Minority leader in the Senate Mitch McConnell former President Trump denounced on Saturday in a speech on the Senate floor shortly after McConnell voted to be acquitted in the former president’s second impeachment trial. Speaking with a first half reminiscent of House impeachment managers’ arguments, McConnell said the former president was “practically and morally responsible” for the January 6 attack on the Capitol.
But McConnell argued that he found it unconstitutional to convict a president who was no longer in office.
“This was a growing crescendo of conspiracy theories orchestrated by an outgoing president who seemed determined to either reverse voters’ decision or otherwise set our institutions on fire,” McConnell said.
McConnell was unequivocal about Mr Trump’s responsibility. “There is no doubt that President Trump is practically and morally responsible for provoking the events of the day,” he said, adding that Mr Trump saw the events take place on television. “A mob attacked the Capitol in his name,” he said. “These criminals carried his banners, hung up his flags and shouted their loyalty to him.”
The Senate voted 57-43 on Saturday to acquit the former president for inciting insurgency. Seven Republicans joined Democrats to find the former president guilty: Senators Richard Burr from North Carolina, Bill Cassidy from Louisiana, Susan Collins from Maine, Lisa Murkowski from Alaska, Mitt Romney from Utah, Ben Sasse from Nebraska and Pat Toomey from Pennsylvania.
McConnell said the people who stormed the Capitol believed they were acting on Mr. Trump’s wishes and instructions. “Having that belief,” said McConnell, “was a foreseeable consequence of the growing crescendo of false statements, conspiracy theories and reckless exaggeration that the defeated president kept shouting into the biggest megaphone on earth.”
McConnell described the violence on January 6, saying that Americans beat and bleed their own police, stormed the Senate floor, and built a gallows and sang about the vice president’s murder. “They did this,” McConnell said, “because they had been fed wild lies by the most powerful man on earth, because he was angry that he lost an election.”
But McConnell argued that the former president is “constitutionally ineligible for conviction” because he is no longer in office – even though the Senate voted 56-44 earlier this week that it was constitutionally possible to convict a former official. .
McConnell said, “I believe the Senate was right not to seize power that the Constitution does not give us.”
He said he respects his colleagues who have come to either conclusion about the constitutionality of sentencing. “No doubt this is a good question,” he said.
“If President Trump were still in office,” he said, “I would have carefully considered whether the house managers had proven their specific charges.”
McConnell prevented the Senate from holding the impeachment trial before Trump left office. He declined to agree to an emergency session of the Senate to conduct the trial, arguing that there was not enough time to conduct it fairly before President Biden took office. Mr. Biden was inaugurated seven days after the House voted to impeach Mr. Trump.
The trial, which began on February 9, lasted only five days.
Although Mr. Trump was acquitted of instigating the riot in the Senate process, he can still face criminal charges. A The Georgia prosecutor has opened a criminal investigation into Mr Trump’s alleged attempts to influence the presidential election in the state. And separately, Manhattan District Attorney Cy Vance is also overseeing an investigation into Mr. Trump for possible crimes as widespread as fraud and tax evasion.