Among the more striking aspects of the Republicans’ response to last week’s historic second impeachment of Donald Trump, for “incitement to insurrection,” were their warnings that holding the President to account for his role in the assault on the Capitol, on January 6th, would only lead to more violence. On Wednesday night, just hours after the House vote, Senator Lindsey Graham, of South Carolina, told Sean Hannity, on Fox News, that the impeachment was itself an incitement. Graham, who had flown with Trump to Texas the day before, said that President-elect Joe Biden should tell Chuck Schumer, the incoming Senate Majority Leader, and Nancy Pelosi, the Speaker of the House, to call off the proceedings ahead of a trial in the Senate: “If you want to end the violence, end impeachment.”
In light of the events at the Capitol, which left five people dead, the possibility of violence can’t be regarded lightly. But bending to that threat would mean acting as if the Capitol were still in the hands of the mob. The insurrectionists whom Trump directed to prevent the tallying of Electoral College votes have, in a sense, been redeployed in an effort to secure impunity for him. That menace lies behind Republican complaints about how “divisive” it would be to convict Trump. It is why members of the National Guard have been camped in the halls of Congress, using their backpacks as pillows; why more than a dozen major Metro stations in Washington are closed; and why Airbnb will not book rooms in the city until after Biden has been inaugurated.
It is also why the Senate must proceed undeterred with Trump’s trial, which will begin, as the Constitution requires, the day after Pelosi sends to the Senate the single article of impeachment approved by the House. (In a signing ceremony after the vote, Pelosi used the lectern that a member of the mob had taken from her office.) The case is solid: the article encompasses not only the incendiary rally before the attack, at which Trump told his supporters to head to the Capitol and fight, but his earlier calls to battle and his blatantly illegal demand that Georgia officials “find” votes for him—or else. Although no other President has been tried after leaving office, there is a precedent in the 1876 case of William Belknap, the Secretary of War, who was unable to head off impeachment by resigning.
A conviction, which could result in Trump’s being barred from ever again holding federal office, would require sixty-seven votes. That means at least seventeen votes would have to come from Republicans; so far, just a handful seem ready to convict. (Among them is Mitt Romney, the only Republican who voted to convict in Trump’s last trial, for the attempted extortion of the President of Ukraine.) The outgoing Majority Leader, Mitch McConnell, has said that he is waiting to hear the legal arguments; he and other senators are also doubtless gauging their own vulnerability.
Meanwhile, Graham is hardly alone in trying to scare his colleagues into going easy on the President. In the House debate on Wednesday, Jason Smith, of Missouri, said that impeachment would “bring up the hate and fire more than ever before”; Bob Good, of Virginia, cautioned that it would “further offend” Trump voters; and Andy Biggs, of Arizona, told his colleagues in a frantic address, “Yours will be a Pyrrhic victory,” because “you will have made him a martyr!” The effort to hold Trump accountable, Biggs said, would “douse the remaining burning embers of this movement with gasoline.”
Biggs is part of a cohort of representatives who have falsely insisted, in particularly florid terms, that the election was stolen. Madison Cawthorn, of North Carolina, and Mo Brooks, of Alabama, addressed the rally where Trump spoke and the mob gathered—Brooks told those present to “stop at the Capitol” and begin “kicking ass.” Then again, two-thirds of the House Republican caucus voted to reject electors; the Republican side of the debate was a pageant of extremists and loyalists. Democrats have openly raised the possibility that Republican legislators or their staff members abetted the assault—a stunning allegation that warrants serious investigation. (There are also questions about the role of some law-enforcement officers, despite the heroism of others.) Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, of New York, said she believes that certain House Republicans “would create opportunities to allow me to be hurt, kidnapped, etc.”
Peter Meijer, of Wisconsin, one of only ten Republicans who voted for impeachment, said that he knew of members of Congress who were acquiring body armor. One rattling spectacle last week was the near-hysteria of some Republicans at the placement of magnetometers at the entrance to the House chamber, to prevent guns from being brought in. Many walked around them, or pushed their way past Capitol police after setting off the alarm. Lauren Boebert, of Colorado, has said that she should be able to carry her Glock onto the floor of the House. Trumpism and America’s gun pathology have become intertwined.
Yet it was the Democrats who were told, in the words of Tom Cole, a Republican from Oklahoma, that they needed to “think about this more soberly.” Other Republicans said that the assault on the Capitol was actually the Democrats’ fault, because they had countenanced the Black Lives Matter movement, cancel culture, and people bothering Trump officials in restaurants. Republicans complained about a “double standard,” as if Trump were the real victim. (If they were looking for a double standard, they could have found it in the tolerance afforded to a mostly white mob, even as its members broke down the Capitol’s doors.)
In the end, it is the Republicans who seem frightened—“paralyzed by fear,” as Jason Crow, a Colorado Democrat, put it. Some may be afraid that Trump will lash out and that his base will turn against them—as it already has turned against, among others, Vice-President Mike Pence and Representative Liz Cheney. Trump still has that power, in part, because elected Republicans have functioned as his willing hostages. Some are true believers; others opportunistically colluded with him, feeding panic about election fraud, race, immigration, class, and the media, as well as promoting QAnon conspiracy theories. All of them may be wary of a trial that will expose what their party has become.
But fear is its own trap. A trial—and other investigations that allow the country to plainly face what happened on January 6th—can help those in its grasp to break out of it. To borrow Lindsey Graham’s formulation, the way to end this violent chapter is, indeed, for impeachment to end—with a trial and a conviction. ♦
