WASHINGTON — Every Democrat in the U.S. Senate, including Georgia’s Jon Ossoff and Raphael Warnock, voted to hold former President Donald Trump responsible for inciting the Jan. 6 riot at the U.S. Capitol. Seven Republicans joined with them, making the vote to convict bipartisan but falling short of the two-thirds majority required.
While Trump and his GOP allies celebrated his acquittal, Warnock said he was deeply disappointed by the 43 senators who voted “not guilty.”
“The evidence was clear, overwhelming and, quite frankly, disturbing,” he said. “If Donald Trump’s actions and words are not impeachable, then nothing is.”
There is a chance the Senate could still pursue other sanctions against Trump, such as a censure or barring him from running for office again under a provision in the 14th Amendment. Warnock said he is ready to turn to other priorities now that the trial has concluded.
“I’m focused on the issues that are concerning the families of the American people getting COVID-19 relief, giving people the direct aid that they need, reopening our small businesses and our schools,” he said. “But I think that the cowardice that we saw on the other side will be judged harshly by history.”
Some of the Republicans who voted with Democrats to convict Trump cited the Jan. 2 phone call he placed to Georgia Secretary of State Brad Raffensperger in their explanations of their votes. U.S. Sen. Mitt Romney of Utah said that evidence helped convince him that Trump was guilty of the charge against him.
“President Trump attempted to corrupt the election by pressuring the Secretary of State of Georgia to falsify the election results in his state,” Romney said in a statement after the vote. “President Trump incited the insurrection against Congress by using the power of his office to summon his supporters to Washington on January 6th and urging them to march on the Capitol during the counting of electoral votes.”
U.S. Sen. Ben Sasse of Nebraska also mentioned Trump’s efforts to “intimidate the Georgia secretary of state to ‘find votes’ and overturn that state’s election” in his statement.
Trump released a defiant statement after the vote, calling it “yet another phase of the greatest witch hunt in the history of our country.”
“No president has ever gone through anything like it, and it continues because our opponents cannot forget the almost 75 million people, the highest number ever for a sitting president, who voted for us just a few short months ago,” the statement continued.
Trump lost the general election to President Joe Biden, who received 81 million votes. But for weeks he claimed, without evidence, that fraud and abuse allowed the election to be stolen from him. The riot occurred on the day of the joint session of Congress to tally Electoral College votes, and Trump addressed his supporters shortly before the Capitol was breached.
Sen. Mitch McConnell, the Senate minority leader, was among the Republicans who voted to acquit Trump. After the trial ended, the Kentucky senator gave a speech where he said he believed the former president was responsible for provoking the insurrection but that he did not think it was legal to put him on trial.
“We have no power to convict and disqualify a former officeholder who is now a private citizen,” he said.
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