Plaskett: ‘We Didn't Need More Witnesses; We Needed More Senators with Spines’
(CNSNews.com) – House impeachment manager Del. Stacey Plaskett (D-Virgin Islands) told CNN’s “State of the Union” on Sunday that the impeachment team didn’t need more witnesses to convict President Donald Trump of inciting an insurrection, they needed “more senators with spines.”
When asked why the House impeachment managers backed down on the subpoenaing of Rep. Jamie Herrera Beutler (R-Wash.), Plaskett said, “I think we didn't back down. I think what we did was, we got what we wanted, which was her statement, which was what she said, and had it put on the record, and being able to say it on the record out loud, so that others would hear.
“Just so the American public is aware, witnesses in a Senate hearing do not come and stand before the senators and make any statements. It's a deposition. It's videotaped, and that is brought before the Senate. So, I know that people are feeling a lot of angst and believe that maybe, if we had this, the senators would have done what we wanted, but, listen, we didn't need more witnesses. We needed more senators with spines,” she said.
Democrats wanted to subpoena Rep. Jamie Herrera Beutler (R-Wash.) but opted to have her statement read into the record instead by lead House impeachment manager Jamie Raskin (D-Md.). The statement said that House Minority Leader Kevin McCarthy (R-Calif.) asked Trump to call off the rioters but Trump said the rioters weren’t his people. They were Antifa.
According to the congresswoman, McCarthy responded saying, "No, they're your people. You need to call them off." Herrera Beutler said Trump’s response was “chilling,” because he said, “Well, Kevin, I guess they're more upset about the election theft than you are."
When asked why they backed down on the subpoena, Plaskett said, “I think we didn't back down. I think what we did was, we got what we wanted, which was her statement, which was what she said, and had it put on the record, and being able to say it on the record out loud, so that others would hear.”
Plaskett said that judging by Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell’s (R-Ky.) closing statement, he agreed with Democrats that President Donald Trump was guilty.
“I think that all Americans, when we rested our case, believed that we had proved our case, and the nonsense that the defense put out did not dispute that. As you heard from Mitch McConnell, his closing statement was what we said. He agreed with us. They all agreed. They just decided that they wanted to give him a walk, and they found a technicality that they created to do so,” she said.
Plaskett said the impeachment managers “had sufficient evidence to prove that the president did what we said he did, which was incite an insurrection to overthrow our government, to retain power for himself, and there was overwhelming evidence of that.”
The delegate from the U.S. Virgin Islands said it was “heartbreaking” and “frustrating” that the Republicans voted to acquit Trump, “but the founders knew what they were doing, and so we live with the system that we have, but, thankfully, it was bipartisan, the greatest majority voting to convict a president, as well as the American people seeing truly who Donald Trump was.”
Joe Biden Confronts Trump Acquittal: ‘Substance of the Charge Not in Dispute’
President Joe Biden confronted the acquittal of former President Donald Trump on Saturday by declaring that although Republican senators in the main did not vote against Trump, the “substance of the charge” that spawned the impeachment trial to his mind was “not in dispute.”
As Breitbart news reported, the Senate failed to clear the 67-vote barrier necessary to convict Trump of the charge he incited an insurrection on January 6, when Congress was certifying the 2020 presidential election.
Seven Senate Republicans voted to convict Trump of inciting an insurrection, including Sens. Bill Cassidy (R-LA), Richard Burr (R-NC), Susan Collins (R-ME), Lisa Murkowski (R-AK), Mitt Romney (R-UT), Pat Toomey (R-PA), Ben Sasse (R-NE).
Biden, who was at the Camp David presidential retreat when the decision came down, pointed to Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConell (R-Ky.) who did not vote to convict Trump, as part of his statement in response.
“While the final vote did not lead to a conviction, the substance of the charge is not in dispute,” Biden said as he lamented what might have been, even as Trump was celebrating the outcome.
Former President Donald Trump celebrated his second impeachment acquittal after his Senate trial concluded on Saturday. https://t.co/MQDJxdFmg3
— Breitbart News (@BreitbartNews) February 14, 2021
The president has remained largely silent on the empeachment process and trial to date, choosing his statement Saturday to lay out his observations.
“Even those opposed to the conviction, like Senate Minority Leader McConnell, believe Donald Trump was guilty of a ‘disgraceful dereliction of duty’ and ‘practically and morally responsible’ for provoking the violence unleashed on the Capitol,” Biden continued, before going on to repeat his calls for unity to “end this uncivil war and heal the very soul of the nation.”
Trump was impeached on Jan 13 by the Democrat-led House of Representatives.
As Trump left the White House on January 20, successful impeachment could not therefore be used to remove him from power – but Democrats had hoped a conviction would rule him out of any future tilt at the highest office in the land.
Adam Kinzinger's lonely mission - the high road is always the less frequented
2014 Global Leadership Dinner
NEW YORK, NY - OCTOBER 22: Congressman Adam Kinzinger attends the 2014 Global Leadership Dinner at Cipriani 42nd Street on October 22, 2014 in New York City. (Photo by Mike Pont/FilmMagic)WASHINGTON — As the Republican Party censures, condemns and seeks to purge leaders who aren’t in lockstep with Donald Trump, Adam Kinzinger, the six-term Illinois congressman, stands as enemy No. 1 — unwelcome not just in his party but also in his own family, some of whom recently disowned him.
Two days after Kinzinger called for removing Trump from office following the Jan. 6 riot at the Capitol, 11 members of his family sent him a handwritten two-page letter, saying he was in cahoots with “the devil’s army” for making a public break with the president.
“Oh my, what a disappointment you are to us and to God!” they wrote. “You have embarrassed the Kinzinger family name!”
The author of the letter was Karen Otto, Kinzinger’s cousin, who paid $7 to send it by certified mail to Kinzinger’s father — to make sure the congressman would see it, which he did. She also sent copies to Republicans across Illinois, including other members of the state’s congressional delegation.
“I wanted Adam to be shunned,” she said in an interview.
A 42-year-old Air National Guard pilot who represents a crescent-shaped district along the Chicago’s suburbs, Kinzinger is at the forefront of the effort to navigate post-Trump politics. He is betting his political career, professional relationships and kinship with a wing of his sprawling family that his party’s future lies in disavowing Trump and the conspiracy theories the former president stoked.
Kinzinger was one of just three House Republicans who voted both to impeach Trump and strip Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene of Georgia from her committee posts. During the House impeachment debate, he asked Democrats if he could speak for seven minutes instead of his allotted one, so that he could make a more authoritative and bipartisan argument against the president; the request was denied.
He has taken his case to the national media, becoming a ubiquitous figure on cable television, late-night HBO programming and podcasts. He began a new political action committee with a six-minute video declaring the need to reformat the Republican Party into something resembling an idealized version of George W. Bush’s party — with an emphasis on lower taxes, hawkish defense and social conservatism — without the grievances and conspiracy theories that Trump and his allies have made central to the party’s identity.
To do so, Kinzinger said in an interview, requires exposing the fear-based tactics he hopes to eradicate from the party and present an optimistic alternative.
“We just fear,” he said. “Fear the Democrats. Fear the future. Fear everything. And it works for an election cycle or two. The problem is it does real damage to this democracy.”
Kinzinger said he was not deterred by the Senate’s failure Saturday to convict Trump in the impeachment trial.
“We have a lot of work to do to restore the Republican Party,” he said, “and to turn the tide on the personality politics.”
Kinzinger now faces the classic challenge for political mavericks aiming to prove their independence: His stubborn and uncompromising nature rankles the very Republicans he is trying to recruit to his mission of remaking the party.
His anti-Trump stance has angered Republican constituents in his district, some of whom liken him to a Democrat, and frustrated Republican officials in Illinois who say he cares more about his own national exposure than his relationship with them.
“There doesn’t seem to be a camera or a microphone he won’t run to,” said Larry Smith, chairman of the La Salle County GOP, which censured Kinzinger last month. “He used to talk to us back in the good old days.”
Kinzinger is unapologetic about his priorities.
“Central and northern Illinois deserve an explanation and deserve my full attention, and they’ll get it,” he said. “But to the extent I can, I will also focus on the national message because I can turn every heart in central and northern Illinois, and it wouldn’t make a dent on the whole party. And that’s what I think the huge battle is.”
Kinzinger has drawn praise from Democrats, but he is not anyone’s idea of a progressive. His campaign website trumpets his long-standing opposition to the Affordable Care Act, and he is an opponent of abortion rights and increased taxes. He first won his seat in Congress with Sarah Palin’s endorsement.
Raised in a large central Illinois family — his father, who has 32 first cousins, ran food banks and shelters for the homeless in Peoria and Bloomington — Kinzinger was interested in politics from an early age. Before he’d turned 10 he predicted he would one day be governor or president, Otto said, and he won election to the McLean County Board when he was a 20-year-old sophomore at Illinois State University.
He joined the Air Force after the Sept. 11 attacks and served in Iraq and Afghanistan. Upon his discharge he joined the Air National Guard, where he remains a lieutenant colonel. In the 2010 Republican wave Kinzinger, then 32, beat a Democratic incumbent by nearly 15 percentage points and, two years later, with support from Eric Cantor, then the House majority leader, ousted another incumbent, 10-term Republican Don Manzullo, in a primary following redistricting.
But Kinzinger soon became dispirited by a Republican Party he believed was centered around opposition to whatever President Barack Obama proposed without offering new ideas of its own.
“His frustration level has been rising ever since he got to Congress, and I think the Trump era has been difficult for him to make sense of and participate in,” said former Rep. Kevin Yoder of Kansas, who was one of Kinzinger’s closest friends in Congress before losing a 2018 reelection bid. When loyalty to Trump became a litmus test for Republican conservatism, Yoder said, “that became a bridge too far for him.”
While Kinzinger never presented himself as a Trump loyalist, he rarely broke with the former president on policy grounds, but he was critical of him dating back to the 2016 campaign, when he was a surrogate for Jeb Bush.
Trump was aware of Kinzinger’s lack of fealty. At a fundraiser in the Chicago suburbs before the 2016 election, Trump asked Richard Porter, a Republican National Committee member from Illinois, how Kinzinger would do in his reelection bid. He didn’t have an opponent, Porter recalled telling the future president.
Trump, Porter said, poked his finger in his chest and told him to deliver to Kinzinger a vulgar message about what he should do with himself. When Porter relayed the comment to Kinzinger during a conversation on Election Day, Kinzinger laughed and invited Trump to do the same.
In Illinois, Republicans have been struggling to guess what Kinzinger’s next move may be. In the interview, Kinzinger said he’s unlikely to pursue the 2022 nomination for governor or the Senate. Right now, he’s leaning toward running for reelection, but with redistricting looming this fall, it’s unclear how the state’s Democratic-controlled legislature will rearrange his district.
What is clear is that Kinzinger has found himself on the wrong side of rank-and-file Republicans at home. John McGlasson, the committee member for Kinzinger’s district, said the congressman had been “insulting with his comments” since Jan. 6.
Republican voters interviewed in the district last week lambasted Kinzinger for turning on Trump.
“If you want to vote as a Democrat, vote as a Democrat,” Richard Reinhardt, a 63-year-old retired mechanical engineer, said while eating lunch at a Thai restaurant in Rockford. “Otherwise, if you’re a Republican, then support our president. Trump was the first president who represented me. The stuff he did helped me.”
Kinzinger predicted “the hangover" of Trump’s post-impeachment popularity “will kind of wear off.’’
Former Gov. Bruce Rauner, the last Republican to win statewide office in Illinois, in 2014, said Kinzinger could find himself a casualty of the bitter schism dividing the party. “The only winners in the war between Trump and Republicans will be Democrats,” Rauner said. “For some voters, character matters. For most, it doesn’t.”
Kinzinger said he has little desire to reach out to the loudest critics in his district’s Republican organizations, whom he hasn’t spoken to in years and said hold little sway over voters. The letter-writers in his family, he said, suffer from “brainwashing” from conservative churches that have led them astray.
“I hold nothing against them," he said, “but I have zero desire or feel the need to reach out and repair that. That is 100% on them to reach out and repair, and quite honestly, I don’t care if they do or not.”
As to his own future in the party, Kinzinger said he will know by the end of the summer whether he can remain a Republican for the long term or whether he will be motivated to change his party affiliation if it becomes clear to him that Trump’s allies have become a permanent majority.
“The party’s sick right now,” he said. “It’s one thing if the party was accepting of different views, but it’s become this massive litmus test on everything. So it’s a possibility down the road, but it’s certainly not my intention, and I’m going to fight like hell to save it first.”
This article originally appeared in The New York Times.
Lawsuit accuses Donald Trump, Giuliani and others of conspiring to incite Capitol riot
Former President Trump, his attorney Rudy Giuliani, the Proud Boys and Oath Keepers conspired to violate the 1871 Ku Klux Klan Act, which prohibits any actions designed to prevent Congress from carrying out its duties, when they incited the Jan. 6 riot at the Capitol, a new lawsuit from the chairman of the House Homeland Security Committee alleged.
The insurrection was the result of a carefully orchestrated plan by Trump, Giuliani and extremist groups like the Oath Keepers and Proud Boys, all of whom shared a common goal of employing intimidation, harassment and threats to stop the certification of the Electoral College, said Rep. Bennie Thompson, a Democrat from Mississippi.
“The Defendants each intended to prevent, and ultimately delayed, members of Congress from discharging their duty commanded by the United States Constitution to approve the results of the Electoral College in order to elect the next President and Vice President of the United States,” the lawsuit said. “Pursuing a purpose shared by Defendants Trump and Giuliani as well as Defendant Proud Boys, Defendant Oath Keepers played a leadership role of the riotous crowd and provided military-style assistance sufficient to overcome any Capitol Police resistance.”
MORE: Congressional investigators probe videos of Trump associates' actions ahead of Capitol riot
With the benefit of not having to prove criminal allegations beyond a reasonable doubt, the civil lawsuit, filed Tuesday in U.S. District Court in Washington, D.C., on behalf of Thompson in his personal capacity by the NAACP and civil rights law firm Cohen Milstein Sellers & Toll, sought unspecified compensatory and punitive damages. The lawsuit is suing Trump in his personal capacity, alleging that he acted outside the scope of his office when inciting the rioters.
The lawsuit alleged violations of the Ku Klux Klan Act, which was passed in 1871 in response to KKK violence and intimidation preventing members of Congress in the South during Reconstruction from carrying out their constitutional duties. The statute was intended specifically to protect against conspiracies, attorney Joe Sellers said.
The litigation follows a long list of similar cases in recent decades in which organizations have used lawsuits, and financial penalties, to expose the networks and financiers of hate groups. One example is a lawsuit that ultimately forced the 2001 closure of the Aryan Nation’s Idaho compound.
Thompson quoted Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell openly encouraging litigation against Trump: “We have a criminal justice system in this country. We have civil litigation. And former presidents are not immune from being accountable by either one.”
MORE: Biden's 1st 100 days live updates: 9/11-type commission to investigate insurrection
After witnessing Capitol police barricading the doors of the House chamber with furniture, Thompson and fellow lawmakers donned gas masks and were rushed into the Longworth House Office Building where they sheltered with more than 200 other representatives, staffers and family members.
“Jan. 6 was one of the most shameful days in our country’s history, and it was instigated by the president himself,” Thompson said. “His gleeful support of violent white supremacists led to a breach of the Capitol that put my life, and that of my colleagues, in grave danger.”
Lawsuit accuses Donald Trump, Giuliani and others of conspiring to incite Capitol riot originally appeared on abcnews.go.com
Mitch McConnell on Jan. 6 Rioters: ‘They Had Been Fed Wild Falsehoods by the Most Powerful Man on Earth’
(CNSNews.com) - Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell (R.-Ky.) said in a speech on the Senate floor at the close of the impeachment trial of former President Donald Trump on Saturday that the rioters who stormed that U.S. Capitol on Jan. 6 “had been fed wild falsehoods by the most powerful man on Earth because he was angry he lost an election.”
McConnell had just voted that Trump was “not guilty” of the impeachment article the House of Representatives had passed against him. However, McConnell argued that this was because the Constitution prevented an impeachment conviction of a former president—allowing only the conviction of a sitting president who could be removed from office.
“January 6 was a disgrace,” McConnell said at the beginning of his speech.
“American citizens attacked their own government,” he said. “They used terrorism to try to stop a specific piece of domestic business they did not like.
“Fellow Americans beat and bloodied our own police. They stormed the Senate floor,” said McConnell. “They tried to hunt down the Speaker of the House. They built a gallows and chanted about murdering the Vice President. They did this because they had been fed wild falsehoods by the most powerful man on Earth because he was angry he lost an election.
“Former President Trump's actions preceding the riot were a disgraceful--disgraceful--dereliction of duty,” said McConnell.
"If President Trump were still in office, I would have carefully considered whether the House managers proved their specific charge," said McConnell. "By the strict criminal standard, the President's speech probably was not incitement. However--however--in the context of impeachment, the Senate might have decided this was acceptable shorthand for the reckless actions that preceded the riot. But in this case, the question is moot because former President Trump is constitutionally not eligible for conviction.
“Now, this is a close question, no doubt," McConnell said. "Donald Trump was the President when the House voted, though not when the House chose to deliver the papers. Brilliant scholars argue both sides of this jurisdictional question. The text is legitimately ambiguous. I respect my colleagues who reached either conclusion.
“But after intense reflection, I believe the best constitutional reading shows that article II, section 4 exhausts the set of persons who can legitimately be impeached, tried, or convicted," he said. "It is the President. It is the Vice President and civil officers. We have no power to convict and disqualify a former office holder who is now a private citizen."
Sen. Mitch McConnell: “Mr. President, January 6 was a disgrace. American citizens attacked their own government. They used terrorism to try to stop a specific piece of domestic business they did not like. Fellow Americans beat and bloodied our own police. They stormed the Senate floor. They tried to hunt down the Speaker of the House. They built a gallows and chanted about murdering the Vice President. They did this because they had been fed wild falsehoods by the most powerful man on Earth because he was angry he lost an election.
“Former President Trump's actions preceding the riot were a disgraceful--disgraceful--dereliction of duty. The House accused the former President of ‘incitement.’ That is a specific term from the criminal law.
“Let me just put that aside for a moment and reiterate something I said weeks ago. There is no question--none--that President Trump is practically and morally responsible for provoking the events of the day. No question about it. The people who stormed this building believed they were acting on the wishes and instructions of their President, and having that belief was a foreseeable consequence of the growing crescendo of false statements, conspiracy theories, and reckless hyperbole which the defeated President kept shouting into the largest megaphone on planet Earth.
"The issue is not only the President's intemperate language on January 6. It is not just his endorsement of remarks in which an associate urged ‘trial by combat.’ It was also the entire manufactured atmosphere of looming catastrophe; the increasingly wild myths--myths--about a reverse landslide election that was somehow being stolen in some secret coup by our now-President.
“Now, I defended the President's right to bring any complaints to our legal system. The legal system spoke. The electoral college spoke. As I stood up and said clearly at that time, the election was settled. It was over. But that just really opened a new chapter of even wilder--wilder--and more unfounded claims. The leader of the free world cannot spend weeks thundering that shadowy forces are stealing our country and then feign surprise when people believe him and do reckless things.
“Now, sadly, many politicians sometimes make overheated comments or use metaphors--we saw that--that unhinged listeners might take literally, but that was different. That is different from what we saw. This was an intensifying crescendo of conspiracy theories, orchestrated by an outgoing President who seemed determined to either overturn the voters' decision or else torch our institutions on the way out.
“The unconscionable behavior did not end when the violence actually began. Whatever our ex-President claims he thought might happen that day, whatever reaction he says he meant to produce, by that afternoon, we know he was watching the same live television as the rest of us. A mob was assaulting the Capitol in his name. These criminals were carrying his banners, hanging his flags, and screaming their loyalty to him.
“It was obvious that only President Trump could end this. He was the only one who could. Former aides publicly begged him to do so. Loyal allies frantically called the administration. The President did not act swiftly. He did not do his job. He didn't take steps so Federal law could be faithfully executed and order restored. No. Instead, according to public reports, he watched television happily--happily--as the chaos unfolded. He kept pressing his scheme to overturn the election.
"Now, even after it was clear to any reasonable observer that Vice President Pence was in serious danger, even as the mob carrying Trump banners was beating cops and breaching perimeters, the President sent a further tweet attacking his own Vice President. Now, predictably and foreseeably under the circumstances, members of the mob seemed to interpret this as a further inspiration to lawlessness and violence, not surprisingly.
“Later, even when the President did halfheartedly begin calling for peace, he didn't call right away for the riot to end. He did not tell the mob to depart until even later. And even then, with police officers bleeding and broken glass covering Capitol floors, he kept repeating election lies and praising the criminals.
“In recent weeks, our ex-President's associates have tried to use the 74 million Americans who voted to reelect him as a kind of human shield against criticism--using the 74 million who voted for him as kind of a human shield against criticism. Anyone who decries his awful behavior is accused of insulting millions of voters. That is an absurd deflection. Seventy-four million Americans did not invade the Capitol. Hundreds of rioters did. Seventy-four million Americans did not engineer the campaign of disinformation and rage that provoked it. One person did it--just one.
“Now, I have made my view of this episode very plain. But our system of government gave the Senate a specific task. The Constitution gives us a particular role. This body is not invited to act as the Nation's overarching moral tribunal. We are not free to work backward from whether the accused party might personally deserve some kind of punishment.
"Justice Joseph Story was our Nation's first great constitutional scholar. As he explained nearly 200 years ago, the process of impeachment and conviction is a narrow tool--a narrow tool--for a narrow purpose. Story explained this limited tool exists to ‘secure the state against gross official misdemeanors’; that is, to protect the country from government officers.
"If President Trump were still in office, I would have carefully considered whether the House managers proved their specific charge. By the strict criminal standard, the President's speech probably was not incitement. However--however--in the context of impeachment, the Senate might have decided this was acceptable shorthand for the reckless actions that preceded the riot. But in this case, the question is moot because former President Trump is constitutionally not eligible for conviction.
“Now, this is a close question, no doubt. Donald Trump was the President when the House voted, though not when the House chose to deliver the papers. Brilliant scholars argue both sides of this jurisdictional question. The text is legitimately ambiguous. I respect my colleagues who reached either conclusion.
“But after intense reflection, I believe the best constitutional reading shows that article II, section 4 exhausts the set of persons who can legitimately be impeached, tried, or convicted. It is the President. It is the Vice President and civil officers. We have no power to convict and disqualify a former office holder who is now a private citizen.
“Here is article II, section 4: ‘The President, Vice President and all civil Officers of the United States, shall be removed from Office on Impeachment for, and Conviction of, Treason, Bribery, or other high Crimes and Misdemeanors.’
“Now, everyone basically agrees that the second half of that sentence exhausts the legitimate grounds for conviction. The debates around the Constitution's framing make that abundantly clear. Congress cannot convict for reasons besides those. It therefore follows that the list of persons in that same sentence is also exhaustive. There is no reason why one list--one list--would be exhaustive but the other would not.
“Article II, section 4 must limit both why impeachment and conviction can occur and to whom--and to whom. If this provision does not limit impeachment and conviction powers, then it has no limits at all. The House's ‘sole power of Impeachment’ and the Senate's ‘sole Power to try all Impeachments’ would create an unlimited circular logic, empowering Congress to ban any private citizen from Federal office.
“Now, that is an incredible claim. But it is the argument the House managers seemed to be making. One manager said the House and Senate have ‘absolute, unqualified . . . jurisdictional power.’ Well, that was very honest, because there is no limiting principle in the constitutional text that would empower the Senate to convict former officers that would not also let them convict and disqualify any private citizen--an absurd end result to which no one subscribes.
“Article II, section 4 must have force. It tells us the President, the Vice President and civil officers may be impeached and convicted. Donald Trump is no longer the President. Likewise, the provision states that officers subject to impeachment and conviction ‘shall be removed from Office if convicted’—'shall be removed from Office if convicted.’ As Justice Story explained, ‘the Senate, [upon] conviction, [is] bound in all cases, to enter a judgment of removal from office.’
“Removal is mandatory upon conviction. Clearly, he explained, that mandatory sentence cannot be applied to someone who has left office. The entire process revolves around removal. If removal becomes impossible, conviction becomes insensible. In one light, it certainly does seem counterintuitive that an officeholder can elude Senate conviction by resignation or expiration of term--an argument we heard made by the managers. But this underscores that impeachment was never meant to be the final forum for American justice--never meant to be the final forum for American justice. Impeachment, conviction, and removal are a specific intragovernmental safety valve. It is not the criminal justice system, where individual accountability is the paramount goal.
“Indeed, Justice Story specifically reminded that while former officials were not eligible for impeachment or conviction, they were--and this is extremely important 'still liable to be tried and punished in the ordinary tribunals of justice.’ Put another way, in the language of today, President Trump is still liable for everything he did while he was in office, as an ordinary citizen--unless the statute of limitations is run, still liable for everything he did while he was in office. He didn't get away with anything yet--yet. We have a criminal justice system in this country.
“We have civil litigation, and former Presidents are not immune from being accountable by either one. I believe the Senate was right not to grab power the Constitution doesn't give us, and the Senate was right not to entertain some light-speed sham process to try to outrun the loss of jurisdiction. It took both sides more than a week just to produce their pretrial briefs. Speaker Pelosi's own scheduling decisions conceded what President Biden publicly confirmed: A Senate verdict before Inauguration Day was never possible.
“Now, Mr. President, this has been a dispiriting time, but the Senate has done our duty. The Framers' firewall held up again. On January 6, we returned to our post and certified the election. We were uncowed. We were not intimidated. We finished the job. And, since then, we resisted the clamor to define our own constitutional guardrails in hot pursuit of a particular outcome. We refused to continue a cycle of recklessness by straining our own constitutional boundaries in response.
“The Senate's decision today does not condone anything that happened on or before that terrible day. It simply shows that Senators did what the former President failed to do: We put our constitutional duty first.”
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