Impeachment trial: Donald Trump could be fixed on his fate this Saturday

Donald Trump, the only US president to have twice suffered the infamy of “impeachment”, has every chance of being acquitted, as in his first impeachment trial a year ago. Given his strong popularity on the right, it seems unlikely that 17 Republican senators will vote with the 50 elected Democrats and form the qualified majority necessary to convict him, a verdict that would pave the way for a term of ineligibility.

Friday, his Democratic successor Joe Biden, who spent more than 35 years on the benches of the Senate, said he was “impatient” to see what his “friends” Republicans were going to do, hoping that they would take “their responsibilities”. A first vote at the opening of the trial on Tuesday outlined the balance of power: 56 elected officials, including 6 Republicans, had deemed the trial consistent with the Constitution, even if Donald Trump left the White House.

“The wick”

Since then, the elected representatives of the House of Representatives, responsible for bringing the accusation against the former real estate magnate, have held a relentless presentation of the facts over two days. Combining shock videos of the violence and selected excerpts from presidential diatribes, they accused Donald Trump of having given up his role of “commander-in-chief” to slip into the clothes of “instigator-in-chief”. According to them, he “stoked the anger” of his supporters for months with a “big lie”: by presenting himself as the victim of an election “stolen” by “fraud” of which he has never provided proof. .

And on January 6, when the elected representatives of Congress certified the victory of Joe Biden, he “lit the fuse”, they said, by throwing at them: “Fight like devils! “Once the assault underway, he waited long hours before calling on his supporters to” return home “, abandoning, according to Democratic prosecutors, his oath to protect institutions. In the end, five people died, and hundreds were injured or traumatized, they estimated.

“Unfair”

Friday, the lawyers of 45^e President of the United States counterattacked in a concise and muscular three-hour pitch. According to them, the attack was “horrible”, but the trial is “unfair”: it is an act of “political revenge” intended “to prohibit speeches that the majority does not like”, they launched. Drawing in their turn carefully edited videos, they ensured that Donald Trump’s lexical field of combat was part of “ordinary political rhetoric”, used on the left as well as on the right and protected by the First Amendment of the Constitution which guarantees freedom. expression.

They notably screened a ten-minute film, in which all the figures of the Democratic Party, including Joe Biden, promise to “fight” in all tones. The defense also judged “absurd” to link the violence to the speech of January 6, stressing that Donald Trump had called on his supporters to march “in a peaceful and patriotic manner” on Capitol Hill. The coup “had been planned in advance” by “criminals” and cannot be blamed on the president, they still pleaded.

“Incendiary”

During a tense question-and-answer session, prosecutors retorted that Donald Trump had only used the term “peaceful” once in his speech, whose overall tone was “inflammatory” according to them. And they hammered out that the bloody coup did not come “in a vacuum”.

On Saturday, the two parties will be able to request, if they wish, additional documents or testimony and it will be up to the senators to validate, by a simple majority vote, their request. If the prosecution and the defense abstain, or if their request is rejected, they will then have two hours maximum each for their indictment and their plea. The one hundred elected members can withdraw for a moment to deliberate, before voting on the verdict.