Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell exhorted former President Trump on Saturday in a Senate floor shortly after McConnell voted acquittal in the former president’s second impeachment trial. In a first-half speech recalling the arguments made by the House’s dismissal managers, McConnell said the former president was “practically and morally responsible” for the January 6 attack on the Capitol.
But McConnell argued that he believed it was unconstitutional to convict a president who was no longer in office.
“This was an intensifying crescendo of conspiracy theories orchestrated by an outgoing president who seemed determined to overturn the voters’ decision or set our institutions on fire at the exit, ”McConnell said.
McConnell was unequivocal about Mr. Trump’s responsibility. “There is no doubt, either, that President Trump is practically and morally responsible for provoking the events of the day,” he said, adding that Mr. Trump watched the events unfold on television. “A crowd was storming the Capitol on their behalf,” he said. “These criminals carried their banners, hung their flags and called him loyalty.”
The Senate voted Saturday 57-43 to acquit the former president on a charge of inciting insurrection. Seven Republicans joined Democrats to find the former president guilty: Senators Richard Burr of North Carolina, Bill Cassidy of Louisiana, Susan Collins of Maine, Lisa Murkowski of Alaska, Mitt Romney of Utah, Ben Sasse of Nebraska and Pat Toomey of Pennsylvania.
McConnell said the people who stormed the Capitol believed they were acting according to Mr. Trump’s wishes and instructions. “Having that belief,” McConnell said, “was a predictable consequence of the growing growth of false claims, conspiracy theories, and reckless hyperbole that the defeated president continued to call out on the largest megaphone on planet earth.”
McConnell described the Jan. 6 violence, saying Americans beat and bloodied their own police, stormed the Senate floor and built a gallows and sang about the vice president’s assassination. “They did it,” McConnell said, “because he had been fed wild falsities by the most powerful man on earth, because he was angry at having lost an election.”
But McConnell argued that the former president “is not constitutionally eligible to be convicted” because he is no longer in office, although the Senate voted 56-44 earlier this week that it was constitutionally possible to convict an ex- officials.
McConnell said, “I think the Senate was right not to take the power that the Constitution doesn’t give us.”
He said he respects his colleagues who have come to either of the two conclusions about the constitutionality of convicting. “That’s a narrow question, no doubt,” he said.
“If President Trump were still in office,” he said, “he would have carefully considered whether House managers demonstrated his specific office.”
McConnell prevented the Senate from holding the impeachment trial before Trump left office. He refused to accept an emergency session of the Senate to conduct the trial, arguing that there was not enough time to conduct it fairly before President Biden took office. Biden was inaugurated seven days after the House voted to prosecute Trump.
The trial, which began Feb. 9, lasted only five days.
Although Trump was acquitted of inciting rioting in the Senate trial, he could still face criminal charges. A The Georgia prosecutor has opened a criminal investigation into Mr. Trump’s alleged attempts to influence the state presidential election. I, separately, Manhattan District Attorney Cy Vance is also overseeing an investigation into Mr. Trump for possible crimes as widespread as fraud and tax evasion.