The US Senate has fallen short of the two-thirds majority needed to convict former President Donald Trump on a charge of incitement to insurrection over the Capitol riot on 6 January, the BBC reports.
A majority of senators – 57 to 43, including seven Republicans – voted to convict Mr Trump, 10 votes short of the 67 required for conviction.
At the trial, a Republican member of the House of Representatives, Jaime Herrera-Beutler, told of a phone call between the former US president and a top Republican official, Kevin McCarthy, while the riot was going on. She said Mr McCarthy had told her about the call on the day.
She explained that Mr McCarthy had implored Mr Trump to call off the rioters, but the president had wrongly blamed left-wing activists broadly known as “antifa”.
“McCarthy refuted that and told the president that these were Trump supporters,” Ms 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.'”
In their closing statements, the Democratic House of Representatives lawmakers appointed to shepherd the process through the Senate warned that it would be dangerous to acquit Mr Trump.
However, Mr Trump’s lawyer, Michael van der Veen, called the proceedings a “show trial” and said the Democrats were “obsessed” with impeaching Mr Trump.
After his acquittal, Mr Trump released a statement denouncing the trial as “the greatest witch hunt in history”. He said no president had “ever gone through anything like it” and that “the movement to Make America Great Again” had “only just begun”.
If he had been convicted, the Senate could have voted to bar him from running for office ever again.
The senior Republican in Congress, Senator Mitch McConnell, warned Mr Trump could still be held liable in court.
“He didn’t get away with anything yet. Yet. We have a criminal justice system in this country, we have civil litigation and former presidents are not immune from being held accountable by either one,” he said.
President Joe Biden said: “While the final vote did not lead to a conviction, the substance of the charge is not in dispute.
“This sad chapter in our history has reminded us that democracy is fragile. That it must always be defended. That we must be ever vigilant. That violence and extremism have no place in America. And that each of us has a duty and responsibility as Americans, and especially as leaders, to defend the truth and to defeat the lies.”
