and external factors. At last, Ribeiro Lodi stated that the decrees issued by the President in July and August 2015 were not, until the time of the trial, considered violations by TCU and that when they were issued, current understanding did not exist. Cross-examination of Rousseff by senators and final arguments by lawyers Rousseff spoke in her own defense before the Senate on 29 August for 45 minutes, proclaiming her innocence and decrying the impeachment process, noting that many of her accusers faced worse charges than she. "Everybody knows this impeachment process opened with explicit blackmail by the former head of the lower house, Eduardo Cunha," she said. She then answered questions from senators for more than twelve hours. She explained that she had needed to make difficult choices on the budget, to address declining revenue and a refusal by opposition in Congress to work with her. She compared her situation with other Brazilian presidents pursued by their opponents, including João Goulart, a leftist ousted in a military coup in 1964, and replaced by a 21-year dictatorship. She also compared the effort to impeach her to the torture she endured after agents of the military dictatorship arrested and jailed her as an urban guerrilla. Rousseff called the impeachment proceedings a new type of coup and evoked the breakdown of Brazilian democracy in the 1960s before the military coup. Senator Ana Amélia Lemos in reply expressed respect for her personal history but said that the senators were not there to judge her biography, but the actions of her government. She said Rousseff had broken the law by manipulating the budget to hide economic problems. The proceedings resumed on 30 August with final arguments of the prosecution and defense, followed by speeches from the senatorsthe speeches lasted twelve hours, ending about 02:30am on the 31st. Senate vote The Senate found President Dilma Rousseff guilty of responsibility crimes and administrative misconduct regarding the federal budget and removed her from office after a vote of 61–20 on 31 August 2016. In a separate vote on whether she should be barred from public office for eight years, senators voted 42–36 in favor. A two-thirds majority of the votes (54 of 81 senators) would have been needed, so she will be able to run for any public office again in the near future. She has vowed to do so. Lawsuits against the Senate judgment Rousseff's defense