The Senate’s 55-45 procedural vote on Tuesday is not preventing the House from doing what they see as a clear case against Trump for his role in inciting the rebels. There are still key questions for them to decide before next month’s trial: they have not made a final decision, for example, whether to call witnesses. They are preparing for the possibility of having no witnesses – but they may decide to use them if they find a witness willing to volunteer, according to sources.
Even without witnesses, Democrats are considering using evidence from videos and social media to help illustrate how Trump’s words, actions and tweets motivated protesters to attack the Capitol, sources say.
But Senate Democrats say the case advocated by House administrators may still influence some Republicans, especially if they can use witnesses to help corroborate Trump’s mindset and the actions that led to the January 6 Capitol riots.
“I think the heart of this case is Trump’s incisive and incisive words, the words that come out of his own mouth,” Democratic Sen. Richard Blumenthal for Connecticut told reporters. “But his intention to do damage, cause injury and perhaps even death may come from witnesses who were with him when he was watching the Capitol attack. So witnesses can corroborate and powerfully document what we know, but they need to prove it.”
A complicating factor for the House’s impeachment team is whether potential witnesses would be willing to be called – particularly those in the White House. The House’s impeachment managers want to avoid any kind of legal dispute over witnesses, as the House had to deal with during Trump’s first impeachment.
Sen. Angus King, the Maine independent who argues with Democrats, said on Tuesday it was an open question whether executive privilege would still apply to former White House officials after Trump stepped down from what could be called as potential witnesses. King argued that such testimony could illuminate the president’s thinking during the trial.
“They will be witnesses or documents, and what was provided as information,” said King.
The opening day of Trump’s second impeachment trial showed how high the barrier is for House Democrats to get close to the votes needed for sentencing, with only five Republicans voting with Democrats to defeat Paul’s procedural motion.
While not all Republicans who voted for Paul said the trial was completely unconstitutional, the 55-45 vote was a clear sign that the 67-vote vote needed to convict Trump and prevent him from running again was almost impossible . Paul said after the vote that he showed that the trial was over before it started.
Even one of the Republicans who voted with Democrats and is open to condemning Trump said the text was on the wall.
“Do the math. I think it is extremely unlikely that the president will be convicted,” said Sen. Susan Collins of Maine, one of five Republicans who broke up with Paul.
The Republican Party in the Senate focuses on the constitutional argument
Senate Republicans have clustered in recent days around the argument that the trial is not constitutional, giving them a way to reject the impeachment of House Democrats without condemning Trump’s conduct when protesters attacked the Capitol on January 6, breaking through the very chamber where the impeachment judgment was made will be held.
“I think it showed that the impeachment is dead on arrival,” said Paul of the vote he forced on Tuesday. “If you voted that it was unconstitutional, how in the world would you vote to condemn someone for it?”
Democrats argued that Republicans were avoiding their responsibility to hold Trump accountable for his behavior, claiming that the trial was unconstitutional. “They don’t want to be held responsible for this vote, so they’re going to try to make this another argument that has everything to do with the constitution,” said Sen. Dick Durbin, an Illinois Democrat.
Before Tuesday’s vote, there were signs that a majority of Senate Republicans would remain united. At the party’s lunch on Tuesday, Republican leaders in the Senate welcomed Jonathan Turley, a leading conservative legal scholar, arguing that the trial is unconstitutional.
Although Turley argued against the impeachment process of a former president, the non-partisan Congressional Research Service wrote this month that “most scholars who have closely examined the issue have concluded that Congress has the authority to extend the impeachment process to employees who are no longer in the office. “
Alaskan Republican Party Senator Lisa Murkowski, who said Trump committed impugnable offenses and voted against Paul on Tuesday, expressed frustration at the vote that took place even before the trial began – and with less than a day of voting. advance.
“I find it a bit regrettable that we had such a spontaneous vote on an extraordinarily significant issue without thoughtful debate and analysis. People had to make really quick decisions,” Murkowski told reporters on Tuesday. “I am not saying that there is bad faith, but I think this is significant enough to warrant further consideration by this body and I think what you have seen now is that people have been forced to take a quick stand. Whether that is or not changes as we go along, I think it’s yet to be seen.
Senator Rob Portman, an Ohio Republican, downplayed the importance of Tuesday’s vote, saying he saw it only as a procedural motion and not a statement whether the trial was constitutional or not.
“I want to hear that in debate,” said Portman. “I have doubts about constitutionality and, for practical reasons, the precedent, but I want to hear from you and let us hear from you.”
“I believe that the constitutional purpose of impeachment is to remove a president from office, not to punish a person after he left office,” Blunt said in a statement. “No consideration was given to President Nixon’s impeachment when he stepped down in 1974. The constitution has not changed and Congress must not set a new and destructive precedent.”
Several Republican Party senators cited the fact that court president John Roberts will not preside over the trial – with Senate pro tempore president Pat Leahy of Vermont as the clearest sign that the trial does not pass the constitutional review.
“It would send a pretty clear signal to me what Roberts thinks about the whole thing,” said Senator Chuck Grassley, an Iowa Republican.