Trump is the first president to have been twice impeached by the House of Representatives and the first to face a trial after leaving power. Donald Trump’s hopes of avoiding conviction by the US Senate were strengthened on Tuesday when 45 Republicans tried to dismiss his impeachment trial before it even began.
Joe Biden told CNN that the trial “has to happen” but doubted the chances of conviction.
Trump was impeached by the House of Representatives on the charge of “incitement of insurrection” following the storming of the US Capitol, including the Senate chamber, by an angry mob on January 6. Senators gathered at the scene of the crime on Tuesday to begin his trial.
After they were sworn in and signed the oath book – each using different pens due to Coronavirus precautions – Rand Paul of Kentucky challenged the legitimacy of the trial.
He argued on a point of order that, since Trump is no longer president, pressing ahead with it “violates the constitution”.
However, the Senate Minority, Whip John Thune said that the former President Donald Trump’s actions ahead of the deadly Capitol riot are totally indefensible, reported the CNN.
With the impeachment trial for Trump set to begin on February 9, Senate Republicans are criticizing him without doing anything about his actions, hoping to put distance between themselves and the former President without casting any votes that could cause a backlash from Trump and his fervent supporters. Many say something should be done about what Trump did but just not by them.
“President Trump did not cause the attack on the Capitol on January 6,” freshman Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene, the controversial Georgia Republican, told her supporters this week.
Yet with the 10 House Republicans who voted to impeach Trump for inciting an insurrection facing a sharp backlash from the right, Senate Republicans are well aware that they would face the same fate if they voted to convict next month. And McConnell, who has privately told associates he thinks Trump committed an impeachable offence, refused to say so publicly when CNN asked him on Tuesday and he later voted with fellow Kentucky Republican Sen. Rand Paul on a procedural motion this week aimed at dismissing the trial on the grounds that it’s unconstitutional.
The procedural vote was not enough to prevent the trial going ahead, since 55 senators voted that it should, but it did suggest that Democrats face an uphill battle to get the 67 senators they will need for a conviction on a two-thirds majority vote.
Asked how they should hold Trump accountable now, Braun said: “I think he’s going to be held accountable in the way that people sort him out with whatever he intends to do in the future.”