Tears in Senate as impeachment trial told of Trump mob
A CONGRESSMAN fought back tears at the opening of Donald Trump’s second impeachment trial as he told how people around him feared for their lives when a mob stormed the US Capitol.
Representative Jamie Raskin said staff and politicians were calling loved ones to say goodbye because ‘they thought they were going to die’ when Trump supporters invaded the iconic building in Washington DC last month.
Opening the case at the Senate, he played a dramatic ten-minute video featuring Mr Trump’s speech during a rally earlier that day and the chaos and violence that ensued.
Mr Raskin also became emotional as he described his fears for the safety of his 24-year-old daughter, Tabitha, who was inside the Capitol building during the riot, which happened just one day after his son’s funeral.
The historic trial got under way last night as Mr Trump’s lawyers failed in a lastditch attempt to have the
charge of inciting insurrection thrown out. Lawyers for the 74-year-old – the first US president to be impeached twice – argued the case was unconsti
tutional because he had now left office.
However, Democrats say they have ‘overwhelming’ evidence of his guilt while his defence team are claiming that rioters acted independently.
If found guilty, Mr Trump could be barred from holding public office again.
A TYPE of Covid-19 found in Bristol is a ‘variant of concern’, it was announced last night.
Another strain in Liverpool is ‘under investigation’, said the government’s new and emerging respiratory virus threats advisory group.
It follows the mutant variations discovered in Kent, Brazil and South Africa which have driven the recent surge in cases and deaths.
Extra Covid testing – already in use in areas such as Ealing – is to be carried out in the south London borough of Lambeth due to concerns over the South African version.
But the advisory group said it had a high degree of confidence that the vaccines would work against variants.
And Dr Susan Hopkins, from Public Health England, said it was reassuring that neither the South African nor the Bristol variant were spreading quickly.
‘We aren’t seeing week on week increases in either of them, they’re very much staying static,’ she said.
Dr Hopkins added there was a good chance to control the variants while lockdown measures continued.
But she warned: ‘As we start to release in March, April, May, this will become much more challenging.’
Meanwhile, figures suggested that the second wave of the virus may have peaked in the third week of January. Deaths reached a high of 1,404 on January 19, said the Office for National Statistics. But, since then, the daily toll has not been above 1,300.
Prof Rowland Kao, of the University of Edinburgh, said: ‘The deaths we are seeing [in the ONS figures] are at least in part due to the very large numbers of infections we saw that continued into January.
‘The fact that the absolute numbers are on the decline mirrors the decline in cases we have seen over the last few weeks, and is good news in that it is further evidence that the epidemic appears to be on the decline.’
The ONS includes all cases where Covid was mentioned on the death certificate, whereas the government’s daily running total is of fatalities within 28 days of a positive test.
The ONS figures show there had been 126,023 deaths by January 29 but the latest government total announced yesterday was 113,850, up by 1,052 in 24 hours.
There were 19 consecutive days – from January 7 to 25 – when the daily death toll was above 1,000, according to the ONS. That compares with 23 consecutive days during the first wave, when the number of lives lost peaked at 1,457 on April 8.
In the week ending on January 29, 8,433 deaths registered in England and Wales had Covid-19 on the certificate. This was the second highest weekly number since the pandemic began.
The figure is up slightly from 8,422 deaths in the week to January 22.
Nearly half of all deaths (45.7 per cent) registered in England and Wales in the week to January 29 mentioned Covid-19 on the certificate – the highest proportion recorded during the pandemic.
In the same week, 2,505 deaths of care-home residents were registered in England and Wales – the highest total since the week ending May 1.
A total of 35,720 care-home residents in England and Wales have now had Covid-19 recorded on their death certificate, the ONS said.
The figures include residents who died in all settings including hospital, not just in the homes.