January 6 insurrection that left then-vice president Mike Pence and lawmakers in mortal danger. "President Trump is still liable for everything he did while he was in office," McConnell said. He stressed that while Congress has exhausted its avenues for punishing Trump, the US justice system has not. "There's no question - none - that president Trump is practically and morally responsible for provoking the events of the day," McConnell told the chamber after the vote.
The former Trump ally unleashed a searing rebuke of the ex-president, calling his actions preceding the assault a "disgraceful dereliction" of duty. Most Republican senators agreed.īut Mitch McConnell, the powerful Senate minority leader who voted to acquit on those same grounds, left no doubt he considers Trump to have caused the riot - which sent lawmakers fleeing for safety as a marauding mob rampaged through the Capitol.
The defense team swatted the evidence away, arguing that Trump's appeal to supporters to "fight like hell, at the rally that preceded the attack," was merely rhetorical.īut their central argument was that the Senate had no constitutional jurisdiction to try a former president. "He summoned his supporters to Washington, on the Ellipse, whipped them into a frenzy, and directed them at the Capitol," Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer said after the vote. Trump was impeached by the House of Representatives on January 13, a week after the chaotic assault that stunned the nation and provoked widespread bipartisan outrage.ĭemocrats argued that Trump's behavior was an "open and shut" case of impeachable conduct, retracing how he spent two months repeating the falsehood that the election was stolen, before inciting his supporters to attack Congress and stop the certification of Joe Biden's victory. "We have so much work ahead of us, and soon we will emerge with a vision for a bright, radiant, and limitless American future," he said in a statement. Trump, who has been secluded in his Florida club since leaving office on January 20, welcomed the verdict - denouncing the proceedings as "yet another phase of the greatest witch hunt in the history of our country."ĭespite the stain of a second impeachment, Trump hinted at a possible political future, saying that "our historic, patriotic and beautiful movement to Make America Great Again has only just begun."
0 kommentar(er)
