Trump acquitted of impeachment charge in Senate trial

The U.S. Senate voted Saturday to acquit former President Donald Trump of one article of impeachment.

All Democrats and seven Republicans voted to convict Trump, falling short of the two-thirds majority needed. The U.S. House of Representatives voted in January to impeach Trump on charges that he incited an insurrection at the U.S. Capitol, making him the only president in history to be impeached more than once.

Trump’s acquittal in the Senate was expected as his conviction would have required 17 Republicans to vote in favor along with all Democrats. What was not expected, however, was the Senate’s vote Saturday to allow witnesses in the trial — before lawmakers quickly backtracked and moved onto closing statements.

The relatively speedy trial consisted of arguments and evidence from House impeachment managers and Trump’s legal team on whether or not the former president was responsible for inciting the attack, when a mob in support of Trump stormed the U.S. Capitol as lawmakers worked to certify then-President-elect Joe Biden’s Electoral College victory.

Trump is one of three U.S. presidents to be impeached. None have been convicted in the Senate. He is also first former president to be tried in the Senate. If he had been convicted, senators would have been able to bar him from holding federal office by a simple majority vote.

Debate over constitutionality

The trial opened Tuesday with debate and a vote on the constitutionality of trying a former president. House impeachment managers and Trump’s lawyers, Bruce Castor and David Schoen, were each allotted two hours to present their sides of the argument to senators on the first day of the trial.

Rep. Jamie Raskin, a Maryland Democrat and lead impeachment manager, opened his side’s case with a recounting and graphic footage of the Jan. 6 attack that included video of Trump telling his supporters to march to Capitol Hill.

Rep. Joe Neguse of Colorado, another House impeachment manager, then argued that trying Trump after he’s left office is constitutional, saying “presidents can’t inflame insurrection in their final weeks and then walk away like nothing happened,” and pointing to precedent to support trying former officeholders.

Trump’s lawyers made the team’s case that the trial was unconstitutional. Schoen argued it was a “radical constitutional theory” and “affront to the Constitution” to hold an impeachment trial for a former president, while Castor said conviction is no longer required since voters already removed Trump from office.

Six Republicans and all Democrats eventually voted that the trial is constitutional — allowing it to move forward.

Both sides present their case

Each side was then given up to 16 hours over two days to argue its case.

House impeachment managers’ evidence included previously unseen footage of the Capitol attack. The new footage showed rioters smashing windows and breaking into the building, lawmakers having close encounters with the mob, an officer being beaten and staffers running into a room to barricade themselves.

“President Trump wasn’t just some guy with political opinions who showed up at a rally on January 6 and delivered controversial remarks,” Neguse said. “And he had spent months using the unique power of that office, of his bully pulpit, to spread that big lie that the election had been stolen to convince his followers to ‘stop the steal.’”

Trump’s lawyers on Friday denied that Trump’s remarks at the rally incited insurrection and argued that the former president’s speech is protected by the First Amendment. They also said that Trump encouraged his supporters to exercise their constitutional rights “peacefully and patriotically” before the Capitol attack.

Trump’s lawyers played video of many prominent Democrats, including Vice President Kamala Harris and President Joe Biden, using the word “fight” during speeches. To argue Trump incited the attack, House managers had included footage of Trump calling for his supporters to “fight like hell” shortly before the riot.

Trump’s team, which called the impeachment effort “constitutional cancel culture,” only used about three of the 16 allotted hours to make its defense before senators submitted questions for both sides.

“This trial is about far more than President Trump. It is about silencing and banning the speech the majority does not agree with,” Castor said. “It is about canceling 75 million Trump voters and criminalizing political viewpoints. It’s the only existential issue before us.”

Move to call witnesses

The trial included a last-minute surprise when House impeachment managers on Saturday unexpectedly called to subpoena Rep. Jaime Herrera Beutler, a Republican from Washington, who had released a public statement confirming a phone call between Trump and House Minority Leader Kevin McCarthy during the attack.

“When McCarthy finally reached the president on January 6 and asked him to publicly call off the riot, the president initially repeated the falsehood that it was antifa that had breached the Capitol,” Herrera Beutler wrote in the statement released Friday. “McCarthy refuted that and told the president that these were Trump supporters.”

She continued: “That’s when, according to McCarthy, the president said: ‘Well, Kevin, I guess these people are more upset about the election than you are.”

The Senate voted 55-45, including five Republicans, to allow witnesses — signaling the trial could have been drawn out for days or weeks.

But House managers and Trump’s legal team came to an agreement to allow Herrera Beutler’s statement to be entered into the record as evidence without calling any witnesses. Michael van der Veen, a member of Trump’s defense, said he would push to depose Democrats including Harris and House Speaker Nancy Pelosi if witnesses were called.

How did we get here?

On Jan. 6, Americans watched in horror as scenes unlike anything witnessed at the Capitol in more than two centuries unfolded on live television.

A pro-Trump mob scaled walls, smashed windows, broke into the Senate chamber and reached the doors of the House chamber — forcing lawmakers to evacuate and temporarily delaying the certification of Biden’s victory.

The attack left five dead and many others injured.

At a rally shortly before the attack, Trump repeated false claims that the 2020 presidential election was fraudulent and stolen from him and urged his supporters to “be strong” and march on Capitol Hill.

Rioters then laid siege on the building.

In the wake of the attack, lawmakers from both parties, at least in part, pinned the riot on Trump’s rhetoric surrounding the election, and some called for his impeachment, conviction and removal from office.

Democratic lawmakers later introduced an article of impeachment against the then-president, saying Trump “demonstrated that he will remain a threat to national security, democracy and the Constitution if allowed to remain in office, and has acted in a manner grossly incompatible with self-governance and the rule of law.”

One week after the deadly attack, the House voted 232 to 197 to impeach Trump for a second time.

Ten Republicans voted in favor of impeachment — a contrast from Trump’s first impeachment in 2019 when no House Republicans voted in favor of impeaching Trump on accusations that he leveraged U.S. aid to pressure Ukrainian officials to investigate Biden.

In the Senate trial for Trump’s first impeachment, Sen. Mitt Romney of Utah was the lone member of the GOP to vote to convict Trump and remove him from office.