Senate Agrees Trial Is Constitutional, as Trump Consolidates Votes for an Acquittal

WASHINGTON — A divided Senate voted on Tuesday to proceed with Donald J. Trump’s second impeachment trial, narrowly rejecting constitutional objections after Home prosecutors opened their case with a harrowing 13-minute video capturing the lethal Capitol riot he stands accused of inciting.

Although the presentation shocked senators who lived by means of the rampage into silence, solely six Republicans joined Democrats in clearing the way in which for the case to be heard, the second indication in two weeks that Mr. Trump is all however sure to be acquitted.

“The results of this trial is preordained,” Senator Ted Cruz, Republican of Texas, mentioned flatly after the 56-to-44 vote. “President Trump can be acquitted.”

Even so, the 9 Home Democrats prosecuting the previous president aimed their opening arguments squarely at Republicans who had the facility to alter the end result. They cited a big selection of conservative authorized students to argue that the Senate not solely had the precise to strive a former president for official misconduct, however an obligation. And so they supplied a uncooked and deeply emotional enchantment from the properly of the Senate, the place a month earlier than lawmakers had taken shelter because the pro-Trump mob closed in.

“Senators, this can’t be our future,” mentioned Consultant Jamie Raskin of Maryland, the lead supervisor, as he fought again tears. He described being locked contained in the Home chamber whereas colleagues known as family members “to say goodbye” and his personal daughter and son-in-law feared for his or her lives close by.

“This can’t be the way forward for America,” he continued. “We can’t have presidents inciting and mobilizing mob violence in opposition to our authorities and our establishments as a result of they refuse to simply accept the desire of the folks.”

It was the beginning of a case that Mr. Raskin and his staff will start prosecuting in full on Wednesday that seeks to show that Mr. Trump spent his closing months in workplace attempting to overthrow the election, then organized his supporters to rally in opposition to his loss and in the end egged them on to march to the Capitol and stage a violent riot as Congress met to formalize President-elect Joseph R. Biden Jr.’s victory.

They confronted off in opposition to a swiftly assembled protection staff for Mr. Trump that supplied an at-times meandering presentation, in the end arguing that attempting the previous president would violate the Structure. It started with a circuitous presentation from Bruce L. Castor Jr., who complimented the compelling case made by the Home managers after which launched right into a speech that appeared to confuse and bore some senators in each events.

His companion David I. Schoen was sharper, asserting that Democrats have been pushed by an “insatiable lust” to destroy Mr. Trump, and warning that they’d as a substitute harm the nation by setting a brand new normal to pursue former officers.

“Underneath their unsupportable constitutional idea, and tortured studying of the textual content, each civil officer who has served is liable to impeachment if any given group elected to the Home decides that what was regarded as essential service to the nation after they served now deserves to be canceled,” Mr. Schoen mentioned.

The protection’s case drew perplexed reactions from Republicans, prompting at the very least one, Senator Invoice Cassidy of Louisiana, to aspect with Democrats on the vote to permit the trial to proceed.

“Anybody who listened to President Trump’s authorized staff noticed they have been unfocused, they tried to keep away from the difficulty and so they talked about every thing however the challenge at hand,” mentioned Mr. Cassidy, who had voted final month in favor of a constitutional objection to the trial and was the one Republican to modify his place on the matter on Tuesday.

With senators in each events wanting to conclude a trial whose final result was clear, they agreed to guidelines that will permit for an awfully speedy impeachment trial, with a verdict anticipated as quickly as this weekend. It might conclude in as little as half the time of Mr. Trump’s first trial.

The pace mirrored Democrats’ fears that pausing to guage Mr. Trump would spoil the momentum behind President Biden’s agenda. Republicans, too, had good motive to need the trial over with, closing a chapter that has been divisive and damaging to their celebration.

By embracing the protection’s arguments for dismissal, Republicans gave themselves cowl to acquit Mr. Trump with out judging the case on its deserves. Many Republican senators have mentioned publicly and privately that they maintain Mr. Trump at the very least partly answerable for the assault on the Capitol, however the former president retains a singular maintain on their voters and their celebration. A vote to convict may very well be politically perilous.

Others, like Senator Mitch McConnell of Kentucky, proceed to insist they’ll function neutral jurors and are open to conviction even when they voted to dismiss the case on constitutional grounds. However the two positions are troublesome to reconcile.

Seventeen Republicans must abandon Mr. Trump to succeed in the two-thirds threshold to convict him. Within the vote on Tuesday, the six Republicans who mentioned the trial ought to go ahead have been Mr. Cassidy, Susan Collins of Maine, Lisa Murkowski of Alaska, Mitt Romney of Utah, Ben Sasse of Nebraska and Patrick J. Toomey of Pennsylvania.

Nonetheless, it was clear the Home managers had fulfilled their purpose of forcing senators to stare down the fact of what unfolded on Jan. 6 and ponder Mr. Trump’s function within the rampage. Mr. Raskin, a former constitutional regulation professor, had senators sitting silently of their chamber, reliving the assault by means of a slickly produced video — full with graphic scenes of violence by the rioters, who have been utilizing the sorts of expletives seldom heard on the Senate flooring.

At one level, the anguished screams of a police officer have been heard as he was practically crushed by the mob on the door.

Mr. Raskin’s emotional enchantment got here after a prolonged authorized argument during which he mentioned that Mr. Trump and his attorneys have been asking senators to create an illogical “January exception” that flew within the face of the founders’ intent. Recreating debates from the 1787 Constitutional Conference and interesting on to senators’ frequent sense, Mr. Raskin argued that the Senate should not permit a president to turn out to be immune from conduct dedicated in his final month in workplace.

“Everybody can see instantly why that is so harmful,” he mentioned. “It’s an invite to the president to take his greatest shot at something he might need to do on his manner out the door, together with utilizing violent means to lock that door, to hold on to the Oval Workplace in any respect prices and to dam the peaceable switch of energy.”

The phrases nonetheless hung within the Senate chamber as Mr. Raskin hit play on a video montage of the lethal assault, interspersing the president’s personal phrases with footage of the pro-Trump throng mobbing the Capitol and marauding by means of its corridors.

“He would have you ever consider there may be completely nothing the Senate can do about it,” Mr. Raskin mentioned, gesturing on the photographs. “No trial. No info. He needs you to resolve that the Senate is powerless at that time. That may’t be proper.”

Mr. Raskin mentioned the framers had supposed simply the alternative. That they had been completely snug with impeaching former officers, he mentioned.

There have been different, subtler nudges to drag Republicans into the trial. The managers repeatedly referred to conservatives’ favored approaches to analyzing the Structure, cited authorized students related to the conservative Federalist Society and embraced an unlikely ally, Charles J. Cooper, an influential conservative lawyer allied with congressional leaders who made a forceful argument this week in The Wall Road Journal in favor of a trial.

As Consultant Joe Neguse of Colorado walked senators by means of the chamber’s personal precedent on the query, he mentioned their predecessors had confronted and rejected the identical argument as Mr. Trump’s in 1876.

“Actually, they have been sitting in the identical chairs you all are sitting in at present, they have been outraged by that argument,” he mentioned, looking on the chamber.

The arguments from Mr. Trump’s three-person protection staff, put in simply two weeks in the past, have been much less cohesive.

Maybe to his profit, Mr. Castor took the air out of the room after Mr. Raskin’s description of Jan 6. with an ambling, and at occasions contradictory, monologue in regards to the passions of the second and senators’ love of nation. After practically an hour, he reached a conclusion, saying that as a non-public citizen, Mr. Trump shouldn’t be impeached, and that if the Justice Division believed he had performed something flawed, it might be prosecuting him.

“There isn’t any alternative the place the president of the USA can run rampant in January on the finish of his time period and simply go away scot free,” Mr. Castor mentioned. “The Division of Justice does know what to do with such folks.”

He argued that Democrats actually simply wished to be sure that Mr. Trump couldn’t run once more.

Following him on the podium, Mr. Schoen took a extra adversarial function. He known as Senator Patrick J. Leahy, who was presiding because the Senate’s president professional tempore, a biased decide. And he mentioned that Mr. Trump’s admonition to his supporters on Jan. 6 to “struggle like hell” was protected free speech.

Mr. Schoen derided the managers for hiring a “film firm” to sew collectively essentially the most ugly scenes of the assault as if it have been a “blood sport.” However he performed his personal video presentation of clips of Democratic lawmakers by means of the years calling for Mr. Trump to be impeached, as ominous music performed within the background.

Emily Cochrane and Luke Broadwater contributed reporting.