© 2024 Milwaukee Public Media is a service of UW-Milwaukee's College of Letters & Science
Play Live Radio
Next Up:
0:00
0:00
0:00 0:00
Available On Air Stations

Watch Live: Senate Votes To Acquit Trump In Historic 2nd Impeachment Trial

Former President Donald Trump's attorneys, including Bruce Castor Jr. (left) and David Schoen, offered their impeachment case defense on Friday.
Sarah Silbiger
/
Getty Images
Former President Donald Trump's attorneys, including Bruce Castor Jr. (left) and David Schoen, offered their impeachment case defense on Friday.

Updated on Saturday at 6:20 p.m. ET:The video for this event has ended.

Donald Trump's historic second impeachment trial came to a close on Saturday, with Democrats falling short of the two-thirds majority needed to convict the former president.

The final vote was 57 to 43. Seven Republicans joined with all of the chamber's Democrats and independents to vote to convict.

Trump faced a single impeachment charge, incitement of an insurrection, for his role in urging a mob to attack the Capitol complex on Jan. 6.

The Senate began the trial Tuesday, a little more than a month after a mob of Trump supporters stormed the U.S. Capitol. Senators voted 56-44 that the trial was in fact constitutional, even though Trump has already left office.

The House of Representatives voted on Jan. 13 to impeach Trump for incitement of insurrection with just a week left in his term, charging that he caused the riot that endangered hundreds of lawmakers and left five people dead, including a police officer. Two more police officers killed themselves in the days following the riot.

Trump has denied responsibility for stoking the mob on Jan. 6. His lawyers claim that he did not encourage unlawful acts and that his comments to supporters that day are protected by the First Amendment. They also argue that he should not be on trial at all, as he is no longer president — though many constitutional experts disagree.

As Congress began counting the Electoral College votes on Jan. 6, Trump called for his supporters to walk to the Capitol in protest of the election results. Trump falsely claimed the election had been "stolen," despite his clear loss to now-President Biden.

"You'll never take back our country with weakness. You have to show strength and you have to be strong. We have come to demand that Congress do the right thing and only count the electors who have been lawfully slated, lawfully slated," he said. "I know that everyone here will soon be marching over to the Capitol building to peacefully and patriotically make your voices heard."

Hours later, multiple people were dead, the Capitol building was in a state of chaos, and still, Biden's election victory was certified by Congress.

House impeachment managers dissected those remarks and others made by Trump in the months prior to argue that his false election claims laid the groundwork for the violence far before that particular rally.

This page was originally published on Tuesday at 11:26 a.m. ET.

Copyright 2021 NPR. To see more, visit https://www.npr.org.

Alana Wise joined WAMU in September 2018 as the 2018-2020 Audion Reporting Fellow for . Selected as one of 10 recipients nationwide of the Audion Reporting Fellowship, Alana works in the WAMU newsroom as part of a national reporting project and is spending two years focusing on the impact of guns in the Washington region.
Alana Wise
Alana Wise is a politics reporter on the Washington desk at NPR.
Related Content