And off to the state GOP doghouse they go for daring to buck former President Trump.
Shortly after voting to convict the former president for the second time on Saturday after the deadly Capitol insurrection last month, Sens. Richard Burr (R-NC) and Bill Cassidy (R-LA) have already found themselves in hot water with Republicans in their respective home states. Continue reading “Backlash Begins: State GOPers Turn On Burr And Cassidy After Voting To Convict Trump”
The fifth day of former President Trump’s impeachment trial will open this morning with the question of witnesses and new evidence.
Overnight, new details emerged about what the then-president was up to while the insurrection was underway, with Rep. Jaime Herrera Beutler (R-WA) recounting an episode in which Trump expressed sympathy for the rioters during a shouted call with House Minority Leader Kevin McCarthy.
If senators choose not to call witnesses, House impeachment managers and the former-president’s defense team will proceed to their closing arguments.
Follow along below.
Sparing not a single word to condemn the violence he provoked on Jan. 6, former President Trump celebrated the Senate’s acquittal of him Saturday in a statement that called the impeachment proceedings “yet another phase of the greatest witch hunt in the history of our Country.”
Continue reading “No Remorse Here! Trump Cheers Acquittal In ‘Witch Hunt’ Against Him”
Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell (R-KY), who voted that Trump was not guilty of the impeachment article against him, said in a speech Saturday that the rioters who attacked the Capitol “did this because they had been fed wild falsehoods by the most powerful man on Earth.”
Continue reading “McConnell Scolds Trump But Defends His Vote Not To Convict”
The Senate acquitted former President Trump for his role in the Jan. 6 insurrection against Congress, with only seven Senate Republicans joining 50 Democrats in favor of conviction — well short of the 67 vote threshold.
Continue reading “Trump Acquitted: Senate GOPers Give The Green Light For End-Of-Term Insurrections”
TPM Reader JG, a law professor, adds this dissent to my comments below …
I think your take on “Dems cave on witnesses” is simply wrong. The managers said they wanted one witness — a one hour deposition of Herrera Beutler. They leaked the fact that no one around Trump or Pence with direct knowledge of Trump’s actions would agree to testify. So with the stipulation that admitted H-B’s statement into the impeachment record, they have an evidentiary basis to argue that Trump fomented insurrection after the fact as well. If they had more witnesses they would have wanted their testimony! I don’t think it has much to do with the threat to call Pelosi, etc. I think the only objection to their strategy is that with more time — a delay to depose H-B, etc., more folks with knowledge would have agreed to come forward. Also not unlikely: McCarthy could come under pressure to dispute H-B (her testimony is hearsay, after all) and could have put in a counter-affidavit disavowing the truth of what she said. So net: the managers’ added to their case. The externals may look messy but it’s up to folks like you to focus on the bottom line.
Senate Democrats decision to forego witnesses earlier this afternoon came as a jolt, inexplicable and maddening, to many or most Democrats outside the chamber because Democrats appeared to hold all the cards and all the votes and yet capitulated entirely. The final decision was simply to enter Rep. Herrera Beutler’s statement into the record and move on.
Before getting to what this means let me be candid and tell you that through most of this trial and what led up to it I’ve been ambivalent about calling witnesses. In the abstract of course you should call witnesses. But we’re not living in the abstract. The national interest and the Democrats’ partisan interests rests overwhelmingly on rapidly passing a bold COVID relief bill to end the Pandemic and resurrect the economy.
That is not needed simply in the direct sense of getting shots in arms and dollars in hands. Coming out of the moral and civic catastrophe of the last four years it is critical to vindicate the idea that people’s votes, their electoral exertions can and will translate into tangible benefits in their lives. This is a Newtonian cause and effect with which civic life withers and dies or gives way to obscurantism and authoritarian temptation.
To the extent witnesses or an extended trial delayed that to more than a trivial degree, just push through the trial and get on to repairing the country. This is all the more the case since the chances of conviction are as infinitesimally small as the scope of the evidence is vast.
From the closing argument of impeachment manager Madeleine Dean (D-PA):
For those who say we need to get past this, we need to come together, we need to unify, if we don’t set this right and call it what it was, the highest of constitutional crimes by the president of the United States, the past will not be past. The past will become our future.
Correction: I initially misidentified Dean.
House managers backed down from their request to depose a House Republican who was told about an angry call that took place mid-insurrection between Donald Trump and House Minority Leader Kevin McCathy.
Well, that didn’t last long.
Dems seemed to have seized the advantage, backed by five GOP senators, to present at least some witnesses in the second impeachment trial of Donald Trump. The fierce reaction of GOP senators to what House impeachment managers and Dem senators wanted to do testified to the the advantage Dems had taken hold of.
