Richard Burr stood and said “guilty” there were hushed gasps in the Senate chamber.

But the North Carolina Republican’s vote to convict former President Donald Trump should not have come as a shock.

Months before Trump would begin falsely claiming that the November election had been stolen from him, the Senate Intelligence Committee led by Burr warned that sitting public officials should use the “absolute greatest amount of restraint and caution if they are considering publicly calling the validity of an upcoming election into question.” Such grave allegations, the committee said in February 2020, can have “significant” consequences for national security.

Explaining his vote to convict Trump of inciting an insurrection at the Capitol on Jan.

When the Capitol was attacked, Burr said in the statement, Trump “used his office to first inflame the situation instead of immediately calling for an end to the assault.”.

For Burr, it was an emphatic statement after years of careful commentary about Trump, much of it made as he investigated Trump's ties to Russia.

13 vote as Republicans in the state and across the country made clear their continued loyalty to Trump.

Thom Tillis, a Republican who voted to acquit Trump, said after the state censure vote that Burr is a “great friend and a great senator” who had voted his conscience.

Ben Sasse, one of the seven Republicans who voted to convict and a member of the Intelligence Committee, said Burr "is a leader, not a motormouth" who distinguished himself with bipartisan work on the committee.

Warner said in an interview that he thinks that one of main things that guided Burr was to ensure that intelligence agencies got “the respect they deserve.” That meant pushing back on Trump, who criticized the agencies for investigating Russia and suggested they had conspired against him by undermining the 2016 election.

Burr endorsed the agencies’ 2017 conclusion that Russia had interfered in the election and had favored Trump, even as the former president declined to do so.

As the committee revealed Russia’s hacking and misinformation efforts around the 2016 election, and warned of future attacks, Burr did so mostly without directly criticizing Trump.

Repeatedly, Burr said he saw no evidence of coordination with Russia, keeping him in the good graces of his fellow Republicans and the White House.

In a rare interview with The Associated Press in the summer of 2018, Burr said the Russia investigation had been “frustrating as hell.” But he also said that the integrity of the inquiry — and its importance to the Senate — was something worth protecting.

More than two years into the investigation, in May 2019, Burr subpoenaed Donald Trump Jr., the president’s son who had met with a Russian lawyer during the campaign.

He said it would have been politically easier for Burr to run a Russia investigation like the one in the House, which was highly partisan.

So when Burr stood up to vote for Trump's conviction, many in the chamber wondered if there would be other surprises.

“I do not make this decision lightly,” Burr said in a statement after the vote, “but I believe it is necessary.”.