Perhaps, but the charge the Dems came up with, incitement to riot, seems very difficult to support on the basis of the evidence at hand. It's not clear that Mr. Trump was attempting to incite anything more than a lawful demonstration against Congress in his January 6th speech. To be sure, he was seeking to stoke his supporters' outrage, but generating political outrage isn't the same as trying to incite a deadly riot, particularly when part of his speech contained an injunction to "[march] over to the Capitol building to peacefully and patriotically make your voices heard."
If, however, his opponents wish to consider his speech dispositive in demonstrating culpability, then a lot of Democrats, including our current Vice-President, are perhaps even more guilty of the same offense for the awful things they said during last summer's riots. Kamala Harris, for example, said this:
They’re [last summer's riots] not going to stop. They’re not going to stop. This is a movement, I’m telling you. They’re not gonna stop. And everyone beware because they’re not gonna stop. They’re not gonna stop before Election Day and they’re not going to stop after Election Day. And everyone should take note of that. They’re not gonna let up and they should not.She also urged her followers to donate toward paying Minneapolis rioters’ bail which is certainly an incentive to continue to riot. Some of the money raised was used to pay the bail of a number of violent criminals including Lionel Timms who promptly returned to the streets and split someone's head open.
You can read more examples of the left's rhetoric during the riots here.
On the other hand, there appears to be little doubt that once the January 6th riot was underway Mr. Trump refused to take appropriate steps to stop it. Indeed, in https://hotair.com/archives/allahpundit/2021/02/15/republicans-democrats-came-together-hang-jaime-herrera-beutler-dry/ his conversation with House Minority leader Kevin McCarthy he seems to have been pleased that his supporters were creating the tumult at the Capitol.
If the House's impeachment charge against him had been dereliction of duty it would've been a lot easier to demonstrate the president's responsibility and a lot more Republicans would've been willing to lend their support to the impeachment effort.
Nevertheless, given that the impeachment case handed over to the Senate by the House was doubtful (not to mention https://thefederalist.com/2021/02/16/devin-nunes-blasts-dems-for-presenting-false-evidence-to-senate-for-impeachment/ dishonestly conducted by the House managers), and given that Trump was no longer president by the time the Senate took up the trial, the Senate probably did the right thing in refusing to convict. Their job wasn't to convict or acquit on the basis of whether they thought Trump handled the events of that day well, their job was to convict if 1) they determined that he was guilty of incitement and 2) if they were convinced that the Constitution permitted the conviction of a president who had already left office.
Since 1) is inscrutable and since constitutional scholars are split on 2), the Senate acted prudently in choosing not to create a precedent of convicting presidents who are no longer in office. Had that precedent been established, it would be possible for a future Congress controlled by one party to vindictively impeach and convict every president of the opposite party years after they left office, a practice which would probably destroy our political system.
As Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell notes in https://www.wsj.com/articles/acquittal-vindicated-the-constitution-not-trump-11613430190?mod=e2two a fine WSJ column, Mr. Trump's legal woes are still in front of him. He can yet be held accountable in courts of law for his behavior, which, since the election, has been largely indefensible. Aside from his legal jeopardy he, among other things, single-handedly effaced what could have been an historic presidential legacy, handed the Senate to the Democrats by attacking Georgia Republicans, and disgraced himself in his treatment of Vice-President Pence.
He may be able to overcome all this, he may even run for president again in 2024, but it's very doubtful that he'll ever again have the strength of support he enjoyed in 2016 and 2020. Of course, as in 2016, a lot depends on who the Democrats run against him if he does run and also upon how well Mr. Biden does over the next three and a half years.
