NC Republicans condemn Burr for guilty vote in Trump impeachment trial
North Carolina Republicans quickly condemned U.S. Sen. Richard Burr’s surprising guilty vote Saturday in the second impeachment trial of former President Donald Trump.
Burr was one of seven Republicans to vote for conviction in the U.S. Senate. The vote was 57-43 in favor of conviction, falling shy of the two-thirds (or 67-vote) threshold needed to convict Trump for his role in inciting the deadly Jan. 6 attack on the Capitol.
“North Carolina Republicans sent Senator Burr to the United States Senate to uphold the Constitution and his vote today to convict in a trial that he declared unconstitutional is shocking and disappointing,” NCGOP chairman Michael Whatley said in a statement.
Former U.S. Rep. Mark Walker, who is running for the retiring Burr’s seat in the 2022 election, sent out a fundraising appeal immediately after Burr’s vote.
“Wrong vote, Sen. Burr. I am running to replace Richard Burr because North Carolina needs a true conservative champion as their next senator,” Walker tweeted.
U.S. Rep. Dan Bishop, a Charlotte Republican, said in a tweet that he supported the immediate censure of Burr.
Burr, 65, is in his third term as a senator after serving five terms in the U.S. House. He hasn’t been seen as a moderate, unlike several of the other Republicans who voted to convict.
And Burr voted twice against holding the trial on constitutional grounds. But once the Senate voted to hold the trial, he said, he considered the merits of the case as an impartial juror.
“The evidence is compelling that President Trump is guilty of inciting an insurrection against a coequal branch of government and that the charge rises to the level of high Crimes and Misdemeanors. Therefore, I have voted to convict,” Burr said in a statement after the vote.
Republican Thom Tillis, North Carolina’s junior senator, voted to acquit Trump after the five-day trial.
The seven Republican votes in favor of conviction was the most ever cast by a president’s own party in the history of American impeachment.
“What it speaks to is that there is not unanimity in the Republican party about this particular conduct. There is not unanimity about what the path forward is or what role Trump should play,” said Donald Corbett, an associate professor of law at N.C. Central University.
Trump’s appeal
Trump lost the 2020 presidential election to Joe Biden, but secured more than 74 million votes from Americans — the second-most in history behind only Biden’s more than 81 million. Throughout the campaign and after the election, Trump repeatedly claimed falsely that the election had been fraudulent and was stolen from him.
Trump’s appeals to overturn the election culminated in a rally on Jan. 6 in Washington, D.C. That was the same day members of Congress were to certify Biden’s electoral college victory with Vice President Mike Pence presiding. Rioters breached the Capitol and at least five people were killed in the immediate aftermath, including one police officer.
“The President promoted unfounded conspiracy theories to cast doubt on the integrity of a free and fair election because he did not like the results. As Congress met to certify the election results, the President directed his supporters to go to the Capitol to disrupt the lawful proceedings required by the Constitution. When the crowd became violent, the President used his office to first inflame the situation instead of immediately calling for an end to the assault,” Burr said in his statement.
Trump was impeached by the U.S. House on Jan. 13, and Biden was inaugurated on Jan. 20. Some Republican members, including Tillis, cast their not guilty votes in constitutional terms.
Although he was unsurprised by the outcome, longtime Republican strategist Carter Wrenn said he thought most Republican senators wanted to avoid a fight with Trump.
“After all the howling and mess we had, impeachment just continued it,” Wrenn said. “I think most people would just as soon it stopped.”
But Burr, Wrenn said, made a better case for the vote to convict Trump than he expected — and he pushed back against the N.C. GOP’s criticism of the senior senator.
“I understand how the Republican Party feels, and I respect their feelings,” Wrenn said. “I just think the American people would be better off if both sides just stop their arguing and bickering and put this part of the 2020 election behind us.”
The state party’s quick rebuke of Burr fits with similar condemnations against other Republicans who have spoken out against Trump, including members of the U.S. House who voted for impeachment. Trump, though he is no longer the president, remains a towering figure in the party.
“Republicans are hedging their bets because they don’t know how much power Trump is going to wield in a few years,” Corbett said. “I think for a lot of them, both individually and collectively, it didn’t make political sense to make him angry. He’s still the most powerful Republican in the country — and he has a long memory.”
Power of the president
Even if Trump doesn’t run for president in 2024, he will likely have an out-sized impact on the GOP primary field. But Trump’s acquittal also underscored, to some, the disparity between the presidency and Congress. Power has undoubtedly been shifting toward the president — no matter the party.
“Have we now collectively in some way altered the concept of checks and balances in the Constitution? That’s the thing that I’m wary about,” Corbett said.
Andy Taylor, professor of political science at N.C. State University, said that process has been a long time coming. “It’s literally impossible,” he said, to get the votes necessary to convict a president in the Senate.
“Members of Congress will talk about being a coequal branch, but not really do anything about it,” Taylor said.
But he noted that Trump made the unequal nature of those branches much more clear.
“He really threw the cold water on us,” Taylor said.
Burr won’t have to face Republican voters in another primary. He announced during his 2016 re-election bid that he is not running again — and has not wavered from that. He could, as other Republicans who have voted against Trump have, face a more official rebuke from the party, such as censure as Bishop suggested.
Ten Republicans in the U.S. House voted for impeachment, and the Senate vote was the most bipartisan in U.S. history during a presidential impeachment. The severity of the attack on the Capitol meant to disrupt the peaceful transfer of power certainly stuck with some members.
Burr called it “an angry mob” and remarked how “dangerously close” members and congressional staff came to crossing paths with the rioters, who were seeking them out on Jan. 6.
“The precipitating event is a real sobering fact and something that this impeachment will be remembered for,” Taylor said. “It’s going to be a very long time before people can expunge that from their memory.”
Others were more complimentary of Burr’s decision. Burr defeated Democrat Deborah Ross in his 2016 re-election bid, but Ross — now a first-term member of the U.S. House — said: “I applaud Senator Burr for voting his conscience.”
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This story was originally published February 13, 2021 at 6:42 PM.
