House sending Trump impeachment to Senate, GOP opposes trial

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 proceeding, dimming the chances that former president will be convicted on the charge that he incited a siege of the U.S. Capitol.
House
Democrats will carry the sole impeachment charge of “incitement of
insurrection” across the Capitol late Monday evening, a rare and ceremonial
walk to the Senate by the prosecutors who will argue their case. They are
hoping that strong Republican denunciations of Trump after the Jan. 6 riot will
translate into a conviction and a separate vote to bar Trump from holding
office again.
But
instead, GOP passions appear to have cooled since the insurrection. Now that
Trump’s presidency is over, Republican senators who will serve as jurors in the
trial are rallying to his legal defense, as they did during his first
impeachment trial last year.
“I
think the trial is stupid, I think it’s counterproductive,” said Sen. Marco
Rubio, R-Fla.. He said that “the first chance I get to vote to end this trial,
I’ll do it” because he believes it would be bad for the country and further
inflame partisan divisions.
Trump
is the first former president to face impeachment trial, and it will test his
grip on the Republican Party as well as the legacy of his tenure, which came to
a close as a mob of loyal supporters heeded his rally cry by storming the
Capitol and trying to overturn Joe Biden’s election. The proceedings will also
force Democrats, who have a full sweep of party control of the White House and
Congress, to balance their promise to hold the former president accountable
while also rushing to deliver on Biden’s priorities.
Arguments
in the Senate trial will begin the week of Feb. 8. Leaders in both parties
agreed to the short delay to give Trump’s team and House prosecutors time to
prepare and the Senate the chance to confirm some of Biden’s Cabinet nominees.
Democrats say the extra days will allow for more evidence to come out about the
rioting by Trump supporters, while Republicans hope to craft a unified defense
for Trump.
Sen.
Chris Coons, D-Del., said in an interview with The Associated Press on Sunday
that he hopes that evolving clarity on the details of what happened Jan. 6
“will make it clearer to my colleagues and the American people that we need
some accountability.”
Coons
questioned how his colleagues who were in the Capitol that day could see the
insurrection as anything other than a “stunning violation” of tradition of
peaceful transfers of power.
“It is a critical moment in American
history and we have to look at it and look at it hard,” Coons said.
An
early vote to dismiss the trial probably would not succeed, given that
Democrats now control the Senate. Still, the mounting Republican opposition indicates
that many GOP senators would eventually vote to acquit Trump. Democrats would
need the support of 17 Republicans — a high bar — to convict him.
When
the House impeached Trump on Jan. 13, exactly one week after the siege, Sen.
Tom Cotton, R-Ark., said he didn’t believe the Senate had the constitutional
authority to convict Trump after he had left office. On Sunday, Cotton said
“the more I talk to other Republican senators, the more they’re beginning 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 left office a week ago,” Cotton said.
Democrats
reject that argument, pointing to a 1876 impeachment of a secretary of war who
had already resigned and to opinions by many legal scholars. Democrats also say
that a reckoning of the first invasion of the Capitol since the War of 1812,
perpetrated by rioters egged on by a president who told them to “fight like
hell” against election results that were being counted at the time, is
necessary so the country can move forward and ensure such a siege never happens
again.
A
few GOP senators have agreed with Democrats, though not close to the number
that will be needed to convict Trump.
Sen. 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 being alleged
and what we saw, which is incitement to insurrection, is an impeachable
offense,” Romney said. “If not, what is?”
But
Romney, the lone 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, R-South Dakota, said he believes a trial is a “moot point” after a
president’s term is over, “and I think it’s one that they would have a very
difficult time in trying to get done within the Senate.”
On
Friday, GOP Sen. Lindsey Graham of South Carolina, a close Trump ally who has
been helping him build a legal team, urged the Senate to reject the idea of a
post-presidency trial — potentially with a vote to dismiss the charge — and
suggested Republicans will scrutinize whether Trump’s words on Jan. 6 were
legally “incitement.”
Senate
Republican leader Mitch McConnell, who said last week that Trump “provoked” his
supporters before the riot, has not said how he will vote or argued any legal
strategies. The Kentucky senator has told his GOP colleagues that it will be a
vote of conscience.
One
of House Speaker Nancy Pelosi’s nine impeachment managers said Trump’s
encouragement of his loyalists before the riot was “an extraordinarily heinous
presidential crime.”
Rep.
Madeleine Dean, D-Pennsylvania., said “I mean, think back. It was just two-and-a-half
weeks ago that the president assembled a mob on the Ellipse of the White House.
He incited them with his words. And then he lit the match.”
Trump’s
supporters invaded the Capitol and interrupted the electoral count as he
falsely claimed there was massive fraud in the election and that it was stolen
by Biden. Trump’s claims were roundly rejected in 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 also was on CNN’s “State of the Union,” as
was Dean. Rounds was interviewed on NBC’s “Meet the Press.”