Impeachment II over, most Senate Republican refuse to convict, give Trump a new free pass on high crimes and misdemeanors

Trump Impeachment II is now over. A distinct majority of the Republicans in the House and the Senate were unwilling to hold their Leader Trump responsible for even the most serious kinds of misconduct in office. The long bipartisan consensus on not holding Republican Presidents and their administrations formally accountable for even criminal conduct has at least been breached. And that's progress.

But now it's critical for federal and state officials to conduct genuinely professional, independent investigations of the Trump Administration's misconduct. John Dean puts it this way:

While I have been sharing thoughts on CNN about impeachment I have not tweeted until now. The Republican Party has confirmed they are, as I reported in my last book, the authoritarian party. They are Un-American and dangerous. We must all hope Trump is jailed for his many crimes!

— John W. Dean (@JohnWDean) February 14, 2021

We found out during the impeachment trial that the lynch mob on January 6 was very close to getting Mike Pence, although I'm sure his Secret Service detail would have put up a serious fight. Pence had the second "nuclear football" with him that contains the nuclear launch codes. The insurrectionists couldn't have used it to launch any missiles. But that would have still been one of the worst security breaches ever. (Barbara Starr and Caroline Kelly, Military officials were unaware of potential danger to Pence's 'nuclear football' during Capitol riot 02/12/2021)

Washington Sen. Patty Murray gave a memorable interview on her experience during the Capitol insurrection on January 6, Sen. Patty Murray recounts her narrow escape from a violent mob inside the U.S. Capitol 02/13/2021:

Heather Cox Richardson described the revelations from Friday in her 01/12/2021 Facebook post. She also calls out this important point about how Trump's legal team used the trial to promote his central political Big Lie:

... Trump’s lawyers refused to say that he lost the election. Trump’s big lie, the lie that has driven his attack on our democracy, is that the outcome of the 2020 election was rigged and that, in reality, he won it in a landslide. There is no merit to this argument. It has been dismissed by state election boards across the country and by our courts, including the Supreme Court. But he continues to refuse to concede the election, fueling a movement that threatens to create a long-term domestic insurgency. His lawyers today endorsed that position.

Jamie Gangel et al report in New details about Trump-McCarthy shouting match show Trump refused to call off the rioters CNN 02/13/2020 on new evidence produced showing even more clearly that Trump new what dangers Members of Congress were in during the insurrection and deliberately refused to send aid, clearly citing with the attackers he had organized and directly incited.

Cenk Uygur gives his take on the story in Breaking: Trump Would Not Call Off the Rioters! TYT 02/12/2021

The facts that came out this past week made me realize that the coup came a lot closer to succeeding than I had thought. It was still a clown coup because it was run by malicious clowns. And it's still true what Timothy Snyder wrote afterwards, that the Orange Clown failed to get enough of the right people to do the wrong thing for it to succeed.

But if the mob had succeeded in murdering Mike Pence and maybe a few Members of Congress - and if they had managed to take possession of Pence's nuclear football - that could have been an excuse for declaring martial law and shutting down Congress to prevent the formal certification of the Presidential election. I thought it was especially chilling what Patty Murray said in her PBS interview embedded above, that the mob outside her office door were chanting "Kill the Infidels!"

That thing came close to being more a bloodbath than it was. The lynch mob was able to engage in continuous fighting with the Capitol police for at least a couple of hours, and there was obviously a very clear plan to withhold outside assistance.

Also, hearing and seeing more details about how bad the situation in the Capitol was, how tactically coordinated much of it was, and how close they came to killing Members of Congress, I'm wondering again: Haven't we spent nearly 20 years waging a "Global War on Terror"? I'm old enough to remember when advocates for the Iraq War said that we have to fight Them over there so we won't have to fight Them over here.

And after all that, a bunch of Rambo wannabes were able to stage the January 6 occupation of the US Capitol? And prowl around inside for hours chanting "Hang Mike Pence!" and "Kill the Infidels!"?

There is something really wrong with this picture.

We can always hope, and there was at least a slim theoretical possibility that enough Republicans would vote to convict to make it official. Depending on how involved some of them may have been with planning or coordinating the event, some of the Senators might have decided to vote for conviction as a way to mitigate possible criminal charges against them.

But the fact is that a Republican like Kevin McCarthy even after his now-infamous call with Trump during the Capitol raid still went down to Mar-O-Lago to kiss the Leader's ring. That doesn't look like even a normal sense of physical self-preservation to me, much less integrity or responsibility. And that is clearly the dominant position among Congressional Republicans, as both impeachments of Trump have shown.

But to be fair, they also know they do face a non-trivial risk of being assassinated by a Trump cult follower if they come out openly against him. It's not an excuse for them, as the Senate Republican votes to convict illustrate. But it's part of the grim reality of Trumpified national politics in the US:

Trump's impeachment trial and the Big Lie of the stolen election

In her February 9 commentary on Tuesday's proceedings on the Trump impeachment trial, Heather Cox Richardson comments on what Timothy Snyder calls "Trump’s big lie" that the 2020 Presidential election was stolen that also "set a precedent" for future Republican coup attempts, which he summarizes this way: "A Republican presidential candidate who loses an election should be appointed anyway by Congress."

Cox writes:

What led the rioters on January 6, 2021, to try to hurt our elected officials and overturn the legal results of the 2020 election was Trump’s long-time assertion that he won in a landslide and the presidency had been stolen from him.

This big lie, as observers are calling it, is not one of Trump’s many and random lies, it is the rallying cry for a movement to destroy American democracy. He is building a movement based on the idea that his supporters are the only ones truly defending the nation, because they—not the people who certified the 2020 election—are the ones who know the true outcome of the election. He is creating a narrative in which he is the only legitimate leader of the nation and anyone who disagrees is a traitor to the Constitution.

As [Rhode Island Democratic Congressman David] Cicilline noted, even after the riot Trump refused to repudiate that big lie. And now, even in the face of impeachment he has not repudiated it. Indeed, he has doubled down on it, refusing to admit he is a “former” president. His supporters haven’t admitted it, either, including his supporters who sit in Congress. None of those who challenged the counting of the electoral votes on January 6 and 7 has admitted it was a political stunt. Now, they are arguing that impeachment is a partisan attack on the part of Democrats.

If Republican senators permit Trump to get away with the big lie, it must, logically, take over the Republican Party. [my emphasis]

She's right that it would be a logical progression. Even though "logically" is a tricky word to apply to decision-making in the Trumpified Republican Party.

Dahlia Lithwick notes (This Is Not Representative Democracy Slate 02/08/2021), "No matter what case Democrats present [in the impeachment trial], Republicans are almost certainly going to stick together and protect the former president. The weeks between the House vote and the Senate trial have only worked to ensure that this comes true."

Given the structural advantages in the electoral system the Republicans currently have, which she also discusses, she reminds us how serious the Republican Party's hostility to democracy is to the current US form of Constitutional government:

It is not helpful or useful for Democrats to approach this impeachment trial wrapped in Hamlet’s thick black cloak of gloom and destructive self-talk. Going on the record to vehemently oppose violent armed rebellion that led to five deaths and abject terror in the seat of government is hardly a whimsical principle upon which to stand firm. But the coming days should not just be a teachable moment about Republicans and their unwillingness to cut loose the twisted and violent conspiracy theories that were the heart of Trumpism. This trial should also remind everyone that democracy itself has been systematically warped in ways that shut out the voices of most reasonable Americans, and that these same forces are working to further suppress their reasonable voices in the years to come. The American people think Donald Trump should be held accountable for what he did, and Americans paying attention are also completely correct to assume that he will not be [in the impeachment trial]. That is an obvious problem that has become so obvious that we’ve nearly forgotten that there are things we can and should do about it. [my emphasis]

I would add that the problem will only be confounded if Trump is not professionally and independently investigated by national and state officials for any serious violations of the law that he may have committed, both before and during his Presidency.

Mitt Romney does the right thing - which stands out because he's a Republican

Mitt Romeney did the right thing in voting to remove Trump from office. Romney is a rightwing Republican plutocrat whose policy position vary from bad to terrible. But he did the right thing on the removal vote. And he was the only Republican in the Senate to do so.

The Senate Democrats actually managed to stay united in voting for removal! It's almost enough to make people who don't believe in miracles rethink their position.

That included Democratic Senators who had been considered shaky: Doug Jones (AL), Joe Manchin (WV), Kyrsten Sinema (AZ) and Jon Tester (MT).

Impeaching Trump was the right thing for the House to do. Removing him from office would have been the right thing for the Senate to do. Accountability for all public officials and especially for Presidents is important. And that includes responsible, independent investigation of public officials for crimes committed in their official roles.

Even Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer deserves credit for holding the caucus together on this. He's really not very effective in many ways in his leadership role. But credit where credit is due.

The rest of the Democratic Senators deserve credit, too, particularly ones like Bernie Sanders, Jeff Merkley and Elizabeth Warren who have been consistently critical of Trump's policies. But it's in the nature of this kind of vote on removing the President that those voting against their party or public expectation get more attention and credit.

That's why Kansas Sen. Edmund Ross (1826-1907) gets far more credit than he really deserves in American history.