Impeachment: Republican senators let Trump off the hook

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By Aiyeku Timothy 

The U.S. Senate have confirmed Donald Trump will not be convicted on Saturday in his second impeachment trial in a year, all thanks to fellow Republicans for blocking the move.

The former president is being tried for his role in the deadly assault by his supporters on the U.S. Capitol on Jan. 6 shortly after they heard him deliver an incendiary speech, before the confirmation of Joe Biden.

The Senate eventually voted 57-43 which is short of the two-thirds majority needed to convict Trump on a charge of incitement of insurrection after a five-day trial in the same building ransacked by his followers.

In the vote, seven of the 50 Senate Republicans joined the chamber’s unified Democrats in favoring conviction to save him off the hook.

Trump left office on Jan. 20, so impeachment could not be used to remove him from power but Democrats had hoped to secure a conviction to bar him from ever serving in public office again and hold him responsible for a siege that left five people including a police officer dead.

Trump’s attorneys argued that his words at the rally were protected by his constitutional right to free speech and said he was not given due process in the proceedings.

Republicans saved Trump in the Feb. 5, 2020, vote in his first impeachment trial, when only one senator from their ranks – Mitt Romney – voted to convict and remove him from office.

Meanwhile, Romney voted for impeachment on Saturday along with fellow Republicans Richard Burr, Bill Cassidy, Susan Collins, Ben Sasse, Pat Toomey, and Lisa Murkowski.

Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell, who voted “not guilty,” offered scathing remarks about the former president after the verdict.

“There is no question that President Trump is practically and morally responsible for provoking the events of the day,” he said.

“The people who stormed this building believed they were acting on the wishes and instructions of their president.”

Trump remains the third president ever to be impeached by the House of Representatives – a step akin to a criminal indictment – as well as the first to be impeached twice and the first to face an impeachment trial after leaving office.

But the Senate still has never convicted an impeached president.

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