The second impeachment of Donald Trump (January 13th 2021), the US president, took place yesterday with 54% of the House of Representatives, including 5% of Trump’s own Republicans, voting in favour. He is being charged with inciting an insurrection, blaming him for the US Capitol riot on January 6th. He will be tried by the Senate, probably on or after January 19th. Trump is scheduled to leave office on the 20th.
Tim Alberta of Politico:
“I know for a fact several members *want* to impeach but fear casting that vote could get them or their families murdered.”
To convict, two-thirds of senators will have to vote against the president. That will require 17 Republicans to cross party lines. A possible but hardly certain outcome. If convicted:
- he will not be able to be pardoned;
- he can be barred from future public office by a majority vote in both the House and the Senate.
Ruth Ben-Ghiat, a Mussolini scholar at NYU:
“Historian of coups and right-wing authoritarians here. If there are not severe consequences for every lawmaker & Trump govt official who backed this, every member of the Capitol Police who collaborated with them, this “strategy of disruption” will escalate in 2021″
Trump’s first impeachment was in December 2019. That was for abuse of power: blackmailing the president of Ukraine to smear Joe Biden, the eventual winner of the 2020 president election, the same election the riot tried to overturn. The Senate trial in February 2020 found him innocent: only one senator crossed party lines: Mitt Romney.
Nixon comparisons: Richard Nixon was never impeached: he resigned under threat of impeachment. Democrats then, as now, controlled the House, but in the Senate they needed 11 Republicans to cross party lines. Nixon was informed that at least 29 would!!! Nixon was accused of covering up what was called a “third-rate burglary attempt” of Democratic headquarters at the Watergate hotel.
Trump is accused of inciting an insurrection, something that unfolded last week in the full glare of television cameras and the Internet. The Capitol riot was trying to stop the counting of the Electoral College vote to determine the winner of the 2020 election. It was carried out by his followers shortly after he told them the election was stolen, saying:
“We’re going walk down to the Capitol, and we’re going to cheer on our brave senators, and congressmen and women. We’re probably not going to be cheering so much for some of them because you’ll never take back our country with weakness. You have to show strength, and you have to be strong.”
Plausible deniability: Note that he never directly told them to storm the Capitol. His words were ambiguous, probably deliberately so, just this side of his right to freedom of speech. But that the rioters understood him correctly can be seen in the fact that he did nothing to stop them for several hours while he “gleefully” watched them on his television set. And when he did tell them to go home, he told them he “loved” them, that they were “very special”.
– Abagond, 2021.
Update (February 13th): The impeachment trial was this week, the 9th to 13th. Trump was acquitted. Only 7 of the 50 Republican senators (14%) were willing to vote to convict, well short of the 17 needed. So Trump remains at the head of the Republican Party and can run again for president in 2024.
See also:
- How to remove a US president
- impeachment
- The first impeachment trial of Donald J. Trump
- The US Capitol riot
- Watergate
- electoral college
- Donald Trump
- Trump 2020
- The Hair Dye Coup – his previous attempts to overturn the election
“Note that he never directly told them to storm the Capitol. His words were ambiguous, probably deliberately so, just this side of his right to freedom of speech.”
Irrelevant. This will be a show trial to let any future disturber of the peace that they will be dealt with harshly. Trump’s lies led him to where he is. His freedom of speech ended when he choose to do the equivalent of yelling fire in a crowded room, I don’t believe the first amendment covers such speech.
A case can be made that the theme and speeches of that manifestation were fighting words.
“Fighting words are, as first defined by the Supreme Court (SCOTUS) in Chaplinsky v New Hampshire, 315 U.S. 568 (1942), words which “by their very utterance, inflict injury or tend to incite an immediate breach of the peace. It has been well observed that such utterances are no essential part of any exposition of ideas, and are of such slight social value as a step to truth that any benefit that may be derived from them is clearly outweighed by the social interest in order and morality.”” (https://www.law.cornell.edu/wex/fighting_words)
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My understanding is that articles of impeachment do not expire. Therefore, a behind the scenes agreement might be that as long as Trump does what Republicans tell him for the next few days, the Senate would vote against if they saw them right now. Also, assuming that a majority of Republicans in the Senate do not want him to run again, the articles could be sent and voted on if he chooses to. Leaving both parties some leverage against “future Trump”. At least for 2 years, the Democrats hold the power to both send the articles up and also to bring them to the floor of the Senate where a lengthy and news-cycle dominating debate rehashing of all the drama that Trump causes can play out.
I do think it would be pointless to send them to a Senate where they’re guaranteed not to have enough votes convict right now. Keeping him on a leash is perhaps more important than the political theater of a vote in the Senate days after he’s already out of office and (hopefully) beginning to be tied up in NY state court.
Just my 2 cents.
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I don’t have any expectations about this having any affect on 45. We see how well this worked last time. The Republican Party is repugnant and vile.
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Update (February 13th): The impeachment trial was this week, the 9th to 13th. Trump was acquitted. Only 7 of the 50 Republican senators (14%) were willing to vote to convict, well short of the 17 needed. So Trump remains at the head of the Republican Party and can run again for president in 2024.
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Trump may have been acquitted by his Senate friends but he’s facing several criminal and civil lawsuits as a private citizen. I do believe he will be held accountable in some other way. I also don’t think the GQP can function with being so fractured. They are done.
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@ Holy
Exactly. I co-sign.
The former President almost got members of the Congress killed, besides police agents and others who happened to be there at that day!
It is clear that he can face criminal charges and even be condemned. Normal judges are not, contrary to many senators, “his friends”.
And if he is condemned at a court, I doubt that he can run for president again.
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I knew this would be the outcome, i knew there would be no conviction. However the House Managers Stacey Plasket from the Virgin Islands, was a favorite on social media among Black Twitter. Her impeccable fashion style, confidence and poise, sharp as tack legalise was impressive. Rep. Jaimie Raskin even though he is going through his own personal grief from the recent loss of his son, still chose country and is a true definition of what an American patriot is.
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Eugene Goodman being awards the Congressional Gold Medal, bravery and quick thinking, protecting the Congressmen and Congresswomen in the Nation Capital. The same Republicans that Mr. Goodman protected, had no respect for him. Especially when they voted to acquit Trump. The abhorrent Rand Paul, was hesitant to stand and applaud Mr. Goodman. He’s a disgusting human.
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Acquitting the President that almost got them killed. Blows the mind.
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