Although former president Donald Trump became the first U.S. president to be impeached twice earlier this year, he has again avoided becoming the first to be convicted in the Senate. In a vote largely along party lines, the Senate again failed to reach the two-thirds majority required to convict a president, meaning the former president escapes punishment on the charge of inciting an insurrection over the January 6 assault on the Capitol, as CNN reported.
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Senate Votes To Acquit Trump Again
Each side had 16 hours this week to make their case before the assembled senators.
House managers, led by Rep. Jamie Raskin, laid out the case against the former president, highlighted in particular by a gut-wrenching video of the riots containing some footage that hadn't been previously made public, and that left several senators visibly shaken.
Former president Trump's lawyers defended his actions on January 6.
Using just a fraction of their allotted 16 hours, Trump's attorneys, Bruce Castor and David Schoen, argued that his rhetoric that day involved only speech protected by the First Amendment, that the riots on January 6 had been planned ahead and carried out without his approval, and that the impeachment proceedings were motivated as an act of political retribution by Democrats.
The last day of the trial saw moments of drama, particularly when the Senate unexpectedly voted in favor of hearing witness testimony.
In particular, the House managers sought to hear from GOP Rep. Jamie Herrera Beutler regarding her recollection of a call between President Trump and House Minority Leader Kevin McCarthy on January 6 to establish what the president knew about the danger then-Vice President Pence was in during the riot, and when he knew it. Ultimately, a deal was struck to read Beutler's statement into the official record and proceed without further witnesses.
In the end, just seven Republican senators voted to convict the former president.
That brought the total votes to convict to 57, which is 10 short of the 67 needed to secure a conviction. And so, once again, Trump has escaped conviction at the hands of the Senate. However, with investigations in both Georgia and New York regarding a variety of offenses, including Trump's infamous call to Georgia Secretary of State Raffensperger asking him to "find votes," the former president's legal troubles appear to be far from over.
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