For the first time in U.S. history, a bipartisan majority of the U.S. Senate voted for impeachment of a president, and for the first time in U.S. history, to impeach a former president. (Sen. Mitt Romney previously made Donald Trump’s first impeachment bipartisan for the first time in history).
The Senate voted 57-43 to impeach former president Donald Trump for inciting the January 6 insurrection in Washington, D.C. Only seven Republicans broke from the Party of Trump: Richard Burr (retiring), Bill Cassidy, Susan Collins, Lisa Murkowski, Mitt Romney, Ben Sasse, Pat Toomey (retiring).
Unfortunately, it takes a two-thirds majority vote of the Senate to convict in an impeachment trial, and a tyranny of a minority of 43 radicalized Republicans, all of whom participated in Donald Trump’s Big Lie that he won the election in a landslide and that the election was stolen from him, voted to normalize a Republican president engaging in sedition and insurrection to overturn the vote of the people in an election and to establish himself as a dictator, thereby ending American democracy.
UPDATE: Former President Trump thanked his servile lickspittle lackeys in the Senate who voted to acquit him on Saturday, and promised that his “movement to Make America Great Again has only just begun.” These 43 senators now own the domestic violence that is certain to follow. As Maureen Dowd recounts of her interviews with Donald Trump, Trump’s Taste for Blood (excerpts):
[E]verything bloodcurdling that happened at the Capitol on Jan. 6 flowed from his bloodthirsty behavior. He had always been cruel and selfish, blowing things up and reveling in the chaos, gloating in the wreckage. But it was only during his campaign that he realized he had a nasty mob at his disposal. He had moved into a world that allowed him to exercise his malice in an extraordinary way, and he loved it.
[O]nce Trump got into politics, he realized, with growing intoxication, that the more incendiary he was, the more his fans would cheer. He found that he could really play with the emotions of the crowd, and that turned him on. Now he had the chance to command a mob, so his words could be linked to their actions.
Trump never cared about law and order or the cops. He was thrilled that he could unleash his mob on the Capitol and its guardians, with rioters smearing blood and feces and yelling Trump’s words and going after his targets — Nancy Pelosi and Mike Pence.
Trump not caring about the fate of his vice president was the inevitable sick end of the pairing of the Sociopath and the Sycophant.
January 6, 2021 is a date which will live in infamy. February 13, 2021 is another date which will live in infamy.
This was the first impeachment in U.S. history in which senators were not only the jurors, but the victims and witnesses to the crime, with the trial held at the scene of the crime.
Still, 43 radicalized Republicans, all of whom participated in Donald Trump’s Big Lie that he won the election in a landslide and that the election was stolen from him, gave Donald Trump a pass for his sedition and insurrection.
Trump even threatened the life of his own Vice President, and members of Congress. It is only by a miracle of chance and the heroics of Capitol Police officers that Mike Pence and members of Congress were not killed that day. By their vote, 43 Republicans declared they did not care.
UPDATE: Dana Milbank writes, Trump left them to die. 43 Senate Republicans still licked his boots.
43 radicalized Republicans have now invited this violent response as a political weapon to occur again. All 43 radicalized Republican senators need to be driven from office, and disgraced for all time in U.S. history. They are traitors to their country, the Constitution, and their oath of office.
The Party of Trump can never again assert that it is the party of “law and order” and feign support for law enforcement when their domestic terrorists assaulted the Capitol Police and District Police Officers defending the Capitol from their violent seditious insurrection. They killed a police officer and injured hundreds more.
Now the criminal justice system must investigate and prosecute Donald Trump for his crimes to hold him accountable.
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Thom Hartman points out how the anti-democratic Senate results in a tyranny of the minority: “Senators representing about 230 million Americans voted to convict Donald Trump of incitement to insurrection, while senators representing about 100 million Americans voted not to convict him.”
“You Can Only Fully See Fascism in the Rear View Mirror. Senators Representing About 230 Million Americans Voted to Convict Trump. Senators Representing About 100 Million Acquitted Him.” , https://buzzflash.com/articles/thom-hartmann-you-can-only-fully-see-fascism-in-the-rear-view-mirror-senators-representing-about-230-american-voted-to-convict-senator-representing-abou
Good catch by Steve Benen – he compares the Republicans who supported impeaching Bill Clinton for a blowjob between two consenting adults, but then voted to acquit Donald Trump for sedition and insurrection against the United States government, an act of treason, because IOKIYAR:
Republican senators who voted to convict Clinton, but acquit Trump: Idaho’s Mike Crapo, Iowa’s Chuck Grassley, Oklahoma’s James Inhofe, and Kentucky’s Mitch McConnell
Republican senators who supported Clinton’s impeachment while in the House, and who voted to acquit Trump: Missouri’s Roy Blunt, South Carolina’s Lindsey Graham, Kansas’ Jerry Moran, Ohio’s Rob Portman, South Dakota’s John Thune, Mississippi’s Roger Wicker
Republican senator who split his votes on Clinton, but who voted to acquit Trump: Alabama’s Richard Shelby
Republican senator who supported Clinton’s impeachment while in the House, and who also voted to convict Trump: North Carolina’s Richard Burr
Republican senator who voted to acquit Clinton but convict Trump: Maine’s Susan Collins
Quote of The Day:
“It could be First Amendment, it could be bill of attainder, it could be due process. I mean all of them are nonsense. I thought that I successfully demolished them at the trial but, you know, there’s no reasoning with people who basically are, you know, acting like members of a religious cult and when they leave office should be selling flowers at Dulles Airport.”
— Rep. Jamie Raskin (D-MD), lead impeachment manager, in an interview on Meet the Press.
Mitch McConnell gave a post-vote speech in which he argued that the evidence presented proved that Donald Trump was guilty “without question,” after he voted to acquit Donald Trump. McConnell, arguing for the 43 Republicans, made a jurisdictional argument: that a president no longer in office cannot be impeached.
This is the same man who recessed the Senate the week after the House impeached Trump, and then falsely asserted that the Senate did not have time to hold a trial before Inauguration Day. McConnell created the very circumstances “to run out the clock,” in his cynical view, which he now relies on. This establishes McConnell’s extreme bad faith and villainy.
The jurisdictional issue was decided by the Senate on Tuesday in a vote of 56-44 that the Senate does in fact have jurisdiction, based upon the history and text of the impeachment clauses and the Senate’s own precedents.
Trump’s defense lawyers repeatedly kept telling senators that they could ignore this procedural vote. This is false, but that’s what these 43 senators did (reportedly relying on the advice of that douchebag Alan Dershowitz, who is not a constitutional law expert).
Trump’s defense lawyers violated the Law of The Case Doctrine. “Under the law of the case doctrine, ‘once a court decides an issue, the same issue may not be relitigated in subsequent proceedings in the same case.’” “Law of the case is an amorphous concept,” which “posits that when a court decides upon a rule of law, that decision should continue to govern the same issues in subsequent stages in the same case.”
Had this been a court of law, the judge would have stopped defense counsel from even making this argument, and threatened to hold him in contempt and to sanction him.
The 43 Republican senators for acquittal disregarded their own controlling vote on jurisdiction on Tuesday, and thus violated the rules of the Senate.
The lazy media always says that Mitch McConnell is an “institutionalist” of the Senate. He is no such thing.
McConnell gave these 43 Republican senators cover to do something that violated the rules of the Senate, and violated the law of the case. What these senators did amounts to jury nullification, and should be reported as a scandal by the media.
Phillip Bump of the Washington Post writes, “McConnell would have happily considered finding Trump guilty, were it not for Mitch McConnell”, https://www.washingtonpost.com/politics/2021/02/13/mcconnell-would-have-happily-considered-finding-trump-guilty-were-it-not-mitch-mcconnell/
[McConnell] said, he’d come to the determination that “we have no power to convict and disqualify a former officeholder who is now a private citizen.” Ergo, a vote to acquit.
In the abstract, this feels like typical political padding: a senator did what he was always likely to do, but he nonetheless felt the need to rationalize it. But on the specifics, this particular excuse from McConnell is marred by one fatal flaw.
The Senate trial occurred after Trump left office solely because Mitch McConnell, who in mid-January was the Senate majority leader, decided that it should.
The House impeached Trump on Jan. 13. On that day, McConnell, then in charge of the Senate, released a statement.
“The Senate process will now begin at our first regular meeting following receipt of the article from the House,” he said — meaning when the Senate was back in session Jan. 19. He’d been asked to bring the Senate back earlier by then-Minority Leader Charles E. Schumer (D-N.Y.), but declined.
After all, his statement continued, there wasn’t enough time anyway.
Clearly that’s not true. As it happened, the trial began Tuesday and concluded Saturday. A trial which began Jan. 15 could have finished Jan. 19. Of course, McConnell would have still been in the majority for that period, so the end of the trial could easily have been pushed until Trump had left office anyway.
This conflict between what McConnell said Saturday and what he did last month did not escape the notice of House Speaker Nancy Pelosi (D-Calif.). After Trump’s acquittal, she addressed reporters.
“Mitch McConnell, who, when this distinguished group of House managers were gathered on Jan. 15 to deliver the articles of impeachment could not — were told it could not be received because Mitch McConnell had shut down the Senate and was going to keep it shut down until the inauguration,” she said, clearly angry. “So for him to get up there and make this indictment against the president and then say, but I can’t vote for it because it’s after the fact — the fact that he established that it could not be delivered before the inauguration.”
[S]he criticized McConnell for having “created the situation where it could not have been heard before the 20th or even begun before the 20th in the Senate.” She also took issue with his framing that the House “chose” not to send the impeachment papers over while Trump was president: “No, we didn’t choose. You chose not to receive it.”
She echoed the sentiment of many legal observers that Trump’s having left office wasn’t an impediment to his being convicted in a Senate trial anyway.
“It was not the reason that he voted the way he did,” she said of Trump’s current position, “it was the excuse that he used.”
It was the excuse that many Republicans used, in fact, an excuse nurtured by the leader of their caucus. He told them to vote their consciences instead of twisting arms to ensure Trump’s acquittal. But he also built a spacious, well-lit escape route for them to use if they chose.
He, for one, chose to use it.
Eight Republican senators voted to object to the certification of the Electoral College votes of Arizona or Pennsylvania, even after the Trump mob seized the Senate chamber and sent them running for their lives. They essentially voted to acquit their own complicity in the crime.
Can the evidence presented by the prosecution be recycled and used in actual criminal trials? In a sane non-political world conviction would be a slam dunk.
Much of the “evidence” was in the public record, i.e., news reports, which is admitted in a Senate impeachment trial, but not generally admitted in a criminal trial. Prosecutors will need to interview the persons identified in those news reports before a grand jury or indictment, and subpoena them for depositions before a trial. Prosecutors will need to obtain documents, e.g., phone records, Secret Service records, and Trump Campaign financial records, for example.
These are two different animals, so to speak.
So the reams of evidence are starting points for dedicated investigators?
Yes.
Daniel Goldman, a former lead counsel for an impeachment trial, tweeted, https://twitter.com/danielsgoldman/status/1360649216322924548
I’m told that multiple witnesses near Trump and Pence were approached by the House team to provide testimony about Trump’s state of mind and the threat to Pence and no one wanted to cooperate.
Too risky to call someone cold, particularly when the case is so powerful as is.