They had 16 hours, but Donald Trump’s defense did not use until 2:30 on Friday afternoon to present their arguments in favor of the former president, who is subject to impeachment in the Senate determining responsibility in the violent attack on the Capitol. on January 6 there were 5 deaths.
The three defense attorneys attacked the arguments advanced by the House of Representatives accusing party over the past two days, assuring that Trump was not responsible for that outbreak of violence and that the message he gave to his followers, moreover, was protected by the First Amendment to the Constitution.
The basis of their argument was that there was no ‘fair trial’ when it came to impeaching Trump (an inappropriate complaint because the session in the Senate is not governed by the same parameters of a legal court), sometimes raising their votes from a one way that wouldn’t be welcomed in court.
The ex-president’s attorneys displayed an aggressive rhetorical style, very much in the style of their client, and became a challenge in addressing senators, especially in the question and answer phase.
Fight, figuratively
To reinforce the argument of free speech, David Schoen first and later Michael van der Veen showed an edited (and decontextualized) video in which a handful of Democratic leaders argued for ‘struggle’ at various points in their careers.
“The word fight has been used in politics forever,” said Van der Veen, referring to the video with moments where they explicitly said “fight like hell” ( fight like hell, in English), a phrase Trump used shortly before the crowd of his supporters stormed legislative headquarters.
“The president was not instructing a fight in physical form,” but rather they fought to defend the election process amid baseless claims that the presidential election was fraudulent, Trump’s defense concluded.
House of Commons Administrator Stacey Plaskett criticized the use of videos in which she said black women were seen talking about ‘fighting’ for a cause, sometimes in the context of protests against police brutality last summer.
The defense attorneys posted a lot of video clip after clip of black women talking about fighting for a cause, issue or politics. I couldn’t ignore that many of those people were women, black women like me, that we are sick and tired of being sick and tired, ”said Plaskett.
The Video War
With great outrage, Schoen and Van der Veen accused Democratic representatives of “ tampering ” with the evidence against Trump and claimed they had received the evidence they would present at the hearings.
However, the videos they showed below suffered from the same flaw that they blamed their counterparts, and looked like a succession of decontextualized cuts and no time references in which Democratic leaders seemed to foment violent attitudes.
The videos resembled the ones that would be used in an election campaign, which seemed to indicate that Trump’s lawyers, like the Democrats before them, don’t speak as much to the senators in attendance as they do to the public outside the Capitol.
In another section, Schoen showed a cut-out video of several Democratic prosecutors referring to media reports or planned issues that had “allegedly” occurred in connection with some of the points they raised in their arguments.
“Presumably it equates to saying, ‘I have no evidence,’ ‘said Schoen, adding that’ we have reason to believe that the representatives have tampered with evidence ‘or’ made a false presentation ‘of some of the tweets from the president.
Referring to the alleged manipulation of a president’s tweet, the defense showed photos of the sequel team leader, Jamie Raskin, in front of a computer on which he appeared to be studying them.
But that point in the presentation was confusing because although it was about a date change in a Trump tweet, the attorney said it was ultimately not used in the administrators’ presentation, so it could not have been part of the case against The ex-president.
At the end of the defense presentations, Bruce Castor decided by reiterating that the purpose of the impeachment is to prevent former President Trump from fleeing again.
“The goal is to get rid of a political opponent, to substitute his opinion for the will of the voters (…) This process goes far beyond Trump (trying) to criminalize political views, this is what this trial is really about ”Castor concluded.
