WASHINGTON (AP) – When Senator Richard Burr stood up and said “guilty”, there were muffled gasps in the Senate chamber. But the North Carolina Republican’s vote to condemn former President Donald Trump shouldn’t have been a shock.
In a way, he had telegraphed his willingness to hold Trump accountable for several years.
Months before Trump began falsely claiming that the November election had been stolen from him, the Senate Intelligence Committee led by Burr warned that incumbent public officials should use “maximum restraint and caution if they are publicly considering claiming validity. of an upcoming election in question. ”These serious allegations, the committee said in February 2020, could have” significant “consequences for national security.
Explaining his vote to condemn Trump for inciting a Capitol insurrection on January 6, Burr returned to this topic. He said Trump “has promoted unfounded conspiracy theories to cast doubt on the integrity of a free and fair election.”
There was no widespread fraud in the election, as Trump falsely claimed for several months and again to his supporters shortly before the turmoil, a fact confirmed by election officials across the country and even by Trump’s then attorney general, William Barr.
When the Capitol was attacked, Burr said in the statement, Trump “used his office to ignite the situation instead of immediately calling for an end to the attack”.
For Burr, it was an emphatic statement after years of careful comments about Trump, many of them made while he investigated Trump’s connections with Russia. The “guilty” vote placed him among a group of seven Republicans in the Senate – and 10 Republicans in the House – which made Trump’s second impeachment the most bipartisan in history.
With Burr’s retirement at the end of his term in 2022, it is a vote that could end up defining his career.
It also came with a price.
The Republican Party of North Carolina voted unanimously censor Burr in the days after the February 13 vote as Republicans in the state and across the country made clear their continued loyalty to Trump.
“Wrong vote, Senator Burr,” tweeted former Republican Congressman Mark Walker, who has already declared his candidacy for the Senate. “I’m running to replace Richard Burr because North Carolina needs a real conservative champion as its next senator.”
Burr refused to be interviewed for this story. But many of his Republican colleagues praised him after the vote.
North Carolina Senator Thom Tillis, a Republican who voted for Trump’s acquittal, said after the state’s censorship that Burr is a “great friend and a great senator” who voted for his conscience. Nebraska Senator Ben Sasse, one of seven Republicans who voted to condemn and a member of the Intelligence Committee, said Burr “is a leader, not a loudmouth” who stood out for his bipartisan work on the committee.
“Richard doesn’t shy away from making difficult calls because he does his homework and knows the facts – he doesn’t waste time putting his finger in the wind,” said Sasse.
A quirky and quiet politician known for his dry sense of humor, his distaste for wearing socks and driving a 1970s convertible Volkswagen covered with bumper stickers, Burr served in Congress for nearly three decades. A former Wake Forest football player and lawn equipment salesman, he was elected to the House during the 1994 Republican wave and became close friends with Representative John Boehner, R-Ohio, before Boehner became a speaker.
First elected to the Senate in 2004, Burr said, after his re-election in 2016, that his third term would be his last – a preventive retirement from politics that had consequences.
After Trump’s election, Senate majority leader Mitch McConnell, R-Ky., Struggled to respond to Russia’s claims of interference in the presidential election that Trump had just won. With Burr not looking for another term, he was the ideal candidate to lead the politically explosive investigation.
Authorized as chairman of the committee, Burr gradually became a silent control of Trump’s powers during the three-year investigation. He worked closely with the committee’s top Democrat, Virginia Sen. Mark Warner, as they examined highly confidential information, some of it about Trump and his associates.
Burr maintained the partnership until the end, even as Republicans strongly turned against the Russian investigation and followed Trump’s example by labeling everything a “farce”.
Warner said in an interview that he thinks one of the main things that guided Burr was ensuring that intelligence agencies received “the respect they deserve”. This meant rejecting Trump, who criticized the agencies for investigating Russia and suggested that they conspired against him in undermining the 2016 election. Burr endorsed the 2017 agencies’ conclusion that Russia interfered in the election and favored Trump, although the former president has refused to do so.
Burr “has shown over and over that he will do what he thinks is right,” said Warner.
Warner’s Capitol counterpart, House Intelligence Committee Chairman Adam Schiff, D-Calif., Said Burr worked with Democrats in good faith and pledged to ensure that agencies “could do their job without fear of politicization “.
But Burr was also politically careful.
While the committee revealed Russia’s hacking and disinformation efforts around the 2016 election and warned of future attacks, Burr did so primarily without criticizing Trump directly. Repeatedly, Burr said he saw no evidence of coordination with Russia, keeping him in the good graces of his Republican colleagues and the White House.
But unlike others who investigate electoral interference, Burr rarely spoke about his work. He also said he would stop visiting the White House while the investigation was underway.
In a rare interview with the Associated Press in the summer of 2018, Burr said the investigation in Russia was “frustrating as hell”. But he also said that the integrity of the inquiry – and its importance to the Senate – is something that is worth protecting. “Nothing in this city remains classified or classified forever,” said Burr, adding that people would look at their efforts in the future.
But as the investigation progressed, his Republican counterparts’ patience ran out. More than two years after the investigation began in May 2019, Burr summoned Donald Trump Jr., the president’s son who met with a Russian lawyer during the campaign. The reaction of your own party was quick.
Burr kept the decision. He explained his reasoning at a private GOP lunch to his skeptical colleagues, gaining McConnell’s support.
Exactly a year later, when the investigation in Russia was ending, Burr’s time at the helm of the committee came to an abrupt end.
Federal agents arrived at Burr’s home in the Washington area and seized his cell phone. The Justice Department was investigating whether he had exploited advance information when he downloaded up to $ 1.7 million in stock in the days before the coronavirus outbreak that caused markets to plummet. Burr denied trade with private information, but walked away of his role on the committee amid the turmoil.
He was not acquitted until almost a year later – on January 19, Trump’s last full day in office. A department spokesman confirmed would not make accusations against Burr, but declined further comments.
Doug Heye, a Republican strategist and former Burr adviser who has known him for more than 20 years, said Burr never wavered, even when the political landscape in Washington has changed in the past five years. He said it would have been politically easier for Burr to conduct an investigation of Russia like that of the House, which was highly partisan.
“I didn’t know he was going to convict, but I wasn’t terribly surprised,” said Heye.
As the impeachment process unfolded in January, Burr said very little. Unlike some of his colleagues who were publicly agonizing over their votes, he refused to speak to reporters across the Capitol. He sided with most Republicans in a vote to reject the trial, creating an expectation that he too would vote to absolve.
So when Burr stood up to vote for Trump’s sentencing, many in the chamber wondered if there were any other surprises. Could there be enough “guilty” Republican votes to make Trump the first president convicted in an impeachment trial? Was Burr a thermometer?
He was not. The vote was 57-43, 10 votes short of the required two-thirds majority. In the end, seven Republicans voted for the conviction – but only Burr’s came without warning.
“I don’t take this decision lightly,” said Burr in a statement after the vote, “but I believe it is necessary.”