Impeachment trial – Trump acquitted of inciting Capitol attack despite 7 Republicans voting to convict

“Because Rand Paul” is trending on Twitter amid the Republican senator’s continuing refusal to wear a mask in Congress during Donald Trump’s impeachment trial.

The issue appeared to attract extra attention after one British user asked: “Excuse my ignorance as a Brit, but I thought President Biden had mandated the wearing of masks in all federal buildings. So why is Rand Paul not wearing a mask in the Senate?”

The flood of responses were, to put it lightly, not kind about Mr Paul, who has made scientifically false claims about not needing to wear a mask if you’ve already had the coronavirus. Scientists say the public should continue to wear masks regardless.

“Because Rand Paul is a punk and a selfish jerk,” was just one of the thousands of unflattering responses.

As the tweets expanded beyond mask issues, another user wrote, “Because Rand Paul was the only person in the Senate chamber who did not applaud officer Eugene Goodman today”, in reference to Mr Paul’s apparent refusal to applaud the DC police officer who diverted a pro-Trump mob from the Senate on January 6.

Donald Trump’s impeachment lawyers singled out comments from women of colour about police brutality protests and painted them as dangerous during their arguments on Friday, impeachment prosecutors argued.

“What’s not lost on me was so many of them were people of colour and women and black women,” said impeachment manager Stacey Plaskett, who represents the US Virgin Islands. “Black women like myself who are sick and tired of being sick and tired for our children, your children, our children.”

The former president’s legal team used video montages as evidence, which overlayed out-of-context statements from Black women like vice-president Kamala Harris and congresswoman Ayanna Pressley with violent scenes from last summer’s largely peaceful police brutality protests.

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Donald Trump’s second impeachment trial could conclude today, leaving a divided US Senate to decide whether the former president incited his supporters to attack the US Capitol on January 6 in a last-ditch effort to stay in power after his November election defeat.

Mr Trump is the first US president to be impeached twice and the first to face trial after leaving office. If convicted, the Senate could then vote to bar him from running for office again.

Conviction is seen as unlikely, however, as at least 17 Republicans in the 100-seat chamber would have to join all 50 Democrats to find the former president guilty.

Only six Republicans voted with Democrats to move forward with the trial, rejecting an argument made by other Republican senators that the Constitution does not allow Congress to impeach a president who has already left office.

The Senate is due to convene at 10am, and a final vote could come in the afternoon.

Donald Trump’s legal team finally got their chance to lay out their impeachment defence of the ex-president’s role in the Capitol riots.

But as they offered their rebuttal of the powerful case of House impeachment managers that Mr Trump incited the violence that left five people dead on 6 January, they found many of their claims immediately under heavy scrutiny.

Mr Trump’s lawyer Bruce Castor claimed during the defence that “there was no insurrection” at the Capitol.

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Donald Trump should be “very, very worried” over a criminal investigation by Georgia authorities into his infamous phone call with Georgia secretary of state Brad Raffensperger.

Ryan Goodman, a former government special counsel, made the comments alongside footage of an MSNBC interview in which Fulton County district attorney Fani Willis addressed she would be looking into Mr Trump’s “state of mind” when he attempted to pressure Mr Raffensperger into changing Georgia’s election result.

A Republican from Washington state who was one of 10 GOP House members who voted to impeach former Donald Trump late on Friday urged people with knowledge of conversations Trump had during the January 6 Capitol riot to come forward.

Representative Jaime Herrera Beutler said in a statement House minority leader Kevin McCarthy told her he spoke with Mr Trump as rioters were storming the Capitol. She said Mr McCarthy asked Mr Trump to publicly “call off the riot” and told Mr Trump the violent mob were Trump supporters, not far-left antifa members.

In her statement, released via Twitter, Herrera Beutler said: “That’s when, according to McCarthy, the president said: ‘Well, Kevin, I guess these people are more upset about the election than you are.’”

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Senators were reportedly laughing during Donald Trump’s legal team’s controversial defense video as it was played in the Senate on Friday, reports have said.

According to PBS reporter Yamiche Alcindor, both Democratic and Republican senators “were louder than I have ever heard them -- talking and at times openly laughing” during the video.

“During the spliced video featuring Sen Warren for a long while, Senator Tom Cotton, in particular, was laughing and shaking his head,” the reporter said.

Democrats were reportedly exchanging troubled looks” and Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer “looked particularly troubled” during the video “but also laughed and shook his head at times.”

In stark contrast, Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell “sat stone-faced, legs crossed as the video was played. No laughing, no whispering, no looking around.”

Mr Trump’s lawyer's barrage of selectively edited videos to equating the language of the former president to that of other politicians have been widely mocked by critics and condemned by Democrats.

Brian Klaas, a professor of global politics at University College London, has responded to claims by some on the right that “both sides” in US politics are guilty of radicalisation at the fringes.

“US politics features asymmetric radicalization. The farthest left Democrats in Congress want a higher minimum wage & Canadian-style health care,” Mr Klaas tweeted.

“The farthest right Republicans in Congress believe Trump won, praised QAnon, and said school shootings were hoaxes. It’s not the same.”

It comes as fears grow at the direction of a Republican Party increasingly prone to authoritarianism and beliefs in demonstrably false conspiracy theories.

Former House impeachment inquiry majority council Daniel Goldman has insisted that bringing witnesses will not change the outcome of Donald Trump’s impeachment trial.

“Lets be real,” the former lead counsel said, before adding: “Every Senator already knows Trump knew exactly what was happening at the Capitol and with Pence and did nothing.”

“And they know from the 6.01pm tweet that he was happy about it. More witnesses won’t change what they already know.”

A verdict to convict former president Donald Trump is “simply not going to happen at this point,” CNN’s Chief Congressional Correspondent has said.

“Seventeen Republicans would need to break ranks and join 50 democrats, that simply is not going to happen at this point,” CNN’s Manu Raju, who has been reporting from Washington on the trial, said in an appearance on Saturday.

“Maybe six will join but that’s about it,” he added, before noting that there will be a “little bit of uncertainty as we get into the final moments of this trial.”