Fight over witnesses could delay Trump trial conclusion

Senators have voted to consider hearing from witnesses in Donald Trump’s impeachment.

The vote could potentially extend procedures that were expected to end with a vote on Saturday.

A last-minute fight to call witnesses threatened to delay the swift conclusion of Donald Trump’s historic impeachment on Saturday as the Senate approached a vote on whether the former president incited the horrific attack on Capitol Hill.

Heading into Saturday, senators appeared to be close to solving the impeachment that exposed the violence and danger to their own lives and the fragility of the national tradition of a peaceful transfer of presidential power.

But that process may be held back at least temporarily by a debate over whether to listen to a House Republican who offered new details on Friday night about a heated phone call on the day of the revolt between Trump and the minority leader. of the House of Representatives Kevin McCarthy which, according to the Democrats, establishes. Trump’s indifference to violence.

Meanwhile, Republican leader Mitch McConnell made it clear that he will vote to acquit Trump, according to a person familiar with his thinking. Closely observed, the Republican leader’s point of view could influence other members of his party.

While a majority of Democrats are expected to condemn the former president, acquittal already seemed likely in the chamber that is evenly split with Republicans. A two-thirds majority is required for conviction.

Just a month since the deadly riot on January 6, final arguments for the historic trial are laid in a rare Saturday session, which takes place under the surveillance of armed National Guard troops still guarding the iconic building. .

The result of the crude and emotional process is expected to reflect a country divided over the former president and the future of his politics. The verdict could influence not only Trump’s political future, but also that of senators who vowed to provide impartial justice as jurors.

“What is important about this trial is that it is actually directed to some extent at Donald Trump, but it is more directed at a president that we don’t even know in 20 years,” said Senator Angus King, independent of Maine.

The nearly week-long trial has delivered a grim and graphic narrative of the unrest and its aftermath in a way that senators, most of whom fled for their own safety that day, acknowledge they are still grappling with.

House prosecutors have argued that Trump’s rallying cry to go to the Capitol and “fight like hell” for his presidency just as Congress was meeting on January 6 to certify Joe Biden’s election victory was part of an orchestrated pattern of violent rhetoric and false claims that was unleashed. Mafia. Five people were killed, including a rioter who was shot and a police officer.

Trump’s lawyers responded within a brief space of three hours Friday that Trump’s words were not intended to incite violence and that the impeachment is nothing more than a “witch hunt” designed to prevent a reoccupation. The charge.

Only by watching the graphic videos – the rioters threateningly calling out House Speaker Nancy Pelosi and Vice President Mike Pence, who was presiding over the recount – did senators say they began to understand how dangerously close the country was to chaos.

Hundreds of rioters stormed the building and took over the Senate. Some participated in bloody hand-to-hand combat with the police.

While the Senate is unlikely to get the two-thirds of the votes necessary to convict, several senators appear to be still weighing their vote.

Senate Republican Leader Mitch McConnell of Kentucky will be widely watched for clues, but he is not pressuring his Republican colleagues and telling senators to vote conscientiously.

Many Republicans representing states where the former president remains popular doubt whether Trump was fully responsible or whether impeachment is the appropriate response. Democrats seem almost united by conviction.

Trump is the only president to have been indicted twice and the first to face trial charges after leaving office.

Unlike Trump’s impeachment trial last year in the Ukraine case, a complicated charge of corruption and obstruction over his attempts to get the foreign ally to dig up dirt on then-campaign rival Biden, this one brought an emotional blow over unexpected vulnerability. from the United States. tradition of peaceful elections. The charge is unique, incitement to insurrection.

On Friday, Trump’s impeachment lawyers accused Democrats of waging a “hate” campaign against the former president as they concluded his defense.

His attorneys strenuously denied that Trump had incited the riots and played out-of-context video clips showing Democrats, some of them senators now serving as juries, and also telling supporters to “fight back,” with the goal of establishing a parallel to Trump’s overheated rhetoric.

“This is normally political rhetoric,” said Trump’s lawyer, Michael van der Veen. “Countless politicians have spoken of fighting for our principles.”

But the presentation blurred the difference between the general encouragement politicians make to fight for health care or other causes and Trump’s fight against officially accepted national election results, and downplayed Trump’s efforts to undermine those results.