WASHINGTON (AP) – Donald Trump’s impeachment trial is more than an effort to condemn the former president for inciting an insurrection. It’s a chance for public accounting and a reminder of the worst attack on the US Capitol in 200 years.
In the month since the Jan. 6 siege by a pro-Trump crowd, encouraged by his call to “fight like hell” to overturn the election, defenders of the former president say it’s time to move on.
Trump is long gone, housed in his Mar-a-Lago club, and Democrat Joe Biden is the new president in the White House. With the trial scheduled to begin on Tuesday, and a super majority of senators are unlikely to convict him on the sole charge, the question arises: Why worry?
However, for many lawmakers who were witnesses, curious and survivors of that bloody day, it is not over yet.
One by one, lawmakers began to share personal accounts of their experiences that harrowing afternoon. Some were on the Capitol fleeing for safety, while others watched unbelievers from adjacent offices. They say they hid behind doors, armed themselves with office supplies and feared for their lives as protesters walked the corridors, chased political leaders and destroyed the vaulted icon of democracy.
“I never imagined what was coming,” said Rep. Mark Takano, D-Calif., Reported in a speech at the House floor.
Memory is a powerful tool and your memories, along with the impeachment process, will preserve a public record of the attack for Congressional record. Five people died and more than 100 people were arrested in a national FBI raid of alleged leaders and participants, a network unlike many others in recent times. While this is sufficient for some, with the certainty that the perpetrators will be brought to justice, others say the trial will force Congress, and the country, to consider accountability.
Todd Shaw, associate professor at the University of South Carolina, said the founders had predicted a presidential check and the trial offers a moment that will mark whether American democracy will make a course correction and say “things have gone too far” – or not, he said.
“We are in a period when many Americans are well aware of this issue,” he said.
Defenders of the former president cast doubt on the legality of the impeachment trial, the justification for punishing an elected official who is no longer in office, and the political consequences of preventing him from being elected again.
Even Trump’s Republican critics, who watched in horror as he encouraged a crowd outside the White House to address the Capitol, cooled his indignation over time and as the reality of Trump’s lasting control over the party takes over. form .
Senator Ted Cruz, R-Texas, who was among the leaders of Trump’s charge of challenging Biden’s election, scoffed at the Senate impeachment case as a “show trial” and a waste of time. “It’s time to move on,” he said.
But Sen. Richard Blumenthal, D-Conn., A former prosecutor, said a trial could have a lasting effect on informing the public, regardless of the verdict or outcome.
“A public trial serves a vital purpose,” he said. “What Donald Trump mobilized, encouraged and incited is an expression of the domestic terrorism that the public needs to see and understand.”
Several legislators were before the Chamber last Thursday and shared their memories: seeing the crowds gathering outside the Capitol grounds and listening to the provocations, screams and glass breaking through the corridors.
And then “the feeling,” as Rep. Dean Phillips, D-Minn., Said, “of being stuck.”
The House and Senate were computing the Electoral College vote certifying Biden’s victory in the election when Trump, who refused to grant, his supporters headed for the Capitol.
Phillips said that when he heard the screams inside the building, he realized that a pencil was all he had as a defense. He thought of moving to the Republican side of the Chamber of Deputies “so that we could blend in”. He and others believed that the protesters “would save us if they simply confused us with Republicans.”
Then, he said, he realized something – for his colleagues who are not white like him, “mixing was not an option”.
Congressman Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, DN.Y., said that the thousands of personal stories of that day, one “as valid and important as the other”, need to be told at a time when some are trying to minimize what happened. She herself faced detractors who criticized her account as exaggerated.
House Speaker Nancy Pelosi asked lawmakers to consider compiling their trial experiences.
Pelosi led the Democrats to impeach Trump, the only president who has been impeached twice and the first in history to face trial after stepping down.
“Why care? Why care?” Asked Pelosi. “Ask our founders why to worry. Ask who wrote the Constitution. Ask Abraham Lincoln. “
Pelosi said that the impeachment administrators of the Chamber will present their case and “we will see if it will be a Senate of courage or cowardice”.
Upon entering the Capitol, it is a changed place. Outside, barbed wire covers tall fences around an extended perimeter, blocking even the country’s bookshelves in the Library of Congress.
Inside, National Guard troops armed with long rifles patrol the marble corridors day and night, some stopping to take pictures of the ornate statues and symbols of the country’s history.
While the building buzzes with familiar sights and sounds, coffee being prepared in the basement cafeteria, there is also a new normal. Broken glass remains in some windows, which some want preserved as a reminder. Posters and handwritten notes thanking Capitol police officers adorn a tunnel in the basement.
Congressman Adriano Espaillat, DN.Y., said in a speech that the attack on the Capitol was an attack on the constituents that lawmakers represent.
“We are their voice here,” he said. “We shouldn’t sweep it under the rug.”
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Associated Press writer Mary Clare Jalonick of Washington contributed to this report.