Senate acquits Trump

The U.S. Senate acquitted Donald Trump on Saturday in his second impeachment trial in a year, with fellow Republicans blocking conviction over the former president’s perceived role in the deadly riot on the U.S. Capitol.

The Senate vote of 57-43 fell short of the two-thirds majority needed to convict Trump on a charge of incitement of insurrection after a five-day trial.

In the vote, seven of the 50 Senate Republicans joined the chamber’s unified Democrats in favoring conviction.

Trump left office on Jan. 20, so impeachment could not be used to remove him from power. But Democrats had hoped to secure a conviction to hold him responsible for a siege that left five people including a police officer dead and to set the stage for a vote to bar him from ever serving in public office again.

Trump‘s attorneys argued that his words at the rally were protected by his constitutional right to free speech and said he was not given due process in the proceedings.

Republicans saved Trump in the Feb. 5, 2020, vote in his first impeachment trial, when only one senator from their ranks – Mitt Romney – voted to convict and remove him from office.

Romney voted for impeachment on Saturday along with fellow Republicans Richard Burr, Bill Cassidy, Susan Collins, Ben Sasse, Pat Toomey, and Lisa Murkowski. Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell also voted “not guilty,

The drama on the Senate floor unfolded against a backdrop of gaping divisions in a pandemic-weary United States along political, racial, socioeconomic and regional lines.

About half of the country thought Trump should be convicted of inciting insurrection, according to an Ipsos poll conducted for Reuters.

Trump, 74, continues to hold a grip on his party with a right-wing populist appeal and “America First” message. The wealthy businessman-turned-politician has considered running for president again in 2024.

Trump is the third president ever to face impeachment by the House of Representatives and the first to have the process used twice in his case, and also the first president to face impeachment after leaving office.

Democrats forged ahead with impeachment despite knowing it could overshadow critical early weeks of Biden’s presidency.

Shortly before the rampage, Trump urged his followers to march on the Capitol, Trump told supporters that “if you don’t fight like hell, you’re not going to have a country anymore.” In another part of the same speech he did urge people to “peacefully and patriotically” march on the Capitol.

During the trial, nine House lawmakers serving as trial managers, or prosecutors, urged senators to convict Trump to hold him accountable for a crime against American democracy and to prevent a repeat in the future.

They played searing video of rioters swarming inside the Capitol and making violent threats toward politicians including House Speaker Nancy Pelosi and then-Vice President Mike Pence. The House managers said Trump summoned the mob to Washington, gave the crowd its marching orders and then did nothing to stop the ensuing violence.

The defense lawyers accused Democrats not only of trying to silence Trump as a political opponent they feared facing in the future but of attempting to criminalize political speech with which they disagreed and aiming to cancel the voices of the tens of millions of voters who backed him.

Trump‘s lawyers argued the trial was unconstitutional because he had already left office. The words Trump used, they argued, were no different than those regularly employed by Democrats. They ran a video showing numerous Democrat politicians, including Joe Biden, using the same words “fight like hell” as part of their political speech on a number of occasions.

The U.S. Constitution sets out impeachment as the instrument with which the Congress can remove and bar from future office presidents who commit “treason, bribery or other high crimes and misdemeanors.”

ISince 1998, there have been three, including Trump‘s two. Andrew Johnson was impeached and acquitted in 1868 in the aftermath of the American Civil War and Bill Clinton was impeached in 1998 and acquitted in 1999 of charges stemming from a sex scandal.

Richard Nixon resigned in 1974 rather than face impeachment over the Watergate scandal.