13 February 2021
Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer (D-N.Y.) on Saturday accused Republicans who voted to acquit Donald Trump during his second impeachment trial of choosing "Trump over country" and failing to "summon the courage or the morality to condemn" the former president's actions leading to the deadly Jan. 6 Capitol siege.
Driving the news: Seven Senate Republicans joined all their Democratic colleagues in the final 57-43 vote, but they failed to reach the two-thirds majority necessary to convict Trump on charges of high crimes and misdemeanors.
What he's saying: “This was about choosing country over Donald Trump. And 43 Republican members … chose Trump. It should be a weight on their conscience today. And it shall be a weight on their conscience in the future.”
- "This was the first presidential impeachment trial in history in which all senators were not only judges and jurors, but witnesses to the constitutional crime that was committed," Schumer said from the Senate floor in his post-trial speech.
- "Unable to dispute the case on the merits, the former president's counsel treated us to partisan vitriol, false equivalents, and outright falsehoods."
- "Essentially, the president's counsel told the Senate that the Constitution was unconstitutional. Thankfully, the Senate took a firm stance, set a firm precedent with a bipartisan vote in favor of our power to try former officials for acts they committed while in office."
- "If President Trump hadn't told his supporters to march to the Capitol, if he hadn't implored them to come to Washington on January 6 in the first place, if he hadn't repeatedly lied to them that the election was stolen, their country was being taken from them, the attack would not have happened."
- "The vast majority of the Senate Republican caucus, including the Republican leader, voted to acquit former President Trump, signing their names in the columns of history alongside his name forever. "
- "The failure to convict Donald Trump will live as a vote of infamy in the history of the United States Senate."
- "The former president tried to overturn the results of a legitimate election and provoked an assault on our own government, and well over half the Senate Republican conference decided to condone it. The most despicable act that any president has ever committed and the majority of Republicans cannot summon the courage or the morality to condemn it."
Thought bubble from Axios' managing editor for politics, Margaret Talev: Schumer was balancing calls to put testimony on the historical record against a near certainty that Trump would be acquitted — and against a desire to clear the path for Biden to be able to govern by getting nominees confirmed and a COVID relief package debates and votes on in the coming weeks.
Go deeper: McConnell votes to acquit, then condemns Trump for Capitol siege
Transcripts show George Floyd told police "I can't breathe" over 20 times
Section2Newly released transcripts of bodycam footage from the Minneapolis Police Department show that George Floyd told officers he could not breathe more than 20 times in the moments leading up to his death.
Why it matters: Floyd's killing sparked a national wave of Black Lives Matter protests and an ongoing reckoning over systemic racism in the United States. The transcripts "offer one the most thorough and dramatic accounts" before Floyd's death, The New York Times writes.
The state of play: The transcripts were released as former officer Thomas Lane seeks to have the charges that he aided in Floyd's death thrown out in court, per the Times. He is one of four officers who have been charged.
- The filings also include a 60-page transcript of an interview with Lane. He said he "felt maybe that something was going on" when asked if he believed that Floyd was having a medical emergency at the time.
What the transcripts say:
- Floyd told the officers he was claustrophobic as they tried to get him into the squad car.
- The transcripts also show Floyd saying, "Momma, I love you. Tell my kids I love them. I'm dead."
- Former officer Derek Chauvin, who had his knee on Floyd's neck for over eight minutes, told Floyd, "Then stop talking, stop yelling, it takes a heck of a lot of oxygen to talk."
Read the transcripts via DocumentCloud.