WASHINGTON — Sen. Pat Toomey of Pennsylvania voted Saturday to convict former President Donald Trump of inciting the Jan. 6 insurrection at the Capitol, likely closing the book on a winding and complicated relationship between the two Republicans.
Toomey, who is not seeking reelection when his term ends in 2022, was one of seven Republicans who voted against Trump in his second impeachment trial. The 57 total votes in favor of conviction fell short of the two-thirds, or 67, needed to convict Trump, leading to his second impeachment acquittal.
Every Democrat voted to convict Trump, including Sen. Bob Casey of Pennsylvania and New Jersey Sens. Bob Mendez and Cory Booker.
Toomey, who voted for Trump in both of the former president’s campaigns, had signaled for weeks he was open to a conviction, saying days after the riot that Trump had “committed impeachable offenses.” And he was one of six Republicans who voted to proceed with the trial, rejecting the argument embraced by most of the GOP that it’s unconstitutional to try a former president.
But as a juror hearing evidence, he said little during the trial and hadn’t declared how he planned to vote on the impeachment article itself. He voted against calling witnesses Saturday.
Over the years, Toomey supported the vast majority of Trump’s policies. But he also criticized some of the former president’s most incendiary conduct, and had made clear his anger at the GOP attempt to throw out Pennsylvania’s election results.
On the day of the Capitol attack, Toomey delivered a point-by-point rebuttal of the push by Trump and other Republicans, including many in Pennsylvania, to throw out his state’s electoral votes — a move that would have effectively disenfranchised the nearly seven million Pennsylvanians who voted in the 2020 election.
After the insurrection, when the Capitol had been cleared and lawmakers returned to debate protected by security in tactical gear, Toomey pointed the blame directly at Trump.
“We witnessed today the damage that can result when men in power and responsibility refuse to acknowledge the truth,” Toomey said on the Senate floor. “We saw bloodshed, because a demagogue chose to spread falsehoods and sow distrust of his own fellow Americans.”
Toomey had also called for Trump to resign — much to the ire of some Pennsylvania Republicans, some who condemned Toomey for breaking with the former president, a contrast with the liberal critics who for years argued he was too supportive of Trump.
Pat Toomey is ready to work with Joe Biden. A little.The senator had long been uneasy with Trump, but also supportive of his agenda. As he ran for reelection in 2016, Toomey ducked questions about whether he would support the Republican nominee until hours before polls closed on Election Day. He pledged to be “an independent voice” and admitted to being surprised when Trump won.
But once Trump was in office, Toomey sided with him often in the name of advancing conservative policies. He wrote much of Trump’s signature tax cuts and his attempt to repeal the Affordable Care Act, and backed the president’s push to appoint a raft of conservative judges. He voted with Trump’s position roughly 85% of the time, according to the website FiveThirtyEight. Toomey also opposed the first impeachment of Trump, saying the president had behaved inappropriately in pressuring Ukrainian leaders to smear Joe Biden, but that Trump’s actions didn’t meet the high bar for removing a president from office.
But Toomey also criticized some of Trump’s personal conduct, including his equivocal response after neo-Nazis clashed with counter-protesters in Charlottesville, Virginia, in 2017, and a tweet urging four Democratic women of color to “go back” to the “broken and crime infested places from which they came.”
