US senate reaches deal to skip witnesses in Trump impeachment trial

US House Democrats began wrapping up their impeachment case against Donald Trump after a chaotic Senate session in which they gave up a late plan for witness testimony that could have significantly prolonged the trial, and delayed a vote on whether the former president incited the deadly Capitol insurrection.

An unexpected vote in favour of hearing witnesses threw the trial into confusion just as it was on the verge of concluding.

However, both sides ultimately reached a deal to instead enter into the record a statement from a Republican House legislator about a heated phone call between Mr Trump and House Minority Leader Kevin McCarthy on the day of the riot that Democrats say established the former president’s indifference to the violence.

Republicans are anxious to get the trial over with and put any discussion of Mr Trump and the Capitol invasion behind them. Five people were killed in the unrest last month.

Democrats, too, have a motive to move on since the US senate cannot move ahead on President Joe Biden’s agenda – including Covid-19 relief – while the impeachment trial is in session.

While most Democrats are expected to vote to convict the former president, acquittal appears likely with a two-thirds majority required for conviction and the chamber split 50-50 between the parties.

Republican leader Mitch McConnell said he would vote to acquit Mr Trump, according to an inside source. Mr McConnell’s view is likely to influence that of his party colleagues.

At issue on Saturday was whether to subpoena representative Jaime Herrera Beutler of Washington state, one of 10 Republicans to vote for Mr Trump’s impeachment in the House.

She said in a statement on Friday that Mr Trump rebuffed a plea from Mr McCarthy to call off the rioters.

Democrats consider this to be key corroborating evidence that confirms the president’s “wilful dereliction of duty and desertion of duty as commander in chief”.

The situation was resolved when Ms Herrera Beutler’s statement on the call was read aloud into the record for senators to consider as evidence.

As part of the deal, Democrats dropped their planned deposition and Republicans abandoned their threat to subpoena hundreds of their witnesses.

The case then proceeded to closing arguments.

Lead House impeachment manager, representative Jamie Raskin of Maryland, said of Mr Trump: “He abused his office by siding with the insurrectionists at almost every point, rather than with the Congress of the United States, rather than with the Constitution.”

Another impeachment manager, representative Madeleine Dean of Pennsylvania, told senators: “If we don’t set this right and call it what it was – the highest of constitutional crimes by the president of the United States – the past will not be past. The past will become our future.”

Mr Trump’s lawyer Michael van der Veen made his closing arguments on the senate floor.

He said there is no evidence that Mr Trump incited an “armed insurrection” to “overthrow the US government”, and argued that to think that Mr Trump would have wanted that is “absurd”.

Mr van der Veen said the event on January 6 was supposed to be peaceful, but that a small group “hijacked” it for their own purposes.

He also repeated arguments from Friday that other politicians have engaged in incendiary rhetoric, though impeachment managers noted that none of those speeches precipitated an attack on the US government.

Senators meeting as the court of impeachment are restrained in taking up other business without the consent of the Republican minority, which is unlikely.

Rules require senators to be present for the proceedings and this past week almost no other major items have been considered as the trial was under way.

The outcome of the raw and emotional proceedings is expected to reflect a country divided over the former president and the future of his brand of politics.

The verdict could influence not only Mr Trump’s political future, but that of the senators sworn to deliver impartial justice as jurors.

Mr Trump is the only president to be impeached twice, and the first to face trial charges after leaving office.

Unlike last year’s impeachment trial over the Ukraine affair – a complicated charge of corruption and obstruction over his attempts to have the foreign ally dig up dirt on then-campaign rival Mr Biden – this one brought an emotional punch over the unexpected vulnerability of the US tradition of peaceful elections. The charge is singular: incitement of insurrection.

The week-long trial has delivered a grim and graphic narrative of the riot and its consequences in ways that senators, most of whom fled for their own safety that day, acknowledge they are still coming to grips with.

House prosecutors have argued that Mr Trump’s rallying cry to go to the Capitol and “fight like hell”, for his presidency just as Congress was convening January 6 to certify Mr Biden’s election victory, was part of an orchestrated pattern of violent rhetoric and false claims that unleashed the mob.

Five people died, including a rioter who was shot and a police officer.

Mr Trump’s lawyers countered that Mr Trump’s words were not intended to incite the violence and that impeachment is nothing but a “witch hunt” designed to prevent him from serving in office again.