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WASHINGTON (AP) – As the House prepares to bring the impeachment charge against Donald Trump to the Senate for trial, a growing number of Republican senators say they are opposed to the procedure, mitigating the chances that the former president will be convicted of the charge that he instigated a siege on the US Capitol.
House Democrats will bring the single “incitement to insurgency” indictment charge across the Capitol late Monday night, a rare and ceremonial march to the Senate by prosecutors pleading their case. They hope Trump’s strong Republican denunciations after the Jan.6 riot will result in a conviction and a separate vote to bar Trump from returning to office.
But instead, GOP passions seem to have cooled since the insurgency. Now that Trump’s presidency is over, the Republican senators who will serve as jurors in the trial are rallying to his legal defense, as they did in his first impeachment trial last year.
“I think the trial is stupid, I think it is counterproductive,” said Senator Marco Rubio, R-Fla. He said that “the first chance I have to vote to end this trial I will do “because he believes it would be bad for the country and further inflame partisan divisions.
Trump is the first former president to face an impeachment trial, and he will test his grip on the Republican Party as well as the legacy of his tenure, which ended as a crowd of staunch supporters heard his cry of rally by storming the Capitol and trying to overturn Joe Biden’s election. The procedure will also force Democrats, who have full party control over the White House and Congress, to balance their pledge to hold the former president accountable while rushing to stick to Biden’s priorities.
Arguments in the Senate trial will begin the week of February 8. Leaders on both sides agreed to the short deadline to give Trump’s team and House prosecutors time to prepare and the Senate a chance to confirm some of Biden’s cabinet candidates. Democrats say the extra days will allow more evidence to emerge from the riots by Trump supporters, while Republicans hope to craft a unified defense for Trump.
Senator Chris Coons, D-Del., Said in an interview with The Associated Press on Sunday that he hopes the evolving clarity on the details of what happened on January 6 “will make it clearer to my colleagues and the American people what we need. some responsibility. “
Coons wondered how his colleagues who were on Capitol Hill that day could see the insurgency as anything other than a “staggering violation” of the tradition of peaceful transfers of power.
“This is a critical moment in American history and we have to watch it and watch it carefully,” Coons said.
An early vote to dismiss the lawsuit would likely not succeed, given that Democrats now control the Senate. Yet growing Republican opposition indicates that many GOP senators would ultimately vote to acquit Trump. Democrats would need the support of 17 Republicans – a high bar – to condemn him.
When the House impeached Trump on January 13, exactly one week after the siege, Sen. Tom Cotton, R-Ark., Said he did not believe the Senate had the constitutional power to condemn Trump after he left. Cotton said on Sunday that “the more I talk to other Republican senators, the more they begin to line up” behind that argument.
“I think a lot of Americans are going to think it’s strange that the Senate is spending its time trying to convict and remove from office a man who stepped down a week ago,” Cotton said.
Democrats reject this argument, pointing to the 1876 impeachment of a secretary of war who had already resigned and the opinions of many jurists. Democrats also say that an account of the first invasion of Capitol Hill since the War of 1812, carried out by rioters pushed by a president who told them to “fight like hell” against the election results which were being counted in time, is necessary then the country can move forward and guarantee that such a siege does not happen again.
A few GOP senators agree with the Democrats, but not close to the number that will be needed to condemn Trump.
Senator Mitt Romney, R-Utah, said he believes there is a “preponderance of opinion” that an impeachment trial is appropriate after someone leaves office.
“I believe that what is alleged and what we have seen, which is an incitement to insurgency, is an ungodly offense,” Romney said. “Otherwise, what is it?”
But Romney, the only Republican to vote to convict Trump when the Senate acquitted the then president in last year’s trial, appears to be an outlier.
Sen. Mike Rounds, of South Dakota, said he thinks a trial is a “moot point” after a president’s term ends, “and I think that’s a time when they would have a hard time trying to get hold of the Senate. ”
GOP Senator Lindsey Graham of South Carolina, a close ally of Trump who helped him build a legal team, on Friday urged the Senate to reject the idea of a post-presidential trial – potentially with a vote to dismiss the charge – and suggested Republicans will take a close look at whether Trump’s words on Jan.6 were legally “incitement.”
Republican Senate Leader Mitch McConnell, who said last week that Trump “provoked” supporters before the riot, has not said how he would vote or argued legal strategies. The Kentucky senator told his GOP colleagues it would be a vote of conscience.
One of House Speaker Nancy Pelosi’s nine impeachers said Trump’s encouragement to his loyalists before the riot was “an extremely heinous presidential crime.”
Rep. Madeleine Dean, D-Pa., Said, “I mean, think back. Just two and a half weeks ago, the president gathered a crowd on the White House ellipse. He prompted them with his words. And then he lit the match.
Trump supporters stormed the Capitol and halted the election count, mistakenly claiming that there was massive election fraud and that it was stolen by Biden. Trump’s claims have been categorically rejected by the courts, including by judges appointed by Trump and by state election officials.
Rubio and Romney were on “Fox News Sunday,” Cotton appeared on Fox News Channel’s “Sunday Morning Futures,” and Romney was also on CNN’s “State of the Union,” as was Dean. Rounds was interviewed on NBC’s “Meet the Press”.
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Associated Press writer Hope Yen contributed to this report.
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