Trump impeachment trial live updates: Biden makes 1st comments on acquittal

House impeachment managers, following the Senate vote to acquit Trump, held a press conference on Capitol Hill and harped on remarks from Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell, R-Ky., saying that they proved the case that Trump incited an insurrection despite failing to reach the votes needed to convict.

Lead House impeachment manager Rep. Jamie Raskin, D-Md., opened by thanking Congress, his team and the American people.

"Trump stormed our House with the mob he incited, and we defended our House. And he violated our Constitution, and we defended the Constitution. And they tried to trash our democracy, and we revived it, and we protected it," Raskin began, highlighting that the trial was the most bipartisan presidential impeachment in the history of the country.

"We have a clear and convincing majority of members of Congress that the president actually incited violent insurrection against the union and against the Congress," Raskin said.

He went on to explain that because House managers had convinced McConnell -- although they didn't get his vote -- that they made their case and didn't see a need to call witnesses after all.

"We could have had 5,000 witnesses and Mitch McConnell would have made the same speech because what he's asserting is that the Senate never has jurisdiction over a former president," Raskin said. "And for reasons I don't need to belabor -- because a big part of the trial was about this -- we reject that completely. It's totally at odds with our history."

Although he voted to acquit the former president, Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell in remarks Saturday distanced himself from Trump and made clear he believed that Trump was solely to blame for the attack on the Capitol on Jan. 6.

"Jan. 6 was a disgrace," McConnell began. "Fellow Americans beat and bloodied our own police. They stormed the Senate floor. They tried to hunt down the Speaker of the House. They built a gallows and chanted about murdering the vice president. They did this because they had been fed wild falsehoods by the most powerful man on Earth because he was angry he’d lost an election."

McConnell reminded those listening of his words on the floor last month in which he said the mob was "fed lies" and "provoked" by Trump.

"There's no question -- none -- that President Trump is practically and morally responsible for provoking the events of the day. No question about it. The people who stormed this building believed they were acting on the wishes and instructions of their president," he said.

McConnell said it wasn't Trump remarks solely on Jan. 6 -- as House managers have argued -- but "also the entire manufactured atmosphere of looming catastrophe, the increasingly wild myths -- myths -- about a reverse landslide election that was somehow being stolen, some secret coup by our now president."

McConnell also shot down the defense equating Trump's rhetoric to past comments of Democrats telling supporters to "fight."

"That's different from what we saw. This was an intensifying crescendo of conspiracy theories orchestrated by an outgoing president who seemed determined to either overturn the voters' decision or else torch our institutions on the way out," he said, adding Trump's "unconscionable behavior did not end when the violence actually began."

He said there should be no question that Trump was aware of the violence underway, but he didn't move to stop it.

"Whatever our ex-president claims he thought might happen that day, whatever reaction he says he meant to produce, by that afternoon, we know he was watching the same live television as the rest of us. A mob was assaulting the Capitol in his name. These criminals were carrying his banners, hanging his flags and screaming their loyalty to him," he said.

"It was obvious that only President Trump could end this," McConnell said. "The president did not act swiftly. He did not do his job."

However, though McConnell said he ultimately didn't believe an impeachment trial in the Senate was the correct form of resolve since Trump was no longer in office, explaining his vote to acquit, he did leave the door open for Trump being criminally prosecuted.

"President Trump is still liable for everything he did while he’s in office," he said. "He didn’t get away with anything yet."

Notably, McConnell said he would have considered House managers' charge while he was still majority leader and Trump was still president, and then impeachment would have been an "acceptable" course, he said, but McConnell punted the trial to incoming Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer during the transfer of power in the chamber last month.

Former North Dakota Sen. Heidi Heitkamp, an ABC News contributor, called Republican Sen. Lisa Murkowski "courageous" for voting guilty, saying she was "the person who really risked it all today on behalf of our democracy."

"I hope that dozens of them [Republican senators] will look back and say, 'Why didn't I have the courage of that Alaska senator?'" Heitkamp told ABC News.

ABC News contributor Sara Fagen said, "Had these been secret ballots" in the House and Senate, "there would've been many more votes to impeach and convict."

After Trump was acquitted by the Senate, Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer, D-N.Y., took to the Senate floor to blast Trump for his actions and echo House managers' argument that Trump violated his oath of office.

"This was the first presidential impeachment trial in history in which all senators were not only judges and jurors, but witnesses to the Constitutional crime that was committed," Schumer said. "The former president inspired, directed and propelled a mob to violently prevent the peaceful transfer of power, subvert the will of the people and illegally keep that president in power."

Schumer went on to argue that without Trump, the insurrection would have never happened.

"If President Trump hadn't told his supporters to march to the Capitol, if he hadn't implored them to come to Washington on January 6th in the first place, if he hadn't repeatedly lied to them that the election was stolen, their country was being taken from them, the attack would not have happened -- could not have happened," Schumer added.

He highlighted the fact that a majority of senators, including seven republicans, did vote to convict the former president, and said he thinks Trump will be discredited in the eyes of America after his second impeachment trial, even though he was acquitted.

"He deserves to be permanently discredited, and I believe he has been discredited in the eyes of the American people and in the judgment of history," he said.