Over 370 Democrat aides banned together and signed an open letter to members of the Senate on Wednesday, begging them to convict former President Trump for inciting an “attack on our workplace.”
“We are staff who work for members of the U.S. Senate and the U.S. House of Representatives, where it is our honor and privilege to serve our country and our fellow Americans,” the Democrat aides began in the letter, sharing their experiences from the day of the January 6 Capitol protest. The aides expressed the unequivocal belief that both Trump and his political allies incited the attack — a narrative championed by the Democrat-led House lawmakers who voted in favor of impeachment.
“Many of us attended school in the post-Columbine era and were trained to respond to active shooter situations in our classrooms. As the mob smashed through Capitol Police barricades, broke doors and windows, and charged into the Capitol with body armor and weapons, many of us hid behind chairs and under desks or barricaded ourselves in offices,” they said, detailing their experience.
Trump, they claimed, “broke America’s 230-year legacy of the peaceful transition of power when he incited a mob to disrupt the counting of electoral college votes. They again stated that the crowd was “inspired by lies told by the former president and others about the results of the election in a baseless, months-long effort to reject votes lawfully cast by the American people.”
The Democrat aides presented two choices, proclaiming that people either “stand with the republic or against it.”
“As Congressional employees, we don’t have a vote on whether to convict Donald J. Trump for his role in inciting the violent attack at the Capitol, but our Senators do,” they concluded, asking Senate lawmakers to convict Trump and prevent him from holding office again for both their sakes and the sake of the country as a whole.
A conviction in the upcoming Senate impeachment trial, slated to begin next week, appears unlikely. Last week, 45 Senate Republicans formally questioned the constitutionality of proceeding with the trial following Sen. Rand Paul’s (R-KY) motion. Even Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell (R-KY), who previously indicated that he did not yet know how he planned to vote, sided with the majority of his GOP colleagues.
The Senate ultimately tabled the order, with five Republicans joining Democrats: Sens. Mitt Romney (R-UT), Ben Sasse (R-NE), Susan Collins (R-ME), Lisa Murkowski (R-AK), and Pat Toomey (R-PA). Nonetheless, Paul declared the impeachment trial “dead on arrival,” as a conviction would require two-thirds support from the Senate — something that appears even more unlikely following Paul’s move:
The Senate just voted on my constitutional point of order.
45 Senators agreed that this sham of a “trial” is unconstitutional.
That is more than will be needed to acquit and to eventually end this partisan impeachment process.
This “trial” is dead on arrival in the Senate.
— Senator Rand Paul (@RandPaul) January 26, 2021
The Democrat-led House filed a brief this week, concluding that Trump committed “incitement of insurrection against the Republic he swore to protect.” Trump’s lawyers maintain that the Democrats’ allegations are riddled with falsehoods and that the trial itself remains unconstitutional.
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