WASHINGTON — Donald Trump’s historic second impeachment trial ended Saturday with acquittal on a 57-43 vote, with seven Republicans and all Democrats voting that the former president incited insurrection.

Though 10 votes shy of the two-thirds needed, it was the most bipartisan vote for conviction in any of the four presidential trials in U.S. history and, by far, the shortest.

Democrats insisted the trial would leave an indelible mark on Trump’s legacy. The 45th president is the only U.S. president impeached and acquitted twice.

“He has been discredited in the eyes of the American people and in the judgment of history,” said Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer, a New York Democrat.

Texas Sens. John Cornyn and Ted Cruz voted for acquittal.

The Republicans who voted to convict were Sens. Richard Burr of North Carolina, Bill Cassidy of Louisiana, Susan Collins of Maine, Lisa Murkowski of Alaska, Mitt Romney of Utah, Ben Sasse of Nebraska and Pat Toomey of Pennsylvania.

One year and one week ago, at Trump’s first trial, Romney had been the only Republican voting to convict and remove him from office on a charge of abuse of power.

The Senate Republican leader, Mitch McConnell of Kentucky, said he based his vote to acquit on the view that Trump is “constitutionally ineligible” for impeachment because he is no longer president. But in a remarkable floor speech after the verdict, McConnell said it’s likely he would have voted differently if Trump had still been in office.

“President Trump is practically and morally responsible for provoking the events of the day. No question about it,” McConnell said, accusing Trump of peddling a “wild myth” that he had won the election and engaging in “unconscionable” behavior before and during the Jan. 6 attack.

“The leader of the free world cannot spend weeks thundering that shadowy forces are stealing our country and then feign surprise when people believe him and do reckless things,” he said.

“They let him off on a technicality,” said Rep. Joaquin Castro, D-San Antonio, one of the nine impeachment managers, taking solace in McConnell’s acknowledgement “that we overwhelmingly proved our case that, substantively, Donald Trump is guilty of inciting an insurrection.”

Trump, who refused to testify, expressed defiance from his South Florida resort.

“Our historic, patriotic and beautiful movement to Make America Great Again has only just begun,” he said after the verdict, complaining that Democrats had gotten “a free pass to denigrate the rule of law, defame law enforcement, cheer mobs … and persecute, blacklist, cancel and suppress” anyone they disagree with, while he had to endure “yet another phase of the greatest witch hunt in the history of our country.”

Throughout the trial, House managers had faced dim prospects of prying loose the 17 Republicans needed to convict Trump for unleashing a violent mob in order to stop Congress from certifying President Joe Biden’s victory.

Defense attorney Michael van der Veen blamed the Jan. 6 attack on “fringe left and right groups,” repeating a favorite Trump claim, debunked by the FBI and other authorities, that antifa and other leftists had infiltrated the mob and acted as provocateurs.

“He was not trying to foment an insurrection,” van der Veen said. “At no point did you hear anything that could ever possibly be construed as Mr. Trump encouraging or sanctioning insurrection.”

After the verdict, gloating, he told reporters that “we slammed them down on the mat and won this case.”

The prosecution saw the case differently.

“None of this would have happened without the president,” Rep. Jamie Raskin, D-Md., the lead House manager, told senators sitting in judgment in a chamber that had been overrun by pro-Trump militants. “This country and the world know who Donald Trump is. This trial is about who we are. This is about whether our country demands a peaceful, nonviolent transfer of power.”

The House impeached Trump one week after the riot, and two weeks before his term expired.

For Democrats, part of the goal was to draw a bright line between acceptable and intolerable presidential conduct. Another was to put Republicans on the spot.

“Look at what Republicans have been forced to defend. Look at what Republicans have chosen to forgive. … 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,” Schumer said on the Senate floor moments after the verdict. “Remember how close our democracy came to ruin.”

Few Republicans had shown any inclination to hold Trump accountable for the insurrection. Six voted with Democrats on Tuesday to set aside an objection that an ex-president is no longer subject to their jurisdiction.

House managers pressed ahead, appealing to a sense of shame and patriotic duty in hopes of overcoming party loyalty and fears of Trump’s wrath and backlash from his ardent base.

But even after his election defeat, Trump casts a long shadow over the GOP.

“You’ll be hearing a lot more from him in the coming days,” spokesman Jason Miller told reporters at the Capitol after the reading Trump’s statement.

Cornyn said it would set a dangerous precedent to impeach a former president and offered one of McConnell’s arguments — that a former president could be subjected to investigation and prosecution for things he did while in office.

Cruz called the charge “a rushed act of partisan retribution.”

Gilberto Hinojosa, chairman of the Texas Democratic Party, called the Texas senators “traitors to our country’s democracy.”

Pattern of behavior

Just before the attack, Trump told supporters that “if you don’t fight like hell, you’re not going to have a country anymore.”

The prosecution built its case not just on Trump’s incendiary remarks to an angry, combustible crowd just before the riot but also on his months of falsehoods, warning that the election would be stolen and claiming afterward that it had, in fact, been stolen.

On Friday night, Rep. Jaime Herrera Butler of Washington, one of the 10 House Republicans who had voted for impeachment, revealed a damning conversation relayed by House GOP leader Kevin McCarthy, who had pleaded with Trump to send help during the siege.

Trump’s response: “Well, Kevin, I guess these people are more upset about the election than you are.”

McConnell noted that with the riot underway, “even with police officers bleeding and broken glass covering the Capitol floor,” Trump kept repeating lies about the election.

One person provoked the riot, he said. “Just one.”

“Mitch McConnell clearly feels that Donald Trump remains a huge problem for the Republican Party even if he has been disgraced in the eyes of the country,” Raskin said afterward.

House Speaker Nancy Pelosi blasted McConnell for only now affirming the case against Trump, after refusing to bring the Senate back into session before Jan. 20, when Republicans lost control of the Senate, for Trump to stand trial while he was still president.

“It was a very disingenuous speech,” she said.

McConnell announced his intention to vote for acquittal shortly before Saturday’s session began. His wife, Elaine Chao, was one of the Trump Cabinet members who resigned in protest after the riot.

Uproar over witnesses

Senators arrived at the Capitol in a freezing drizzle Saturday expecting to move straight to closing arguments. They ended up voting 55-45 to approve a surprise request from the House managers to hear testimony from Herrera Butler.

As the sides haggled over how to proceed, Cruz called the prospect of witnesses a “Pandora’s box” that Democrats would regret opening and attributed the demand to desperation.

“Leftist Twitter got really upset last night that they weren’t calling witnesses,” he said. “They haven’t proven their case.”

With senators in both parties eager to get the ordeal behind them, a deal was struck. Raskin read the congresswoman’s statement into the record and the trial moved to closing arguments.

The McCarthy call was one of many pleas from besieged lawmakers via social media and TV that Trump ignored, even as he continued to heckle Vice President Mike Pence via Twitter, and called at least two GOP senators to urge them to block certification of Biden’s election.

“Did he quickly try to get in touch with or denounce the Proud Boys, the Oath Keepers, the Save America rally organizers and everyone on the extreme right and tell them that this was not what he had in mind, it’s a big mistake, call it off?” Raskin asked. “No. He delighted in it. He reveled in it. He exulted in it. He could not understand why the people around him did not share his delight.”

“He further incited them while failing to defend us,” Raskin said. “If that is not a high crime and misdemeanor, then what is?”

Trump refused to testify, and Cruz agreed that he shouldn’t have to.

“There is a long tradition in our trials that is reflected in the Bill of Rights that any individual is not required to testify against themselves,” the senator said.

Cruz and two other GOP senators, Lindsey Graham and Mike Lee, met several times in a side room with Trump’s defense team during the trial, providing legal and strategic advice. Such consultations would be wildly inappropriate in a courtroom, but, as Cruz and Trump’s attorneys pointed out, impeachments don’t follow the rules of civil and criminal trials.

Trump’s attorneys had spent just three hours Friday defending his conduct, calling it “a preposterous and monstrous lie” that a “law and order president” could have condoned the assault on Congress.

House managers had spent 12 hours Wednesday and Thursday showing a pattern of behavior by Trump to glorify political violence against his adversaries, from cheering a road rage incident in Texas involving a Biden campaign bus to offering to pay legal fees for rallygoers who punched protesters.

They also built the case that Trump had inflamed followers with a “big lie” about election fraud.

More than 60 state and federal courts threw out Trump’s claims as baseless and, in some cases, laughable.

The prosecution relied on Trump’s long record of outlandish claims and anti-democratic rhetoric, showing senators clip after clip to demonstrate how he had primed supporters for violence, then lit the fuse the day of the riot and proved his ill motives by refusing to call off supporters or send troops to protect the Capitol, Congress and his own vice president.

The day of the riot: “You don’t concede when there’s theft involved.”

The day after Election Day: “They’re trying to steal an election.”

More than a month earlier: “It’s a rigged election — it’s the only way we’re going to lose.”

The managers showed a clip of former Dallas tea party activist Katrina Pierson, a Trump campaign surrogate, warming up the pre-riot crowd. “They haven’t seen a resistance until they have a seen a patriot fight for their country,” she said.

“This conduct took time,” said Rep. Madeleine Dean, D-Pa.

As McConnell put it: “No doubt, the people who stormed this building believed they were acting on the wishes and instructions of their president. And their having that belief was a foreseeable consequence of the growing crescendo of false statements, conspiracy theories and reckless hyperbole which the defeated president kept shouting into the largest megaphone on planet Earth.”