WASHINGTON (AP) – After a prosecution case rooted in emotional, violent imagery of the siege of the Capitol, Donald Trump’s impeachment process shifts Friday to defense attorneys willing to make a fundamental concession: The violence was as traumatic, unacceptable and illegal as Democrats say.
But, they will say, Trump did not order it.
Acknowledging the horrors of January’s day is meant to tone down the deep-seated impact of the House Democrats case and quickly turn it to what Trump’s defenders see as the core – and more to be gained – issue of the trial: whether Trump can be held responsible for instigating the deadly January 6 riot
The argument will likely appeal to Republican senators who want to be seen as people condemning the violence, but without condemning the president.
“They didn’t tie it to Trump in any way,” David Schoen, one of the president’s attorneys, told the end of two full days of Democrats’ arguments seeking to do just that.
He took a look at the gist of his speech Tuesday and told Senate jurors, “They don’t need to show you movies to show that the riot happened here. We will determine that it happened, and you know all about it. “
In both legal documents and arguments this week, Trump’s lawyers have made their position clear that the people responsible for the riot are the ones who actually stormed the building and who are now being prosecuted by the Justice Department.
Anticipating defense efforts to dislodge Trump’s rhetoric from the rioters’ actions, the impeachment managers spent days trying to fuse them through a reconstruction of never-before-seen video footage alongside clips from the month in which the president urged his supporters to to undo the election results.
Democrats, who closed their case on Thursday, used the rioters’ own videos and words of January 6 to place responsibility on Trump. “We were invited here,” said an intruder from the Capitol. “Trump sent us,” said another. He will be happy. We fight for Trump. “
The prosecutors’ goal was to profile Trump not as a spectator, but rather as the “chief” who spread electoral falsehoods, then encouraged supporters to challenge the results in Washington and stir dissatisfaction with rhetoric about fighting and take back the land.
Democrats are also demanding that he be banned from holding future federal office.
“This attack would never have happened without Donald Trump,” said Representative Madeleine Dean, one of the impeachment managers, on Thursday while suppressing the emotion. “And so they came, draped in Trump’s flag, and used our flag, the American flag, to hit and club.”
Despite all the significance that a president’s impeachment must convey, this historic second trial against Trump could end with a vote this weekend, especially as Trump’s lawyers focused on legal rather than emotional or historical questions and hope to get it all. behind him as soon as possible.
With little hope of persuasion by the required two-thirds of the Senate, the Democrats delivered a striking case to the American public, describing in grim, personal terms the terror faced that day – some of it in the Senate Chamber where senators sit as jurors. They used security videos of rioters threateningly looking for house speaker Nancy Pelosi and Vice President Mike Pence, smashing into the building and waging bloody hand-to-hand battles with the police.
They showed the many public and explicit instructions Trump gave his supporters – long before the White House rally that unleashed the deadly assault on the Capitol when Congress upheld Democrat Joe Biden’s victory. Five people died in the chaos and its aftermath.
“Why do you think the nightmare with Donald Trump and his violations of law and gang violence is over?” rep Jamie Raskin asked, D-Md., The Chief Prosecutor. He previously said, “When Donald Trump told the crowd, as he did on January 6, ‘Fight like hell, or you’ll run out of land,’ he meant they were going to ‘fight like hell.”
At the White House, Biden said he believed “some thoughts could change” after senators watched the security video, although he had previously acknowledged that conviction was unlikely. On Thursday, many seemed willing to continue.
‘I actually thought it was very repetitive today. I mean, not much new. I was really disappointed that they weren’t much concerned with the legal standards, ”said Republican Senator Josh Hawley of Missouri.
Several Republican senators, including Ted Cruz from Texas and Mike Lee from Utah, met with Trump’s attorneys on Thursday. Cruz told reporters that the senators were discussing legal strategy – something that would never have been allowed in a criminal case. There is no rule prohibiting Senate jurors from pursuing a strategy alongside lawyers in impeachment lawsuits, although Democrats can use it to ask questions about impartiality.
The presentation by Trump’s lawyers is, in a sense, low risk given the likelihood of acquittal. But it is also being watched closely due to an uneven action Tuesday when a lawyer, Bruce Castor, gave such meandering arguments that Trump was rampaging from his Florida home.
They are expected to highlight different parts of the same speech that prosecutors are targeting when Trump told supporters gathered at the Ellipse outside the White House to “ fight like hell. ”
They will claim that in the same speech, Trump encouraged the crowd to behave “peacefully,” and that his comments – and his general distrust of the election results – are all protected by the First Amendment. Democrats strongly oppose that claim, saying his words were not a political speech, but rather amounted to direct incitement to violence.
The defense attorneys would also likely come back to Tuesday’s arguments that the trial itself is unconstitutional because Trump is no longer in office. The Senate rejected that claim Tuesday when it voted to go ahead with the trial, but Republican senators have nonetheless indicated they remain interested in the argument.
On Thursday, senators going through a second full day of arguing seemed somewhat tired, slumped in their chairs, their arms folded, and walked about stretching.
One Republican, Senator Jim Inhofe of Oklahoma, said during a pause, “To me, the longer they talk, the longer they lose their credibility.”
Republican Senator Marco Rubio said the January 6 facts, while “unpatriotic” and even “treacherous,” were not his primary concern. Instead, he said Thursday, a lawsuit against someone who is no longer in office sets “a very dangerous precedent.”