Trump was acquitted of inciting the riot in the Senate trial, he could still face criminal charges. The trial, which began on February 9, lasted only five days.Īlthough Mr. Biden was inaugurated seven days after the House voted to impeach Mr. He refused to agree to an emergency session of the Senate to conduct the trial, arguing there was not enough time to conduct it fairly before President Biden took office. McConnell prevented the Senate from holding the impeachment trial before Mr.
"If President Trump were still in office," he said, "I would have carefully considered whether the House managers proved their specific charge." "This is a close question, no doubt," he said. He said he respects his colleagues who have reached either conclusion about the constitutionality of convicting. McConnell said, "I believe the Senate was right not to grab power the Constitution doesn't give us." "They did this," McConnell said, "because they'd been fed wild falsehoods by the most powerful man on earth, because he was angry he lost an election."īut McConnell argued that the former president "is constitutionally not eligible for conviction" because he is no longer in office - even though the Senate voted 56-44 earlier this week that it was constitutionally possible to convict a former official. McConnell described the violence on January 6, saying that Americans beat and bloodied their own police, stormed the Senate floor and built a gallows and chanted about murdering the Vice President. "Having that belief," McConnell said, "was a foreseeable consequence of the growing crescendo of false statements, conspiracy theories and reckless hyperbole which the defeated president kept shouting into the largest megaphone on planet earth." McConnell said the people who stormed the Capitol believed they were acting on the wishes and instructions of Mr.