WASHINGTON | Under high security, the US Senate is preparing to open Tuesday the second impeachment trial of Donald Trump, accused of “incitement to insurgency” in the murderous assault on the Capitol.
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This trial is doubly historic: it is the first time that a former American president has been tried in dismissal. And on January 13, the real estate mogul had already become the first president to be hit twice by an indictment (“impeachment”) in the House of Representatives, this time for “incitement to insurgency”.
“Absurd” accusation against “overwhelming” evidence: the lawyers for the former Republican president and the elected Democrats who carry the accusation have already set the tone for the discussions to come during the trial, which opens at 1 pm in the same hemicycle where pro-Trump protesters burst on January 6.
Extraordinary detail, the 100 senators who will serve as jurors were thus the witnesses, and victims, of the attack.
The strong images of these moments and Donald Trump’s speech to his supporters a few minutes earlier should occupy a central role in the accusation. Outside, the unprecedented security measures surrounding the Capitol recall the violence, and the shock, caused by the assault.
Now living in Florida, the billionaire will not go to trial. And there is little doubt that he will be acquitted at his term.
The Constitution requires a two-thirds majority for a guilty verdict. Even if Republican senators have sharply criticized the role of the 45th US president in the violence, it seems unlikely that 17 of them will join their voices to the 50 Democrats in condemning the billionaire, still very popular with his base.
One thing, however, unites the two camps: they want to go fast, and a final vote could take place as early as the beginning of next week.
Republicans because they don’t want to dwell on a streak that divides their ranks; Democrats because they want the Senate to be able to quickly focus on their priority again: approving Joe Biden’s candidates and laws.
Presenting himself as a “unifier” of a battered America, the latter takes care to stay away from this procedure. The new president “won’t spend a lot of time watching the hearings, if at all,” White House spokeswoman Jen Psaki insisted on Monday.
“Absurd” trial
It is a legal debate on the constitutionality of the trial which will occupy its opening Tuesday: each camp will have two hours to deliver its arguments and the senators will then vote to say if they deem themselves competent.
This point is at the heart of the arguments of Donald Trump’s lawyers, David Schoen and Bruce Castor, for whom it is “absurd and unconstitutional to conduct an impeachment trial against a private citizen”. An argument repeated by many Republican senators.
A simple excuse to avoid having to judge on the merits the conduct “despicable” of Donald Trump and therefore “to alienate the supporters of the president,” thundered the leader of the Democratic majority in the Senate, Chuck Schumer.
On Tuesday, he promised the presentation of “new” exhibits.
Make the fault “fall back”
In their argument delivered Monday, the “prosecutors” Democrats cited “overwhelming evidence” of the guilt of the billionaire, responsible according to them for “the worst violation of the Constitution ever committed by an American president”.
They recall his months spent denying his defeat to Joe Biden, denouncing, against all evidence, “massive” electoral fraud. And his long speech to the thousands of supporters gathered on January 6 in Washington, even as parliamentarians were gathered on Capitol Hill to endorse the Democrat’s victory.
“You will never take back our country by being weak. You have to show strength, ”he said to the white-hot crowd in front of the White House, before calling to go to the Capitol to make“ your voice heard in a peaceful and patriotic way ”.
“He thus ignited the flame of the insurgency and threw it into the powder keg he had spent months creating”, hammered the Democrats on Tuesday.
But for his lawyers, “President Trump did not urge anyone to commit illegal acts.”
To say that he could be responsible for the violence of a “small group of criminals” who “absolutely misunderstood” is “simply absurd”, they wrote on Monday.
These arguments confirm that Donald Trump “refuses to accept responsibility for his actions,” retorted the Democratic “prosecutors” Tuesday shortly before the opening of the trial.
And that since he “has no good defense against (the accusation) of inciting insurgency against the country he had sworn to protect, he” tries instead to lay the guilt on his supporters ”.