Thursday, August 5, 2021

Trump impeachment trial confronts memories of Capitol siege


Washington, February 6: The impeachment trial of Donald Trump is more than an effort to convict the former president of inciting an insurrection. It’s a chance for a public accounting and remembrance of the worst attack on the US Capitol in 200 years.

Todd Shaw, an associate professor at University of South Carolina, said the founders envisioned a check on the presidency and the trial provides a moment that will demarcate whether American democracy makes a course correction and says “things have gone too far” — or not, he said.
“We’re in a period where a lot of Americans are very aware of that question,” he said.
Defenders of the former president are casting doubt over the legality of the impeachment trial, the rationale for punishing an elected official no longer in office and the political fallout of preventing him from being elected again.
Even Republican critics of Trump, who watched in horror as he encouraged a rally mob outside the White House to make its way to the Capitol, have cooled their outrage with the passage of time and as the reality of Trump’s enduring hold on the party takes shape.
Sen. Ted Cruz, R-Texas, who was among those leading Trump’s charge to challenge Biden’s election, mocked the Senate impeachment case as a “show trial” and waste of time. “It’s time to move on,” he said.
But Sen. Richard Blumenthal, D-Conn., a former prosecutor, said a trial can have a lasting effect of informing the public, regardless of the verdict or outcome.
“A public trial serves a vital purpose,” he said. “What Donald Trump mobilised and emboldened and incited is an expression of domestic terrorism that the public needs to see and understand.”
Several lawmakers stood before the House late Thursday and shared their remembrances: seeing the crowds gather outside the Capitol grounds and hearing the taunts, screams and glass breaking down the halls.
And then “the feeling,” as Rep. Dean Phillips, D-Minn., put it, “of being trapped.”
The House and Senate had been tallying the Electoral College vote certifying Biden’s election victory when Trump, who had refused to concede, his supporters to head to the Capitol.
Phillips said that, as he heard the screams inside the building, he realised a pencil was about all he had for defense. He thought about moving over to the Republican side of the House chamber “so we could blend in.” He and others believed the rioters would “spare us if they simply mistook us for Republicans.” Then, he said, he realized something — for his colleagues who are not white like he is, “blending in was not an option.”
Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, D-N.Y., said the thousands of personal stories from that day, one “just as valid and important as the other,” need to be told at a time when some are trying to minimize what happened. She herself faced detractors who criticised her account as exaggerated.

House Speaker Nancy Pelosi has asked lawmakers to consider compiling their experiences in essays.
Pelosi led Democrats in impeaching Trump, the only president twice impeached, and the first in history to face trial after leaving office.
“Why bother? Why bother?” Pelosi asked. “Ask our founders why bother. Ask those who wrote the Constitution. Ask Abraham Lincoln.”
Pelosi said the House impeachment managers will make their case and “we’ll see if it’s going to be a Senate of courage or cowardice.”
Walking into the Capitol, it’s a changed place. Outside, razor wire tops tall fences surrounding an extended perimeter, even blocking off the nation’s bookshelves at the Library of Congress. (AP)