Donald Trump’s second impeachment: Senate votes trial constitutional
Senators vote Donald Trump’s impeachment can proceed but he’s reportedly ‘borderline screaming’ at his team’s performance.
A majority of senators have voted that it is constitutional to proceed with Donald Trump’s impeachment trial, with six Republicans joining Democrats on the vote.
The vote was passed 56 to 44, with just a simple majority needed to proceed.
Louisiana senator Bill Cassidy joined with five other Republicans who had previously sided with Democrats against a point of order arguing that the planned trial of a now-private citizen violates the Constitution.
The vote indicates that the Democrats will not be able to get the 17 Republicans needed to convict Mr Trump.
The vote followed arguments from both the Democratic impeachment managers and Mr Trump’s legal team over the constitutionality of an impeachment trial after a president had left office.
The opening of Mr Trump’s defence team has been lashed, with the former president reportedly “borderline screaming” as he watched lead lawyer Bruce Castor’s performance.
A Trump aide told CNN if Mr Trump could fire the team, he would.
“It wasn’t just that his lawyers were lopsided, it was a disaster,” the aide said.
Alan Dershowitz, who served on former Donald Trump’s impeachment defence team during last year’s trial, also blasted Mr Castor for his opening remarks.
“I have no idea what he’s doing,” Mr Dershowitz told Newsmax TV.
“Maybe he’ll bring it home, but right now, it does not appear to me to be effective advocacy,” Mr Dershowitz told the conservative cable news outlet. “He may know the senators better than I do, maybe they want to be buttered up, maybe they want to be told what great people they are and how he knows two Senators, but it’s not the kind of argument I would have made, I have to tell you that.”
The Democrats opened their case with dramatic footage from the January 6 riots, with lead House manager Jamie Raskin giving an emotional account of the day. Mr Raskin, who had buried his 25-year-old son the day before, told his fellow senators: “This cannot be our future, this cannot be the future of America.”
The impeachment trial will begin tomorrow.
The other Republicans to vote with Democrats were Sens. Mitt Romney of Utah, Ben Sasse of Nebraska, Susan Collins of Maine, Lisa Murkowski of Alaska and Pat Toomey of Pennsylvania.
How today’s hearing unfolded
Anne Barrowclough 9.15am: Senate votes impeachment trial is constitutional
A majority of senators have voted that the impeachment trial is constitutional. Six Republicans joined Democrats on the trial’s constitutionality. The vote was passed 56 to 44, with just a simple majority needed to proceed.
The number of Republicans voting with the Democrat is up one from the previous vote on Rand Paul’s motion that impeachment was unconstitutional after the president left office.
Bill Cassidy, a Republican from Louisiana, was the only Republican senator to change his mind over constitutionality this time around.
The House managers and Mr Trump’s defence team are each allotted up to 16 hours spread over the next two days to present their cases.
The House managers arguing for impeachment go first, and we know that they plan to use a lot of video from the day of the insurrection to make their points. We expect the proceedings will resume at noon ET tomorrow.
Eliza Collins 9.05am: Senators vote on constitutionality
Senators are now voting on whether the impeachment is constitutional
Mr Trump’s David Schoen accused House Speaker Nancy Pelosi of intentionally delaying sending over the impeachment articles until he was out of office in order to keep the chief justice of the Supreme Court from overseeing the trial.
LIVE: Trump defense team speaks during impeachment trial. https://t.co/Csd4DDIQAY
— NBC News NOW (@NBCNewsNow) February 9, 2021
Chief Justice John Roberts oversaw Mr. Trump’s first impeachment trial. The Constitution requires the chief justice of the U.S. to preside over impeachment trials of sitting presidents. But the law is silent on who presides over the trial of a former president, and Chief Justice Roberts declined to participate in this one, according to Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer (D., N.Y.). He said that Vermont Sen. Patrick Leahy was next in line for the role as president pro tempore of the Senate.
Mr. Leahy, 80 years old, is the longest-serving politician in the Senate and the top Democrat on the powerful Senate Appropriations Committee.
“Then president Trump suffered a tangible detriment from Speaker Pelosi’s actions which violates not only his rights to due process of law but also his expressed constitutional right to have the chief justice president,” he said. “That tangible detriment includes the loss of the right to conflict free impartial presiding officer, with all due respect, the very purpose behind requiring the chief justice to preside over the impeachment’s trial.”
Anne Barrowclough 8.50am: ‘Impeachment driven by base hatred’
David Schoen, another of Donald Trump’s lawyers, has accused Democrats of pushing to impeach Mr. Trump out of partisanship.
“Many Americans see this process for exactly what it is: a chance by a group of partisan
politicians seeking to eliminate Donald Trump from the American political scene and seeking to disenfranchise 74 million-plus American voters,” he said.
LIVE: Trump defense team speaks during impeachment trial. https://t.co/Csd4DDIQAY
— NBC News NOW (@NBCNewsNow) February 9, 2021
“Based on partisan force feeding, this trial will tear this country apart.
“This is a process fuelled irresponsibly by base hatred,” he continued. “They are willing to sacrifice our national character to advance their hatred and their fear that one day they may not be the party in power.”
Noting that House impeachment managers enlisted the help of a movie company to produce the video shown at the start of the trial, Mr Schoen described it as an effort to “chill and horrify” those who will view it.
“They want to put you through a 16-hour presentation over two days focusing on this as if it were some sort of blood sport. And to what end?” he asked. “For healing? For unity? For accountability? Not for any those.”
Anne Barrowclough 8.35am: ‘We can’t punish people for political speech’
Before handing over to David Schoen, Bruce Castor defended Mr Trump’s speech which has been accused of inciting the riots.
“We can’t be possibly suggesting we punish people for political speech in this country and that people go and commit lawless acts as a result of their beliefs, and they cross the line. They should be locked up,” Mr Castor said.
Eliza Collins 8.15am: ‘We’re here because Dems don’t want to face Trump again’
Donald Trump’s lawyer Bruce Castor said the impeachment trial was only taking place because Democrats were concerned that voters would select Mr. Trump in 2024.
“We are really here because the majority of the House of Representatives does not want to face Donald Trump as a political rival in the future,” Mr. Castor said. “That is the real reason we are here and that’s why they have to get over the jurisdiction hurdle which they cannot get over,” a reference to the contention of many Republican politicians that a former president can’t be impeached.
Mr. Castor said Americans just voted to change presidents, “so why think that they won’t know how to do it in 2024 if they want to? Or is that what the fear is? Is the fear that the people in 2024, in fact, will want to change and will want to go back to Donald Trump and not the current occupant of the White House, President Biden?”
Mr Castor said moving forward with an impeachment would set a bad precedent.
“If we go down the road that my very worthy adversary here Mr. Raskin asks you to go down, the floodgates will open,” he said, referring to the Democrats’ lead impeachment manager, Rep. Jamie Raskin of Maryland.
Mr. Castor said voters would begin to demand their politicians impeach those they disagree with.
“Political pressure is driven by the need for immediate action,” he said.
Anne Barrowclough 8.00am: Dershowitz rips Trump lawyer’s opening
Alan Dershowitz, who served on former Donald Trump’s impeachment defence team during last year’s trial, has blasted Mr Trump’s lawyer Bruce Castor for his opening remarks today.
“I have no idea what he’s doing,” Mr Dershowitz told Newsmax TV.
“Maybe he’ll bring it home, but right now, it does not appear to me to be effective advocacy,” Mr Dershowitz told the conservative cable news outlet. “He may know the senators better than I do, maybe they want to be buttered up, maybe they want to be told what great people they are and how he knows two Senators, but it’s not the kind of argument I would have made, I have to tell you that.”
Mr Dershowitz said he would have focused on a First Amendment defence of freedom of speech.
“You cannot abridge the freedom of speech, and whatever you might think of the President’s speech, and I don’t think very much of it, it can’t be the basis for an impeachment if it’s constitutionally protected,” he said.
“I would have gotten right to that, but again, different strokes for different folks, different styles for different lawyers,” Dershowitz said. “And he’s a folksy lawyer, and folksy lawyers sometimes do very, very well with juries.”
Eliza Collins 7.45am: Trump’s defence team take the stage
Donald Trump’s defence team has taken the stage, and Mr. Trump’s lawyer Bruce Castor said people expect their senators to do what is right and suggested they shouldn’t let emotion get in the way of facts.
“It’s natural to recoil; it’s an immediate thing,” Mr. Castor said. “It comes over you without your ability to stop it, the desire for retribution. Who caused this awful thing? How do we make them pay?”
All of the senators acting as jurors in the trial were also witnesses to the Jan. 6 riot at the Capitol.
LIVE: Trump defense team speaks during impeachment trial. https://t.co/Csd4DDIQAY
— NBC News NOW (@NBCNewsNow) February 9, 2021
Eliza Collins 7.00 am: ‘This cannot be our future’
Lead impeachment manager Jamie Raskin has spoken emotionally about the events of January 6, the day after he had buried his 25-year-old son, who had died in a suicide. Having invited his daughter Tabatha and son-in-law Hank to the Capitol for the Electoral College vote tally, Mr. Raskin described how he assured them that it would be safe.
“I told them of course it should be safe,” Mr. Raskin said. “This is the Capitol.”
He said before the riot took place he had felt ‘lifted up from the agony’ by his colleagues, both Democrats and Republicans, who had come to see him and offer condolences. But the day quickly turned.
“They thought they were going to die,” he said of his daughter and son-in-law. After it was over, Mr. Raskin said he apologised and promised Tabatha it would not be like that the next time she returned.
“She said ‘dad I don’t want to come back to the Capitol.’ Of all the terrible, brutal things I saw and I heard on that day, and since then, that one hit me the hardest,” he said.
Lead impeachment manager Jamie Raskin chokes up while recounting the trauma of January 6, which was one day after he buried his son: "People died that day. ... Two officers have taken their own lives. Senators, this cannot be our future" https://t.co/puj6sJ8Cqh pic.twitter.com/iifNEM55DB
— CNN Politics (@CNNPolitics) February 9, 2021
“That and watching someone use an American flag pole — the flag still on it — to spear and pummel one of our police officers, ruthlessly, mercilessly, tortured by a pole with a flag on it that he was defending with his very life.”
“Senators this cannot be our future, this cannot be the future of America,” he said. “We cannot have presidents inciting mob violence against our government and our institutions because they refuse to accept the will of the people under the constitution of the United States.”
Eliza Collins 6.00am: Hushed silence as senators watch Capitol riots
The video showed graphic images from the Jan. 6 riot at the Capitol. Some of the clips featured the senators themselves and the chamber in which they now sit as jurors.
Almost all 100 senators, most of them masked because of COVID-19, sat in their seats during the video, silently watching and listening as rioters on the screens rammed doors, attacked police, and chanted: “Treason!” and “Traitors!” and “Where the (expletive) are they?!”
The sounds rang through the hushed chamber.
Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell (R., Ky.) watched from his front-row seat near the middle of the floor. He sat motionless as the video showed his forceful speech shortly before rioters broke into the building.
In those remarks, Mr. McConnell had said there was no doubt that Joe Biden won the presidency on Nov. 3 and warned that overturning the election would send democracy into a “death spiral.”
At one point, the senators watched as rioters stormed up the stairs toward the ornate doors to the Senate floor, only to be diverted at the last second by Capitol Police Officer Eugene Goodman. The senators had still been inside the chamber at the time, and security had rushed to lock the doors.
When the video presentation ended, and Rep. Jamie Raskin (D., Md.) began to speak, the room seemed to exhale.
Mr. Raskin said that by arguing the trial is unconstitutional, Mr. Trump and his attorneys are making the case that the Senate is powerless if a president commits an impeachable offence at the end of his or her term.
“That can’t be right,” Mr. Raskin said.
The transition of power, he added, is the most dangerous moment in a democracy, and there cannot be a January exception for impeachment. The Constitution gives the Senate the sole power to try impeachments, Mr. Raskin said. “All means all. There are no exceptions to the rule.”
Trial opens with debate on constitutionality
The Senate opened its second impeachment trial of former President Donald Trump with a debate on the constitutionality of hearing a case against a president who is no longer in office. The debate will conclude with a vote, and the Senate is expected to move forward with the trial.
The Democratic impeachment managers allege that Mr. Trump encouraged the mob that stormed the Capitol on Jan. 6, saying Mr. Trump “has no valid excuse or defence” for his actions. Mr. Trump’s lawyers said that he didn’t incite the crowd and that the rioters who breached the Capitol “did so of their own accord and for their own reasons.”
Both sides will each get up to 16 hours over several days to make their cases. Democrats say they plan to introduce new evidence but also admit there’s little chance for a conviction. At least 17 Republicans would have to vote with all Democrats in the Senate to reach the two-thirds threshold necessary for a guilty verdict.
Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer, speaking from the Senate floor, called the charges against former president Donald Trump “the gravest charges brought against a president of the United States in American history.”
“It’s our solemn constitutional duty to conduct a fair and honest impeachment trial of the charges against former president Trump,” said Mr. Schumer.
The Senate then voted 89-11 to approve the rules for the trial, which had been hashed out ahead of time between Mr. Schumer and Minority Leader Mitch McConnell of Kentucky.
In January, 45 Republicans voted in favour of an attempt by Sen. Rand Paul to challenge the constitutionality of trying a former president but some have since said they were still open to hearing the evidence laid out in the trial.
While 45 Republicans had voted last month in favour of challenging the constitutionality of trying a former president, some said they were keeping an open mind ahead of the trial.
“I’m gonna listen to the argument, I think that’s my responsibility,” Sen. John Cornyn said Tuesday, despite voting with Republicans to challenge the constitutionality in January.
While that vote was seen as a gauge of Republican support for convicting Mr. Trump, it wasn’t a direct vote on constitutionality, as senators were voting on whether to debate or withdraw the question. Several Republicans made this distinction at the time.
“I voted for allowing debate on this issue and against tabling this important discussion,” said Sen. Rob Portman, shortly after the first vote. “As the trial moves forward, I will listen to the evidence presented by both sides and then make a judgment based on the Constitution and what I believe is in the best interests of the country.”
At least 17 Republicans would have to vote with all Democrats in the Senate to reach the two-thirds threshold necessary for a conviction.
With the Wall St Journal
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