WASHINGTON (AP) – Senators are about to vote whether Donald Trump will be held responsible for inciting the horrific Capitol attack after a quick trial that revealed the violence and danger to their own lives and the fragility of the nation’s tradition of a peaceful transfer of presidential power.
Almost a month since the deadly uproar, the final arguments are set for the historic impeachment trial while the senators arrive for a rare Saturday session, all under the watch of armed National Guard troops who still guard the iconic building.
The outcome of the rapid, crude and emotional process is expected to reflect a nation divided over the former president and the future of his type of politics in America.
“What is important about this trial is that it is really aimed at Donald Trump, but it is more focused on some president that we will not even know 20 years from now,” said Sen. Angus King, the Maine independent, weighing his vote.
The trial of almost a week has been delivering a gloomy and graphic narrative of the January 6 riot and its consequences for the nation in a way that senators, most of whom fled for their own safety that day, acknowledge that they are still facing.
Absolution is expected in the evenly divided Senate, a verdict that can strongly influence not only Trump’s political future, but also senators who have sworn to do impartial justice as jurors when casting their votes.
House prosecutors argued that Trump’s rallying cry to go to the Capitol and “fight like hell” for his presidency at the time when Congress met on January 6 to certify Joe Biden’s election was part of a pattern orchestrated by violent rhetoric and false claims that triggered the mob. Five people died, including a rowdy shot and a policeman.
Defense lawyers responded in just three hours on Friday that Trump’s words were not intended to incite violence and impeachment is nothing more than a “witch hunt” designed to prevent him from serving in office again. .
Just watching the graphic videos – protesters shouting menacingly by House Speaker Nancy Pelosi and Vice President Mike Pence, who chaired the vote count – the senators said they began to understand how dangerously close the country has come to chaos. Hundreds of protesters stormed the building, taking over the Senate and some engaging in hand-to-hand combat with the police.
While it is unlikely that the Senate will be able to muster the two-thirds of the votes needed to condemn, several senators appear to be still weighing their vote. Republican Senate leader Mitch McConnell will be widely observed for clues, but he is not putting pressure on his Republican side of the corridor and is telling senators to vote for his conscience.
Many Republicans representing states where the former president remains doubt whether Trump was fully responsible or whether impeachment is the appropriate response. Democrats seem almost united by conviction.
Trump is the only president to be charged twice and the first to face trial charges after leaving office.
Contrary to Trump’s impeachment trial in Ukraine’s case last year, a complicated charge of corruption and obstruction in his attempts to get the foreign ally to dig up the dirt of then rival Biden, it brought an emotional blow to the unexpected vulnerability of tradition the country’s peaceful elections. The accusation is singular, inciting insurrection.
On Friday, Trump’s impeachment lawyers accused Democrats of waging a “hate” campaign against the former president as they finalized their defense, sending the Senate to a final vote in his historic trial.
The defense team vigorously denied that Trump incited the deadly mutiny and played out-of-context video clips showing Democrats, some of them senators now serving as jurors, also telling supporters to “fight”, with the aim of drawing a parallel with Trump’s overheated rhetoric.
“This is usually political rhetoric,” said Trump’s lawyer, Michael van der Veen. “Countless politicians talked about fighting for our principles.”
But the presentation obscured the difference between the general incentive that politicians make in the battle for health care or other causes and Trump’s fight against officially accepted national election results, and downplayed Trump’s efforts to undermine election results. The defeated president was telling his supporters to fight after all states had verified their results, after the Electoral College had confirmed them and after almost all the electoral actions brought by Trump and his allies had been rejected in court.
Democratic senators shook their heads at what many called the false equivalence of their own inflamed words. “We were not asking them to ‘fight like hell’ to overturn an election,” said Sen. Richard Blumenthal, D-Conn.
Democrats say Trump was the “chief instigator” whose months-long campaign against election results was rooted in a “big lie” and laid the foundation for the riot, a violent domestic attack on the Capitol unparalleled in history.
“Get real,” said prosecutor Jamie Raskin, D-Md., At one point. “We know this is what happened.”
The Senate met as an impeachment court for former presidents Andrew Johnson, Bill Clinton and now twice for Trump, but the unprecedented nature of the case, because he is no longer in the White House, has provided Republican senators with one of several arguments against the conviction.
Republicans contend that the proceedings are unconstitutional, although the Senate voted at the start of the trial on the matter and confirmed its jurisdiction.
Six Republican senators who joined the Democrats in the vote to take the case are among the most watched for their votes.
The first signs arrived Friday during questions to lawyers. Senator Susan Collins, R-Maine and Senator Lisa Murkowski, R-Alaska, asked the first question, the two centrists known for independent strings. Did they lean to a point that prosecutors asked exactly when Trump learned of the Capitol violation and what specific actions did he take to end the unrest?
Democrats argued that Trump did nothing while the crowd revolted.
Another Republican who voted to start the trial, Senator Bill Cassidy of Louisiana, asked about Trump’s tweet criticizing Pence moments after being told by another senator that the vice president had just been evacuated.
Van der Veen replied that “at no time” was the president informed of any danger. Cassidy told reporters later that it was not a very good answer.