WASHINGTON (AP) – Senators are set to vote on whether Donald Trump will be responsible for inciting the horrific attack on the Capitol after a speedy trial that exposed violence and danger to their own lives and the fragility of the national tradition of peaceful transfer of presidential power.
Barely a month after the deadly riot, final arguments are set for the historic indictment trial when senators arrive for a rare Saturday session, all under the watchful eye of National Guard armed troops still guarding the iconic building.
The outcome of the swift, dirty, and emotional processes is expected to reflect a nation divided over the former president and the future of his political brand in America.
“The important thing about this trial is that it’s really directed to some extent at Donald Trump, but it’s more aimed at some president we don’t even know in 20 years,” said Sen. Angus King, an independent Tomorrow, vote.
The trial for almost a week has been presenting a crude, graphic narrative of the January 6 riot and its aftermath for the nation so that senators, most of whom fled for safety, that day, acknowledge that they are still facing off.
The acquittal in the divided Senate is expected, a verdict that could greatly influence not only Trump’s political future, but that of sworn senators to deliver impartial justice as jurors while casting their votes.
House prosecutors have argued that Trump’s cry to go to the Capitol and “fight like hell” for his presidency just as Congress convened Jan. 6 to certify the election of Joe Biden was part of a pattern orchestrated by violent rhetoric and false claims that triggered the mob. Five people were killed, including a riot police officer who was shot and a police officer.
Defense attorneys responded within three hours Friday that Trump’s words were not intended to incite violence and that the dismissal is nothing more than a “witch hunt” designed to prevent him from returning to office.
Senators only watched the graphic videos (riots threatened the Speaker of the House, Nancy Pelosi, and Vice President Mike Pence, who presided over the vote count) that began to understand the dangerous closure of the country to chaos. Hundreds of riots broke out in the building, taking control of the Senate and some participating in a hand-to-hand and bloody fight with police.
While it is unlikely that the Senate will be able to get the two-thirds of the votes needed to condemn, it appears several senators are still weighing their vote. Republican Senate leader Mitch McConnell will be widely watched for clues, but does not press his side of the Republican aisle and tells senators to vote his conscience.
Many Republicans representing states where the former president remains popular doubt whether Trump was fully responsible or whether the ouster is the right answer. Democrats appear almost united by conviction.
Trump is the only president who has been indicted twice and the first to face trial charges after leaving office.
Unlike the trial of Trump’s dismissal last year over the Ukraine affair, a complicated charge of corruption and obstruction for his attempts to bring the foreign ally to brutality to the then rival Biden, this one caused an emotional blow on the unexpected vulnerability of the nation’s tradition of peaceful elections. The accusation is singular, incitement to insurrection.
On Friday, Trump’s dismissal lawyers accused Democrats of conducting a “hate” campaign against the former president as they finished their defense, sending the Senate to a final vote in its historic trial.
The defense team strongly denied that Trump had sparked the deadly riot and played out-of-context video clips showing Democrats, some of them senators now serving on the jury, and also telling supporters to “fight.” with the goal of drawing a parallel with Trump’s overheated rhetoric.
“It’s usually political rhetoric,” Trump’s attorney, Michael van der Veen, said. “Countless politicians have spoken out to fight for our principles.”
But the presentation blurred the gap between politicians’ general urges to fight for health care or other causes and Trump’s fight against officially accepted national election results and downplayed Trump’s efforts to undermine those results. electoral. The defeated president was telling his supporters to continue the fight after all states had verified their results, after the Electoral College had affirmed them, and after almost all the electoral demands made by Trump and his allies had been rejected in court.
Democratic senators shook their heads at what many called a false equivalence to their own words of fire. “We weren’t asking them to‘ fight like hell ’to overthrow the election,” said Sen. Richard Blumenthal, D-Conn.
Democrats say Trump was the “chief instigator” the months-long campaign against election results took root in a “big lie” and laid the groundwork for the riot, an unprecedented violent domestic attack on the Capitol in history.
“Make yourself real,” Chief Prosecutor Jamie Raskin, D-Md, said at one point. “We know that’s what happened.”
The Senate has summoned as an indictment court 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 of the sentence.
Republicans maintain the proceedings are unconstitutional, although the Senate voted early in the trial on the issue and confirmed it had jurisdiction.
Six Republican senators who joined Democrats in the vote to take over the case are among those most viewed by their votes.
The first signs came Friday during questions from lawyers. Senator Susan Collins, R-Maine, and Sen. Lisa Murkowski, R-Alaska, asked the first question, the two centrists known by independent lines. They bowed to a point that prosecutors had made wondering exactly when Trump learned of the Capitol’s breach and what concrete actions he took to end the riots?
Democrats had argued that Trump did nothing while the crowd revolted.
Another Republican who voted to start the trial, Louisiana Sen. Bill Cassidy, asked about Trump’s tweet criticizing Pence moments after another senator told him the vice president had just been evacuated.
Van der Veen responded that “at no time” was the president informed of any danger. Cassidy told reporters later that was not a very good response.