Subscriber Benefit
As a subscriber you can listen to articles at work, in the car, or while you work out. Subscribe NowA growing number of Republican senators say they oppose holding an impeachment trial, a sign of the dimming chances that former President Donald Trump will be convicted on the charge that he incited a siege of the U.S. Capitol.
House Democrats, who will walk the impeachment charge of “incitement of insurrection” to the Senate on Monday evening, are hoping that strong Republican denunciations of Trump after the Jan. 6 riot will translate into a conviction and a separate vote to bar Trump from holding office again. But GOP passions appear to have cooled since the event, and now that Trump’s presidency is over, Republican senators who will serve as jurors in the trial are rallying to his legal defense, as they did during his first impeachment trial last year.
“I think the trial is stupid, I think it’s counterproductive,” said Sen. Marco Rubio, R-Fla.. He said that “the first chance I get to vote to end this trial, I’ll do it” because he believes it would be bad for the country and further inflame partisan divisions.
Arguments in the Senate trial will begin the week of Feb. 8. Leaders in both parties agreed to the short delay to give Trump’s team and House prosecutors time to prepare and the Senate the chance to confirm some of President Joe Biden’s Cabinet nominees. Democrats say the extra days will allow for more evidence to come out about the rioting by Trump supporters who interrupted the congressional electoral count of Biden’s election victory, while Republicans hope to craft a unified defense for Trump.
An early vote to dismiss the trial probably would not succeed, given that Democrats now control the Senate. Still, the Republican opposition indicates that many GOP senators would eventually vote to acquit Trump. Democrats would need the support of 17 Republicans—a high bar—to convict him.
When the House impeached Trump on Jan. 13, exactly one week after the siege, Sen. Tom Cotton, R-Ark., said he didn’t believe the Senate had the constitutional authority to convict Trump after he had left office. On Sunday, Cotton said “the more I talk to other Republican senators, the more they’re beginning to line up” behind that argument.
“I think a lot of Americans are going to think it’s strange that the Senate is spending its time trying to convict and remove from office a man who left office a week ago,” Cotton said.
Democrats reject that argument, pointing to a 1876 impeachment of a secretary of war who had already resigned and to opinions by many legal scholars. Democrats also say that a reckoning of the first invasion of the Capitol since the War of 1812, perpetrated by rioters egged on by a president who told them to “fight like hell” against election results that were being counted at the time, is necessary so the country can move forward and ensure such a siege never happens again.
A few GOP senators have agreed with Democrats, though not close to the number that will be needed to convict Trump.
Sen. Mitt Romney, R-Utah, said he believes there is a “preponderance of opinion” that an impeachment trial is appropriate after someone leaves office.
“I believe that what is being alleged and what we saw, which is incitement to insurrection, is an impeachable offense,” Romney said. “If not, what is?”
But Romney, the lone Republican to vote to convict Trump when the Senate acquitted the then-president in last year’s trial, appears to be an outlier.
Sen. Mike Rounds, R-S.D., said he believes a trial is a “moot point” after a president’s term is over, “and I think it’s one that they would have a very difficult time in trying to get done within the Senate.”
And Sen. John Cornyn, R-Texas, had tweeted on Saturday: “If it is a good idea to impeach and try former Presidents, what about former Democratic Presidents when Republicans get the majority in 2022? Think about it and let’s do what is best for the country.”
On Friday, GOP Sen. Lindsey Graham of South Carolina, a close Trump ally who has been helping him build a legal team, urged the Senate to reject the idea of a post-presidency trial — potentially with a vote to dismiss the charge—and suggested Republicans will scrutinize whether Trump’s words on Jan. 6 were legally “incitement.”
Sen. John Barrasso, R-Wyo., said Democrats were sending a message that “hatred and vitriol of Donald Trump is so strong” that they will hold a trial that stops Biden’s policy priorities from moving. Sen. Ron Johnson, R-Wis., suggested Democrats are choosing “vindictiveness” over national security as the new president tries to set up his administration.
Senate Republican leader Mitch McConnell, who said last week that Trump “provoked” his supporters before the riot, has not said how he will vote or argued any legal strategies. The Kentucky senator has told his GOP colleagues that it will be a vote of conscience.
One of House Speaker Nancy Pelosi’s nine impeachment managers said Trump’s encouragement of his loyalists before the riot was “an extraordinarily heinous presidential crime.”
“I think you will see that we will put together a case that is so compelling because the facts and the law reveal what this president did,” said Rep. Madeleine Dean, D-Pa. “I mean, think back. It was just two-and-a-half weeks ago that the president assembled a mob on the Ellipse of the White House. He incited them with his words. And then he lit the match.”
Trump’s supporters invaded the Capitol and interrupted the electoral count as he falsely claimed there was massive fraud in the election and that it was stolen by Biden. Trump’s claims were roundly rejected in the courts, including by judges appointed by Trump, and by state election officials.
Sen. Chris Coons, D-Del., said in an interview with The Associated Press on Sunday that he hopes that evolving clarity on the details of what happened Jan. 6 “will make it clearer to my colleagues and the American people that we need some accountability.”
Coons questioned how his colleagues who were in the Capitol that day could see the insurrection as anything other than a “stunning violation” of the centuries-old tradition of peaceful transfers of power.
“It is a critical moment in American history and we have to look at it and look at it hard,” Coons said.
Rubio and Romney were on “Fox News Sunday,” Cotton appeared on Fox News Channel’s “Sunday Morning Futures” and Romney also was on CNN’s “State of the Union,” as was Dean. Rounds was interviewed on NBC’s “Meet the Press.”
Please enable JavaScript to view this content.
Dang sure felt like they were in a hurry to vote on Supreme Court Justices. Weird how accountability feels like….like…like their job or something?
These are Republicans, they don’t believe in doing their job. They don’t believe in America. They believe in their political party. They are … Republicans In Name Only.
How quickly they forget a mob encouraged by the leader of their party, and their support for his lies, was beating on the doors of the Capitol looking for them. And not to congratulate them for the great job they were doing…
People died and were beaten trying to protect them and this is the thanks they get. Back the blue, indeed.
The Republican Party is a joke in 2020.
In 2021 too.
So convicting a former President is the most pressing need on the agenda of Congress.
More important than confirming the incoming President’s cabinet choices, more important than implementing the new administrations new plan to combat the COVID-19 crisis, more important than an economic stimulus, more important than national defense of our borders (another caravan is coming), more important than reducing unemployment and getting citizens back to work, more important than UNIFYING the country. All these items are what the Biden/Harris ticket pledged to do during their campaign.
Do your job Congress and Mr. President. The American people deserve better (Biden’s words…..)
The Senate under Mitch McConnell had time to address most of that. They chose to do nothing for COVID for six months. They chose not to vet any of Biden’s Cabinet choices in order to help perpetuate The Big Lie. Maybe take your beef up with Mitch.
(The only reason that there are still Cabinet members to vet is because Mitch McConnell chose not to vet any of them. Multiple members of Trump’s cabinet were ready by January 20, 2017. Look it up.)
What you’re advocating is like a cheating husband who refuses to say he’s sorry for cheating on his wife. He just want her to “most past” the infidelity without showing any remorse or changing his ways. It don’t work like that.
There is no unity without remorse and accountability. The Republican Party is refusing to show any remorse and they are refusing to take any accountability for the actions of January 6th. They need to take the first step towards unity and convict Donald Trump.
Fortunately, there’s at least one Republican who is taking his oath seriously:
“Sen. Mitt Romney said Sunday that former President Donald Trump’s second impeachment trial is warranted, describing Trump’s repeated efforts to meddle in the presidential election and his incitement of supporters to storm the U.S. Capitol on Jan. 6 as serious “attacks” on democracy.
Romney told Fox News’ Chris Wallace that Trump’s conduct — including pressuring Georgia officials to concoct a victory for himself and “incitation toward insurrection” the day Congress certified Joe Biden’s win — was a serious “attack on the very foundation of our democracy. It’s something that has to be considered and resolved.”
The Utah senator and former governor of Massachusetts didn’t fully tip his hand when asked whether he’d vote to convict Trump. But Romney rejected his Republican colleagues’ notion that Democrats should have responded to calls for “unity” by foregoing Trump’s impeachment just days before he left office.
“If we’re going to have unity in our country, it’s important to recognize the need for accountability, for truth and justice,” said Romney, who previously maligned Trump’s and his allies’ efforts to invalidate millions of votes for Biden.”
https://www.masslive.com/politics/2021/01/trump-impeachment-trial-sen-mitt-romney-says-you-cant-have-unity-without-accountability-truth-justice.html
Quote: So convicting a former President is the most pressing need on the agenda of Congress.
Apparently so, Mark.
He falsely claimed ? There was massive voter fraud? Come on – are we reading journalism or activism?
No amount of saying that over and over will wipe out the fact that people cheated. Plain and simple. You can’t have more people vote than are registered, or have people vote that are dead or don’t live in the state. Or have more ballots returned for counting than were mailed out.
If Dems are so guided by principle, why dont they just say hell yes we cheated! we did everything we could to win. Now that would be honest and refreshing!!
The impeachment still matters. As things stand, without a conviction, the 45th President is eligible to run again in 2024. Preventing that would go a long way to “unifying” the country by removing the greatest threat to the Constitution in our lifetime.
No it would not, Chris. If Trump ran again in 2024 and the election was held with fewer shenanigans by big-city Democrat machines, the country would be given a choice as to whether or not they wanted him to be president. If YOU didn’t want him to be, you could work on his opponent’s campaign and not vote for him.
(And for Pete’s sake, Joe B., will you quite quoting the Class A RINO who is Mitt Romney? As much as you gripe about Trump, don’t you know a sore loser when you see one?)
Yes, I know a sore loser when I see one. A sore loser instigates a riot to try to get Congress to stop certifying the election results. A sore loser doesn’t even show up at his successors inauguration. A sore loser never concedes. A sore loser gets audiotaped asking the Georgia Secretary of State to find 12,000 votes for him.
Don’t you ever get bored with being dunked on?
Jason Miller, then and now a top advisor to Trump, has issued a thinly-veiled warning that what Senate Republicans do in the trial will determine whether his boss forms and leads a third party. A so-called Patriots Party led by Trump would be a disaster, unable to win a national election but perhaps significant enough to draw votes away from the Republican carcass in a general election resulting in more Democrat wins. McConnell likely knows that the only way for his GOP to survive and be viable in the near future is to convicted Trump and prohibit him from running for or holding national office ever again. As for the argument that it may or is likely to be unconstitutional to convict a federal officeholder after he or she has left office, all the more reason to go ahead and convict and let the Supreme Court settle that question for now and the future.
Your disaster is, to me, a godsend that’s been coming for 20 years.
That would mean the GOP would have to modify its platform to pull moderates out of the Democratic Party. I think there are a number of people like me who vote Democrat not because they love the party, but because it’s the only game in town for relatively sane governance.
But I think you can pick people off with proposals like sane gun control (the second amendment had limits for years), reducing abortion via reducing demand for it, and ideas like eliminating the welfare system entirely and doing a UBI instead for those eligible. Actual ideas instead of just screaming no and appealing to their wealthy donors and the far right fringe.
Let the Trumpinistas go create their own party if they want to be a Trump personality cult based on racism, QAnon nonsense and other lies.
If the Supreme Court had done their job in questioning the ballot-counting and such in the corrupt precincts and cities where fraud was apparent and documented, it never would have gotten to this point. As it was, they deferred and kicked the can down the road…to the nation’s loss.
Produce the evidence, Bob. And just a reminder, Trump lost every single court case related to fraud because there was no fraud.
You’ve been had.
Oh no you are wrong. The Republican Party would cease and be replaced by any other 3rd party platform. He is fighting for his existence. He has no other skills after a lifetime cutting deals with people who do not care about americans
Is there anything WE can do? Why do these individuals get to determine how they would vote?
He falsely claimed ? There was massive voter fraud? Come on – are we reading journalism or activism?
No amount of saying that over and over will wipe out the fact that people cheated. Plain and simple. You can’t have more people vote than are registered, or have people vote that are dead or don’t live in the state. Or have more ballots returned for counting than were mailed out.
If Dems are so guided by principle, why dont they just say hell yes we cheated! we did everything we could to win. Now that would be honest and refreshing!!
Where is the evidence for the mass voter fraud Don A.?
Post the evidence, Don. 60 court cases, 90 judges, even judges appointed by Trump. All sent his claims packing.
You realize that if there was actual fraud that would change the result of the election, every journalist in the world would be fighting over it to be the next Woodward and Bernstein, right?
And if there was actual fraud, Rudy Giuliani wouldn’t be looking at a case in which he’s being sued for over a billion dollars for spreading lies.
Joe B and David L: Keep whistling past the graveyard. Remember, if they can do it FOR you, they can do it TO you.
I’ll take that as “I have no evidence and am just repeating what I hear on conservative media”.
I used to listen to all that too. It’s garbage.
John Roberts said he would not sit in on the proceeding. Which means it is not a Constitutional Trial.
Can you find me in the constitution where the trial of a former federal officeholder has to be conducted by the chief justice and not by the rules agreed to by the Senate?
In impeachment proceedings, the House of Representatives charges an official of the federal government by approving, by majority vote, articles of impeachment. A committee of representatives, called “managers,” acts as prosecutors before the Senate. The Senate sits as a High Court of Impeachment in which senators consider evidence, hear witnesses, and vote to acquit or convict the impeached official. In the case of presidential impeachment trials, the chief justice of the United States presides. The Constitution requires a two-thirds vote of the Senate to convict, and the penalty for an impeached official upon conviction is removal from office. In some cases, the Senate has also disqualified such officials from holding public offices in the future. There is no appeal. Since 1789, about half of Senate impeachment trials have resulted in conviction and removal from office.