Senate Republicans largely voted against trying former President Donald Trump after he was impeached with just a few days left in his term in the House for incitement of insurrection at the U.S. Capitol on Jan. 6. Only five Republican senators voted against tabling a bill forced by Sen. Rand Paul from Kentucky, which, if passed, would have declared the trial unconstitutional and ended.
By a 55 to 45 vote, the Democratic-controlled Senate narrowly stopped a Republican effort to dismiss the impeachment trial of Trump, which Republicans claimed was unconstitutional because Trump has already left office. However, there is precedent for impeaching officials that have already left office. In 1876, the House impeached the then-Secretary of War William Belknap after he had already resigned, and the Senate took up the trial even after he left office, although he was later acquitted.
The only five Republicans to vote against the bill, forced onto the floor by Sen. Rand Paul, R-Ky, were Sens. Lisa Murkowski, R-Alaska; Susan Collins, R-Maine; Mitt Romney, R-Utah; Ben Sasse, R-Neb.; and Pat Toomey, R-Pa. All of these people were previously expected to vote for conviction. Even Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell, R-Ky., who had previously said that he believed Trump had committed “impeachable offenses,” voted for the measure, and Sen. Rob Portman of Ohio, who announced his retirement Monday, voted for it, too. Every single Senate Democrat voted against the measure.
Though the trial proceedings will commence as scheduled beginning Feb. 9, it looks unlikely that the former president will be found guilty in the Senate. It takes a two-thirds majority to convict a federal official, which means that 17 Republicans will be required to vote along with the 50 Democrats in order to convict Trump. Another vote (which would only require a simple majority) would be required after that to disqualify Trump from ever holding office again. The possibility of 12 Republicans changing their minds between now and the final vote to convict is slim.
Even the Republicans who had been supportive of conviction signaled it was unlikely for the trial to succeed in the Senate. Collins, one of the most moderate Senate Republicans, said she believed “it’s extraordinarily unlikely that the president will be convicted.”
Any window that previously existed for a bipartisan coalition of Democrats and Republicans to work together to condemn the former president for his actions seems firmly shut by now. The GOP was reminded again of the strong grip Trump maintained over the party even though he was already out of office, and the 10 House Republicans who crossed the party line and voted to impeach the president are facing backlash both from the party and their constituents.
If McConnell, the powerful Senate Republican, was willing to vote against starting a trial in the Senate even after signaling that he believed personally disliked and committed impeachable offenses, there is virtually no possibility of a bipartisan conviction coalition forming.
This could mean one of two things for the GOP. Either the party was still firmly clinging on to a much-hated president who was soundly rejected by voters last fall, or Republicans feared being primaried by pro-Trump candidates when they will be next up for reelection, which Trump has said he would do to any disloyal Republican. Either way, it isn’t looking too good for the party. Especially for those in swing districts and states, Democrats could easily exploit the Republicans’ loyalty to a president that potentially incited insurrection and could use this as a powerful message to get Democratic voters out again in two years’ time to vote away the Trump loyalists.
And the 2022 Senate map doesn’t look good for Republicans, either. The party will need to defend many seats in swing states, while there are only three potentially competitive Democratic-held seats. In fact, all the competitive Democratic seats are all in states won by President Biden, and so the ground for the GOP to take back the majority is quite slim.
The GOP has tried to take an approach that because the Constitution doesn’t mention it, it would mean that the Senate does not have the authority to try former officials even if they had been impeached while in office. However, some constitutional experts say that a trial of a former official is consistent with the framers’ intentions to allow for impeachment, which ensures public officials remain accountable for their actions. If not, those officials could commit high crimes and misdemeanors in their last weeks in office knowing that they would not be punished for it. The experts in this comp included a founder of the Federalist Society, a conservative group.