House Speaker Nancy Pelosi scoffed at the "cowardly" Republicans who voted for acquittal. With the impeachment trial now over, some lawmakers have suggested censure as an option. Pelosi dismissed those efforts as grossly inadequate in the face of the violent attack on the nation's seat of power. "What we saw in that Senate today was a cowardly group of Republicans who apparently have no options because they were afraid," she said. "We censure people for using stationary for the wrong purpose. We don't censure people for inciting insurrection that kills people in the Capitol."
Democratic Senate leader Chuck Schumer said January 6 will live as a "day of infamy" in American history. Schumer took to the Senate floor to decry the Senate's acquittal of the former president, calling the day of the insurrection the "final, terrible legacy" of Trump and said the stain of his actions will never be "washed away".
Republicans have been anxious to get the trial over with and move on from discussion of Trump and the insurrection at the Capitol. Democrats, too, have a motive to move on since the Senate cannot move ahead on new President Joe Biden's agenda including Covid-19 relief while the impeachment trail is in session.
In closing arguments, Democrats again alleged that Trump was responsible for the deadly January 6 siege on the day the Senate was certifying the election results. "He abused his office by siding with the insurrectionists at almost every point, rather than with the Congress of the United States, rather than with the Constitution," said lead House impeachment manager Jamie Raskin.
Raskin earlier said witnesses were necessary to determine Trump's role in inciting the riot. Fifty-five senators voted for his motion to consider witnesses, including Susan Collins of Maine, Lisa Murkowski of Alaska, Ben Sasse of Nebraska and Mitt Romney of Utah. Once they did, Lindsey Graham of South Carolina changed his vote to join them on the 55-45 vote.
Trump lawyers opposed calling witnesses, with attorney Michael van der Veen saying it would open the door to him calling about 100 of his own. He said the depositions could be done in his law office in Philadelphia, prompting laughter from senators.
"If you vote for witnesses," Van der Veen said, crossing his arms and then then raising them in the air for emphasis, "do not handcuff me by limiting the number of witnesses that I can have."
The outcome of the raw and emotional proceedings was reflecting a country divided over the former president and the future of his brand of politics. The verdict could influence not only Trump's political future but that of the senators sworn to deliver impartial justice as jurors.
"If we don't set this right and call it what it was, the highest of constitutional crimes by the president of the United States, the past will not be past," another impeachment manager, Madeleine Dean of Pennsylvania, told senators. "The past will become our future."
The nearly week-long trial has delivered a grim and graphic narrative of the riot and its consequences in ways that senators, most of whom fled for their own safety that day, acknowledge they are still coming to grips with.
House prosecutors have argued that Trump's rallying cry to go to the Capitol and "fight like hell" for his presidency was part of an orchestrated pattern of violent rhetoric and false claims that unleashed the mob. Five people died, including a rioter who was shot and a police officer.
Trump's lawyers countered in a short three hours Friday that Trump's words were not intended to incite the violence and that impeachment is nothing but a "witch hunt" designed to prevent him from serving in office again.
Only by watching the graphic videos — rioters calling out menacingly for House Speaker Nancy Pelosi and Vice President Mike Pence, who was presiding over the vote tally — did senators say they began to understand just how perilously close the country came to chaos.
Hundreds of rioters stormed into the building, taking over the Senate. Some engaged in hand-to-hand, bloody combat with police.
Trump's lawyers have vigorously denied that the former president incited the riot and they played out-of-context video clips showing Democrats, some of them senators now serving as jurors, also telling supporters to "fight," aiming to establish a parallel with Trump's overheated rhetoric.
"This is ordinary political rhetoric," said van der Veen. "Countless politicians have spoken of fighting for our principles." Democratic senators shook their heads at what many called a false equivalency to their own fiery words.
Trump is the only president to be twice impeached and the first to face trial charges after leaving office.
Unlike last year's impeachment trial of Trump in the Ukraine affair, a complicated charge of corruption and obstruction over his attempts to have the foreign ally dig up dirt on then-campaign rival Biden, this one brought an emotional punch over the unexpected vulnerability of the US tradition of peaceful elections.
