WASHINGTON (AP) – Legal sparring around Donald Trump’s impeachment process is underway, with briefings filed this week with radically different positions leading up to next week’s Senate trial.
House prosecutors and the former president’s defense team are advancing their arguments about Trump’s role in the January 6 uprising at the Capitol and the legality of even holding a trial. They also debate the First Amendment and a blunt Democrats assessment that the riot threatened the presidential succession.
Takeaways from the arguments from both sides:
‘ONLY RESPONSIBLE’
Who is responsible for the riot? Democrats say there is only one answer, and that’s Trump.
The Democrats claim Trump was “extraordinarily responsible” for the January 6 attack by “creating a powder keg, making a match, and then taking personal advantage of the ensuing destruction.” They say it is “impossible” to imagine the riot unfolding as it happened without Trump’s encouragement, and they even mention a fellow Republican, Rep. Liz Cheney from Wyoming, who said essentially the same thing.
Trump’s lawyers, on the other hand, suggest that he cannot be responsible, because he has never incited anyone to “ destructive behavior. ” They admitted that there was an illegal breakthrough in the Capitol, which resulted in deaths and injuries. But they say the people who are “responsible” – those who entered the building and destroyed it – are being investigated and prosecuted.
FIRST CHANGE OF FAULT LINE
Trump’s lawyers do not dispute that he told his supporters to “fight like hell” for the siege of the Capitol. But the defense says Trump, like any citizen, is protected by the First Amendment to “express his belief that the election results were suspicious.” He had an opinion he could voice, they say, and if the First Amendment only protected the popular speech, it would be “no protection at all.”
House Democrats don’t see it that way. For starters, they say the First Amendment is to protect individuals from the government, not allow government officials to abuse their power. And while a private citizen may have the right to advocate for totalitarianism or the overthrow of the government, “no one would seriously suggest” that a president who took the same positions should be immune from impeachment.
LINE OF SUCCESSION
The impeachment managers argue that loyalists urged by Trump directly endangered the safety of lawmakers who fled the House and Senate when the rioters poured in.
Among those affected were the most senior government leaders.
Those in the line of succession for the presidency after Trump – then Vice President Mike Pence, House Speaker Nancy Pelosi, and Senate Pro Tempore Chuck Grassley – were all in the Capitol and forced to flee to safety. Trump’s actions “ not only endangered the lives of every member of Congress, ” the Democrats wrote, but also “ endangered the peaceful transfer of power and line of succession. ”
The brief details were chilling threats to Pence and Pelosi as rioters ransacked the building and “ specifically went hunting. ” According to the document, which mentions media outlets and videos, insurgents shouted, “Hang Mike Pence!” and called him a traitor for having indicated that he would not challenge the electoral count, as Trump wanted. One person would have said that Pelosi would have been “torn into small pieces” had she been found.
The Democrats also describe the terror that the lawmakers and staffers felt during the siege. “Some members called loved ones for fear that they would not survive the attack by President Trump’s insurgent gang,” the impeachment managers wrote.
REFUSE, REFUSE, REFUSE
That’s the message from Trump’s defense team, who used the word “ denied ” or “ denies ” a whopping 29 times in his 14-page briefing.
Trump’s team denies that the impeachment trial can be held because he is no longer in office. They deny that he incited violence to his supporters. And they deny that he did anything wrong on January 6, or the weeks leading up to the riot, when he infuriated his supporters by convincing them, despite overwhelming evidence to the contrary, that the election had been stolen from him.
When Trump told the crowd, “If you don’t fight hard, you run out of land,” he just insisted on the “need to fight for election security in general,” Trump’s lawyers claim. He tried not to interfere with the electoral vote count, even though he had demanded that Pence do just that.
“It is denied that President Trump has ever endangered the security of the United States and its governmental institutions,” they wrote. “It is denied that he has threatened the integrity of the democratic system, hindered the peaceful transfer of power and endangered an equal government.”
Rather, they say he “ performed admirably in his role as president, doing what he thought was in the best interest of the American people at all times. ”
There was no widespread election fraud, as has been confirmed by a range of election officials across the country and by former Attorney General William Barr. Nearly all the legal challenges to the election raised by Trump and his allies were rejected.
HISTORY LESSON
Both sides disagree on whether a trial is permissible now that Trump has stepped down – and the seemingly mysterious argument could be the key to his acquittal.
Trump’s lawyers say the case is moot because he is no longer in the White House and therefore the Senate has no jurisdiction to try him in an impeachment case. Many Senate Republicans agree, and 45 of them voted on that basis to end the process before it began. A two-thirds of the Senate’s vote is required for Trump’s conviction.
It is true that no president has undergone impeachment after his departure, but house managers say there is broad precedent. They cite the case of former Secretary of War William Belknap, who resigned in 1876, just hours before he was impeached for a bribe. The House charged him regardless, and the Senate subsequently tried him, although he was eventually acquitted. Democrats also note that Trump was impeached by the House while he was still president.
The constitution’s drafters were for impeachment power to punish current or former officials for acts committed during their tenure – with no “January exception,” the Democrats wrote. Not only that, they say, the constitution explicitly allows the senate to disqualify a former official he convicts from future office.
That possibility, they suggest, makes the case against Trump – who could host another White House in 2024 – anything but debatable.