Second Keynote Address.

• Author: Durbin, Senator Richard

I want to thank Professor Frank Bowman and Missouri Law Review for holding this symposium on the impeachment trials of President Donald Trump. The topic is critically important and timely.

It was just two years ago this month that the Senate acquitted President Trump in the first impeachment trial, and one year ago this week, he was acquitted in the second trial for inciting an insurrection against the government of the United States. Now, in the first trial, Republican Senators voted to prohibit the trial managers, the actual prosecutors, from subpoenaing any witnesses or documents. They won because they were in the majority. Before both trials, enough Republican Senators, known as jurors, announced that they had already made up their minds to acquit the President--that the not-guilty verdicts were essentially rendered even before the trial started.

That raises an obvious question. The Constitution sets a high bar, two-thirds of the vote in the Senate to convict and remove a President from office. In the four impeachment trials of three different presidents, that super majority threshold has never been met. The closest, 1868, President Andrew Johnson escaped conviction by a single vote. The whole world watched in disbelief as Donald Trump summoned a mob to Washington, told them they had to "fight like hell," pointed to the Capitol, and turned them loose. And then did nothing, did absolutely nothing for hours to stop the pillaging and carnage. Even as police officers were being poisoned with bear spray, pummeled with weapons including iron bars and even flag poles. I was in the middle of that horror. I lived through it. The whole world witnessed it. And yet, only seven of the fifty Republican Senators voted to convict President Trump in his second trial.

Combined with all fifty Democrat and Independent Senators, that made for fifty-seven guilty votes. Clear majority. But still at least ten votes short of what was needed to remove President Trump from office. So, here's the question. Given the pre-ordained verdicts, were the two impeachment trials of Donald J. Trump a mistake? A waste of time? In this age of hyper-partisanship, is it even possible for the Senate to remove from office a president who commits high crimes and misdemeanors, or is impeachment now just an empty threat?

Before I address those issues, let me give you a bit of my background. In addition to now chairing the Senate Judiciary Committee, I'm one of only fourteen senators...