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Donald Trump acquitted, denounced in historic second impeachment trial

AP
President Donald Trump speaks with reporters as he walks to board Marine One on the South Lawn of the White House.
Camera IconPresident Donald Trump speaks with reporters as he walks to board Marine One on the South Lawn of the White House. Credit: Alex Brandon/AP

Former president Donald Trump has welcomed his second impeachment acquittal and says his movement "has only just begun".

Barely a month since the deadly January 6 riot that stunned the world, the Senate convened for a rare Saturday session to deliver its verdict, voting while armed National Guard troops continued to stand their posts outside the iconic building.

The verdict, on a vote of 57-43, is all but certain to influence not only the former president’s political future but that of the senators sworn to deliver impartial justice as jurors. Seven Republicans joined all Democrats to convict, but it was far from the two-third threshold required.

Addressing reporters after the trial concluded, Trump’s legal team thanked the Senate for finding the former president not guilty.

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Michael van der Veen, who presented the bulk of the defense, fist-bumped a colleague as he departed the Capitol. He joked: “We’re going to Disney World!“

President Donald Trump speaks during a rally protesting the electoral college certification of Joe Biden as President, Wednesday, Jan. 6, 2021.
Camera IconPresident Donald Trump speaks during a rally protesting the electoral college certification of Joe Biden as President, Wednesday, Jan. 6, 2021. Credit: Evan Vucci/AP

Trump in a lengthy statement on Saturday thanked his lawyers and his defenders in the House and Senate, who he said "stood proudly for the Constitution we all revere and for the sacred legal principles at the heart of our country".

He slammed the trial as "yet another phase of the greatest witch hunt in the history of our country".

He told his supporters that "our historic, patriotic and beautiful movement to Make America Great Again has only just begun" and he would have more to share with them in the months ahead.

The verdict after the uprising leaves unresolved the nation’s wrenching divisions over Trump’s brand of politics that led to the most violent domestic attack on one of America’s three branches of government.

“Senators, we are in a dialogue with history, a conversation with our past, with a hope for our future,” said Rep. Madeleine Dean, D-Pa.., one of the House prosecutors in closing arguments.

“What we do here, what is being asked of each of us here in this moment will be remembered. History has found us.”

Though he was acquitted, it was easily the largest number of senators to ever vote to find a president of their own party guilty of an impeachment charge.

Voting to find Trump guilty were GOP Sens. Richard Burr of North Carolina, Bill Cassidy of Louisiana, Susan Collins of Maine, Lisa Murkowski of Alaska, Mitt Romney of Utah, Ben Sasse of Nebraska and Patrick Toomey of Pennsylvania.

Supporters of President Donald Trump are confronted by U.S. Capitol Police officers outside the Senate Chamber inside the Capitol in Washington.
Camera IconSupporters of President Donald Trump are confronted by U.S. Capitol Police officers outside the Senate Chamber inside the Capitol in Washington. Credit: Manuel Balce Ceneta/AP

The trial had been momentarily thrown into confusion when senators suddenly wanted to consider potential witnesses, an hours-long standoff Saturday that stalled the momentum toward a vote. Prolonged proceedings would be politically risky, particularly for Biden’s new presidency and his emerging legislative agenda.

The trial came amid the searing COVID-19 crisis, and the Biden White House trying to rush pandemic relief through Congress.

Biden has hardly weighed in on the proceedings and was spending the weekend with family at the presidential retreat in Camp David, Maryland.

Many senators kept their votes closely held until the final moments, Republicans in particularly now thrust into minority status. Democrats took narrow control of the Senate with runoff elections in Georgia on Jan. 5, the day before the siege.

The nearly weeklong trial has delivered a grim and graphic narrative of the riot and its consequences in ways that senators, most of whom fled for their own safety that day, acknowledge they are still coming to grips with.

House prosecutors have argued that Trump’s was the “inciter in chief” stoking a months-long campaign, and orchestrated pattern of violent rhetoric and false claims that unleashed the mob. Five people died, including a rioter who was shot and a police officer.

Trump’s lawyers countered that Trump’s words were not intended to incite the violence and that impeachment is nothing but a “witch hunt” designed to prevent him from serving in office again.

Only by watching the graphic videos - rioters calling out menacingly for House Speaker Nancy Pelosi and Vice President Mike Pence, who was presiding over the vote tally - did senators say they began to understand just how perilously close the country came to chaos.

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