The second impeachment trial of former President Donald J. Trump began on Tuesday, 370 days after he was acquitted of high crimes and offenses in his first trial. He is accused of “instigating a riot” for sparking violence in the US Capitol on January 6th. The House impeachment managers and Mr Trump’s defense team argued over whether the Constitution would allow the Senate to hold a trial against a former president and ultimately decided he could move forward.
Here are some takeaways from day one.
The senators ruled that a former president can actually stand trial for impeachment.
In a 56-44 vote, the Senate dismissed Mr Trump’s defense team’s argument and decided, largely partisan, that he had the authority to bring an accused former president to justice. This paved the way for Wednesday’s trial.
Impeachment executives, led by Representative Jamie Raskin of Maryland, argued that the rejection of this impeachment trial would constitute a “January exception” that would set the precedent for a Lame Duck president to act inconsistently in the final weeks of his tenure .
The defense team called the prosecutor’s case a “quick impeachment” and argued that a former president does not need to stand trial because it would set the precedent for punishing a former official after leaving office at the whim of the party in power.
Only a simple majority was required on the question of jurisdiction, in contrast to the two-thirds majority required for a conviction. Six Republicans, along with all 50 Democrats, decided that the Senate could continue the process.
Democrats, led by Raskin, promised and delivered compelling footage of the January 6th events.
In a 13-minute video of scenes from the January 6 attack on the Capitol, the House’s chief impeachment manager, Mr. Raskin, showed a graphical visual record of the attack, including the explicit language of the rioters and riot shouts, as well as clips from Mr. Trumps Comments during the day – like his speech to followers before some of them stormed the Capitol and a Twitter post hours after the attacks, in which he wrote, “Remember that day forever.”
The Trump impeachment ›
What you need to know
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- A court case will determine whether former President Donald J. Trump is guilty of instigating a deadly crowd of his supporters when they stormed the Capitol on January 6, violently violated security measures, and went into hiding when they met to certify President Biden’s victory.
- Parliament voted 232 votes to 197 in favor of a single impeachment trial, accusing Mr. Trump of “inciting violence against the United States government” in order to dismiss the election results. Ten Republicans voted against him alongside the Democrats.
- To convict Mr. Trump, the Senate would need a two-thirds majority to approve. This means that at least 17 Republican senators would have to vote with Senate Democrats to convict.
- A conviction seems unlikely. Last month, only five Senate Republicans sided with the Democrats in repelling a Republican attempt to dismiss the charges because Mr Trump is no longer in office. On the eve of the start of the trial, only 28 senators say they are not sure whether to convict Mr Trump.
- If the Senate convicts Mr. Trump and finds him guilty of “inciting violence against the United States government,” the Senators could vote on whether to expel him from office. This vote would only require a simple majority, and when it came to party lines, the Democrats would prevail if Vice President Kamala Harris casts the casting vote.
- If the Senate doesn’t condemn Mr Trump, the former president could run for office again. Public opinion polls show he remains by far the most popular national figure in the Republican Party.
The scenes of chaos in the video showed a crowd of protesters forcibly pushing past security barricades and police lines. Shots from inside the building included an officer screaming as he was knocked down by a door and another officer shot killing one of the rioters, Ashli Babbitt.
For many of the Senators on Tuesday, the footage provided different angles than what they saw firsthand when they were brought out of the same Senate Chamber in shock and fear.
“They are asking what a great crime and misdemeanor our constitution is,” Raskin told the senators at the end of the video. “This is a high crime and misdemeanor. If that is not a criminal offense, there is no such thing. “
One of Mr. Trump’s defense lawyers, David I. Schoen, accused the property managers of hiring a “film company” to put together the most disturbing footage of the day. Mr Schön also offered a video account with a collection of calls by Democrats to impeach Mr Trump over the past four years, a false equivalency as none of these comments resulted in violence.
The expected outcome of this process is the same as Mr Trump’s first.
While this is a new Senate – with Democrats in the majority – and the way Mr Trump is accused is different from the allegations he faced in his first impeachment trial, there is no question that Mr Trump will ultimately is acquitted, just like a year ago.
It would take the Democrats 17 Republicans to break with and vote with the former president to have the two-thirds necessary to convict Mr Trump. If the six Republican senators who voted with Democrats Tuesday on the Senate’s right to hold the trial also voted to convict Mr. Trump, it would take Democrats 11 more Republican defectors to get a conviction.
For Democrats, a guilty verdict would be a formal, permanent waiver of Mr. Trump’s behavior. Should Mr Trump be convicted, the Senate could vote to decide whether to run again for office – something the Democrats have argued is in the best interests of the country.
An acquittal would allow Republicans to postpone the conviction of their party’s most popular member. But it would only delay the inevitable reckoning of their party faces between the moderate members and the far right wing, which not only defends Mr Trump but seeks to punish other Republicans for betraying him.
For the Democrats, an acquittal could still be some sort of political victory, as the trial was an opportunity to publicly condemn Mr Trump’s actions in his final days as president and provide a formal record of the Republican senators who refused to accept him to punish.
Senator Mike Lee, Republican of Utah, has already been criticized for proposing that Mr. Trump be given a passport for the January 6th events.
“Look, everyone makes mistakes, everyone is entitled to a mulligan every now and then,” Lee said on Fox News after the property managers argued, using a golf term for a do-over.
Senator Patrick Leahy, Democrat of Vermont, is a witness, juror, and judge.
As the longest-serving Democrat in the Senate, 80-year-old Leahy is the chairman of the Senate trial against Mr Trump.
Last year, Chief Justice John G. Roberts Jr. held that role, an appointment set out in the Constitution. This time, however, Chief Justice Roberts was not interested in the job. And because the constitution does not provide who should oversee the trial of a former president, it fell to Mr Leahy and gave him the power to rule on key issues such as admissible evidence.
On January 6th, Mr. Leahy was among the lawmakers who had to move away from the violent crowd, making him one of the hundreds of witnesses who were at the Capitol that day. And as one of 100 Senators, he will also vote on whether to convict Mr Trump of inciting violence against the United States.
Mr Leahy’s three hats were a reminder, among other things, that while these trials in the Senate are referred to as trials, they are not comparable to those in courtrooms across the country.
Mr Trump’s defense team unsuccessfully argued that Mr Leahy’s conflict of interest is one reason the trial is unconstitutional.
The first attorney to speak on Mr. Trump’s defense left the senators a little confused about his team’s strategy.
Bruce L. Castor Jr., the attorney who began the Trump defense team’s arguments Tuesday, led Senators down a tortuous path of generalizations about the Senate, Mr. Trump’s right to freedom of expression, and the difference between murder and manslaughter in criminal justice.
“I have no idea what he’s doing,” said Alan M. Dershowitz, who served on Mr. Trump’s defense team during his first impeachment last year, on conservative television station Newsmax. “Maybe he’ll bring it home, but at the moment it doesn’t seem like an effective advocacy.”
While Mr. Castor was speaking, other senators looked restless and began to talk to each other.
“The president’s attorney kept moving,” Republican Senator John Cornyn told reporters after the trial ended. “I’ve seen a lot of lawyers and a lot of arguments and that wasn’t the best I’ve ever seen.”
Mr Schön, another of Mr Trump’s attorneys, seemed to regain attention in the room when he argued that the Constitution does not allow the impeachment of a former president.
“This process will tear this country apart, perhaps as we have seen it only once in our history,” said Mr Schön, an obvious reference to the civil war. “For political reasons,” he added, “it is wrong, how wrong it can be for all of us as a nation.”
Glenn Thrush contributed to the coverage.
