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Seven Republicans broke ranks voting to convict former President Donald J. Trump, and despite the resolve to acquit the former president, Senator Mitch McConnell condemned him in the Senate.
By Eileen Sullivan
The conclusion of Donald J’s political trial. Trump was briefly questioned Saturday after a request for last-minute testimony threatened to prolong proceedings over whether the president incited the January 6 insurrection at the Capitol. he temporarily abandoned the issue, paving the way for the final arguments and a vote that allowed Trump to absolve at the time of the acquittal of felonies and misdemeanors.
Here are some things from the fifth day of the trial.
In a vote of 57 to 43, the Senate acquitted Trump for the time being in thirteen months. But he was the top bipartisan for condemning one of the four accusations in American history.
Democrats needed 17 Republicans to vote with them to convict Trump of his rate of “incitement to insurrection” in singles for his role in the capitol attack. In the end, only seven broke ranks, but that one more than expected, Senator Richard M. North Carolina Burr crossing the lines of the game.
Senators Bill Cassidy of Louisiana, Susan Collins of Maine, Lisa Murkowski of Alaska, Mitt Romney of Utah, Ben Sasse of Nebraska and Patrick J. Pennsylvania toomey voted to convict Trump.
In the final arguments, Trump denounced the fatal violence on January 6 and argued that the former president had been denounced through a sessed media outlet and the victim of a long “vendetta” through his political opponents.
Rep. Joe Neguse of Colorado, one of the law enforcement officials, raised the possibility of further long-term politically based attacks if Trump was not responsible.
“Senators, this can’t be the beginning. It can’t be the new normal, ” Mr. Neguse. “This will have to be the end. This resolution is in your hands. “
But even when the trial saved Trump a conviction, criminal prosecutions that oppose his supporters are multiplying because of his role in the government. Already, more than two hundred people have been charged with federal crimes similar to the attack, and investigators are just getting started. .
Additional evidence in the coming months may give a more accurate picture of Trump that day, leaving open the option that Saturday’s acquittal would be the last word about his legacy.
Burr, a reliable conservative vote from North Carolina, made the decision to convict Trump on Saturday.
“The president promoted unfounded conspiracy theories to call into question the integrity of a free and fair election because he didn’t like the results,” Burr said on a Saturday afternoon. The evidence is compelling that President Trump is to blame for inciting an insurgency opposed to a branch of the same government and that the rate rises to the point of maximum crimes and misdemeanors. “
Burr, who withdrew at the end of his term after the 2022 election, has had an unsent relationship with Trump. As head of the Senate Intelligence Committee, Trump. Burr conducted a bipartisan investigation into Russian interference in 2016. Elections.
Mr Burr’s vote is surprising, but the vote of Senator Mitch McConnell of Kentucky, the most baffling minority leader.
McConnell told his colleagues in the early hours of Saturday that he would vote for the former president’s acquittal, and after the political trial ended, McConnell spoke in the Senate and said, “There is no doubt, none, that President Trump is almost and morally for causing the day’s events.
McConnell was an advocate for the former president and even supported McConnell’s refusal to admit the election for more than a month after Joseph R. Biden Jr. was declared the winner. While McConnell was by the side, Trump inflamed his supporters with his fraudulent allegations of voter fraud that led to the attack on Capitol Hill. McConnell’s repudiation of Trump was more powerful than that of the senators who voted in favor of the conviction.
McConnell said that while Trump was guilty of the riots, the Senate did not review a former president. The political trial, he said, is a “restricted tool” designed to dismiss officials, not prosecute them thereafter. At the beginning of the trial, the Senate voted that the trial was appropriate despite the objections of top Republicans, adding Burr and McConnell.
Despite the partisan divisions that have explained the trial, Republican and Democratic senators agreed Saturday that the procedure should not go on with testimony.
On Saturday morning, the Senate was in a position to hear the prosecution and defense’s arguments, but plans for a quick end were threatened through 11-hour tests that House officials said were for their case: main points in a phone call with California Rep. Kevin McCarthy Array , the minority leader in the House, in which Trump allegedly sided with troublemakers when his supporters broke into the Capitol.
On Friday night, Rep. Jaime Herrera Beutler of Washington, one of 10 House Republicans who voted to accuse Trump, published a detail of a verbal exchange he had with Trump and McCarthy in which he described his verbal exchange with the president.
The prospect of allowing testimony has infuriated Republicans.
“If it’s delayed, it’ll be a long time with so many witnesses,” Senator Lindsey Graham of South Carolina said Saturday on Twitter.
“If you need to lengthen this, let’s lengthen it,” said Senator Joni Ernst of Iowa, a member of the Senate Republican leadership, a break from the process. “They probably wouldn’t get their names, they would possibly get nothing,” he said, referring to Biden’s appointments to the senior positions in his administration.
Democrats sought a quick trial, on the component, so they can simply complete Biden and start executing his agenda.
After behind-the-scenes negotiations, both sides agreed to record Herrera Beutler’s.
Michael T. van der Veen, one of Trump’s, expressed frustration at the option of delaying the process with testimony. A trial lawyer in Philadelphia, Van der Veen has epped due to a lack of court criteria in the Senate chamber that are typical of courtrooms across the country.
“If you wish to have witnesses, I will wish at least a hundred statements, not just one,” Mr. van der Veen said, adding that raising witnesses at this level of judgment is “inappropriate and inappropriate. “The Senate faced a similar scenario in Trump’s first political trial. But the courtroom criteria you’re used to do not apply to trial procedures, which are largely designed through the Senate.
“We closed this case today. We all have our final arguments ready,” he said. At one point, he was so enraged that he had to take a step back “and cool the room temperature a little bit. “
Van der Veen, who is part of a team of lawyers who took over the defense after Trump composed tactics with his first team, lamented that he had eight days to prepare.
“This is the most depressing delight I’ve had here in Washington, D. C. , ” he said Friday.
Reporting through Alan Rappeport Emily Cochrane, Nicholas Fandos, Maggie Haberman, Charlie Savage, Luke Broadwater and Glenn Thrush.
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