WASHINGTON (AP) – As House prepares to bring charges against Donald Trump to Senate for trial, growing number of Republican senators say they oppose the proceedings, reducing the chances of the former president being convicted of the charges that he incited a siege of the Capitol.
House Democrats will carry through the Capitol late Monday night the only charge of “inciting insurgency,” a rare and ceremonial walk to the Senate by the prosecutors who will plead their case. They hope strong Republican charges against Trump after the January 6 riot translate into a conviction and a separate vote to dissuade Trump from re-serving.
But instead, GOP passions seem to have cooled since the uprising. With Trump’s presidency over, Republican senators who will serve as jurors in the trial are rallying in his legal defense, as they did last year during his first impeachment trial.
“I think the process is stupid, I think it’s counterproductive,” said Senator Marco Rubio, R-Fla. He said that “the first chance I get to vote to end this process, I will.” because he believes it would be bad for the country and further inflame the partisan divisions.
Trump is the first former president to face impeachment lawsuit, and it will test his hold on the Republican Party, as well as the legacy of his tenure, which came to an end when a crowd of loyal supporters heeded his cry of protest by storming the Capitol and try to undo Joe Biden’s election. The procedure will also force Democrats, who have full party control over the White House and Congress, to balance their pledge to hold the former president accountable while rushing to deliver on Biden’s priorities.
The arguments in the Senate trial begin the week of February 8. Leaders in both parties agreed with the brief delay to give Trump’s team and House prosecutors time to prepare and the Senate a chance to confirm some of Biden’s cabinet nominees. Democrats say the extra days will ensure more evidence about the riots by Trump supporters, while Republicans hope to create a unified defense for Trump.
Senator Chris Coons, D-Del., Said in an interview with The Associated Press on Sunday that he hopes the evolving clarity over the details of what happened on January 6 “will make it clearer to my colleagues and the American people that we need some responsibility. “
Coons wondered how his colleagues who were at the Capitol that day could see the uprising as anything but an “astonishing violation” of the tradition of peaceful transfers of power.
“It’s a critical moment in American history and we have to look at it and take a good look at it,” said Coons.
An early vote to reject the process would likely fail, as Democrats now control the Senate. Still, growing 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 condemn him.
When the House deposed Trump on Jan. 13, just one week after the siege, Senator Tom Cotton, R-Ark., Said he did not believe the Senate had the constitutional authority to condemn Trump after he left office. On Sunday, Cotton said, “the more I talk to other Republican senators, the more they start to rally” behind that argument.
“I think many Americans will find it strange that the Senate is spending its time condemning and removing a man who left office a week ago,” Cotton said.
Democrats reject that argument, pointing to an 1876 impeachment of a war secretary who had already resigned and the opinions of many legal scholars. Democrats also say a reckoning of the first invasion of the Capitol since the War of 1812, perpetrated by rioters incited by a president who told them to “fight like crazy” against the election results being counted at the time, is therefore necessary. the country can move forward and ensure that such a siege never takes place again.
A few GOP senators agree with the Democrats, but nowhere near the number it will take to condemn Trump.
Senator Mitt Romney, R-Utah, said he believes there is a “preponderance of opinion” that impeachment lawsuits are appropriate after someone leaves office.
“I believe that what is being claimed and what we have seen, namely incitement to insurrection, is a culpable crime,” said Romney. “If not, what is?”
But Romney, the only Republican to vote to condemn Trump when the Senate acquitted the then-president at last year’s trial, appears to be an outlier.
Senator 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 they would have a really hard time trying. to do it within the senate. ”
On Friday, GOP Senator Lindsey Graham of South Carolina, a close Trump ally who helped him build a legal team, urged the Senate to reject the idea of a post-presidency trial – possibly with a vote to dismiss the charge – and suggested that Republicans investigate whether Trump’s words on Jan. 6 were legal “incitement.”
Republican Senate leader Mitch McConnell, who said last week that Trump “ provoked ” his supporters for the riot, has not said how he will vote or has advocated legal strategies. The Kentucky senator has told his GOP colleagues 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. ”
Representative Madeleine Dean, D-Pennsylvania, said, “I mean, think back. It’s been only two and a half weeks since the president gathered a crowd on the Ellipse of the White House. He turned them on with his words. And then he lit light the match. ”
Trump’s supporters raided the Capitol and interrupted the voter count, falsely claiming that there was mass fraud in the election and that it was stolen by Biden. Trump’s allegations were flatly rejected in the courts, including by justices 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 was also on CNN’s State of the Union, as was Dean. Rounds was interviewed on NBC’s “Meet the Press.”
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Associated Press writer Hope Yen contributed to this report.