In the end, ex-President Donald Trump’s legal team sounded just as extreme online as the former leader of the free world used to sound before he was banned from Twitter.
On Friday, Trump’s team of lawyers – over the course of just a few hours – laundered many of his pet letters and some of the favored conspiracy theories through their official legal strategy during his second Senate impeachment trial.
Early in his presentation, Michael van der Veen, one of the Trump attorneys, insinuated that they were left-wing anarchists or ‘Antifa’ who had been behind much of the mafia’s violence on January 6, a reflection of Trump’s own embrace of an unfounded internet theory that Antifa had “framed” Trump supporters. The legal team protested against ‘cancel culture’ – they called ‘constitutional cancellation culture’, presumably for the occasion – as a result of one of the more nagging closing messages of the Trump campaign in 2020. During the trial, a clip surfaced in a montage of Democratic lawmakers. from pop music icon Madonna – yes, Madonna – who was mean to Trump, befitting the 45th US president’s obsession with A-list celebrities. And while his legal team did not make Trump’s lies about the 2020 electoral fraud conspiracies the center of their arguments (as Trump would have liked), they were sure there was nothing out of the ordinary about Trump telling those lies, and claimed it was. Democrats that really spread “Big Lies” about US elections.
And before all this was, it wasn’t that the team was in such excellent shape anyway. Until Friday, the former president’s legal team tried to build themselves up, with Trump privately complaining since Tuesday that attorney Bruce Castor should be put on the bench following his disastrous opening performance. Since the opening day of the trial, GOP lawmakers had publicly grumbled about the rudeness of the Trump team’s work, scratching their heads about why the Trump lawyers had failed to deliver what they believed was a simple lay-up. On Friday morning, senior Trump adviser Jason Miller said openly on Newsmax TV that Republican senators (and trial jurors) Mike Lee, Ted Cruz, and Lindsey Graham had huddled with Trump attorneys the day before and gave us “ some additional ideas. ”
But in the end, this probably didn’t matter. Republicans still said they had the numbers to let Trump go free again. It didn’t matter that the arguments were plainly lazy or hollow. It didn’t matter that the GOP lawmakers were offended by the apparent lack of effort. It didn’t matter that trial jurors offered the Trump council attorney in the middle of the senate proceedings. And it certainly didn’t matter that then-President Trump launched the deadly January 6 MAGA attack on the Capitol that endangered the lives and safety of some of those Republicans, or whether he spent months on end, anti-Democratic crusade to nullify Joe Biden’s 2020 victory.
As of Friday afternoon, Trump – relaxed at his private Mar-a-Lago club and new Florida home base – was on track for a quick and easy acquittal. In fact, he was on that track all week. The ex-president received calls and messages all day from friends and allies assuring him that it was even more evident than before that he would be acquitted, according to two people familiar with the case. Some of the Trump allies pre-emptively congratulated the former president, who agreed that the Democrats had no chance. Another person with knowledge of the situation said Trump had said this week that he was looking forward to throwing a little “ party ” to celebrate after this was all over: to re-mark an occasion where his political enemies wouldn’t see him. could punish how she wanted.
And by the end of Friday, Trump’s lawyers had successfully given many GOP lawmakers the fig leaf they wanted, to get him off the hook for the bloody riot and to bolster his continued tremendous influence and hold on the party. And the lawyers didn’t have to try so hard, and they did so in the Trumpian language of petty complaints and culture warriors.
“The defense team did what it should have done today as they should have done on Tuesday: they showed plenty of holes in the house manager’s case. If there were Republicans today who were undecided, who needed something to hang their hats to get acquitted, the defense team provided that today, ” said Steven Groves, who worked as a lawyer and then as a spokesman for the White House Trump, said on Friday afternoon.
“They’ve done their job,” added Groves.
That’s not to say GOP senators were over the moon about the Trump team’s defense. While their concentrated dose of MAGA-tinged admit will no doubt please their main audience – their client – many of the jurors who would rule the outcome were lukewarm as to how well they argued for the true merits of the case.
Republican senators, who largely panned the string of meandering non-sequiturs and general screams that opened the Trump lawyers’ defense on Tuesday, said they had raised the low bar they had previously set.
“They are on a good defense today,” said Senator Lisa Murkowski (R-AK), who is seen as one of the most likely GOP votes to condemn. On Tuesday, Murkowski said she was “really baffled” at how ineffective Castor’s argument was.
Trump’s most ardent supporters in the room, meanwhile, gave high marks for the video-heavy presentation. Some were spotted by reporters in the gallery who nodded when the Trump lawyers drew an equivalence between Jan. 6 and the Black Lives Matter protests over the summer, echoing arguments some GOP senators had been pushing for weeks.
“The president’s attorneys blew the House managers’ case out of the water,” said Senator Ron Johnson (R-WI). “They just legally gutted their case.”
If the Trump case seemed intended to trigger Democrats, it was. When those sitting on the floor saw their own likenesses in the Trump team’s videos using their own words against them, they scoffed and laughed. Many left the floor steaming at the display: Senator Richard Blumenthal (D-CT) said Trump was guilty of a “heinous crime” and his lawyers “tried to draw a false, dangerous, and distorted equivalence” with past comments of the Democrats.
A legislator, Rep. Jim McGovern (D-MA), whose words objecting to the 2016 election were featured by Trump attorneys, were pushed back on Twitter. “I and other members of Congress spent all eight whole minutes recording our concerns about Russian interference in the elections. We have not tried to change the results. We did not enforce a vote. We did not incite a violent uprising when we lost, ”said McGovern.
“Any comparison is more than false equivalence,” McGovern continued. “It’s BS.”
The intent of the screen, said Senator Bob Casey (D-PA), was clear. “It seemed to be mostly focused on watching Donald Trump,” he said, “or as a way to get his constituents really excited.”
All told, the Trump team used less than a third of the time the Democrats took to put forward their arguments – they finished after about three hours of presentation. In the eyes of some, they could have talked even shorter: Johnson said at the first break, taken around 2am, that they should just let the matter rest.
A final vote can already take place on Saturday. Only a handful of senatorial votes are questionable, with only a few Republicans considered as possible members of the Democrats to support a conviction and a life-long ban on Trump’s holding.
Friday’s session concluded with a question-and-answer period during which senators were given the opportunity to question both parties. Some, like Trump’s lawyers, may have had a different audience in mind. “Isn’t this just a political show trial designed to discredit President Trump and his policies,” asked Senator Bill Hagerty (R-TN), “and shame on the 74 million Americans who voted for him?”
Not all questions were performative. Senator Bill Cassidy (R-LA), a surprise vote, asked Trump’s defense team about Senator Tommy Tuberville (R-AL) memory that he made Trump aware that Vice President Mike Pence was in danger at the Capitol on 6 January. , shortly before Trump tweeted pressuring the vice president to reverse the election.
“The tweet and lack of response suggest President Trump didn’t care that Mike Pence was in danger,” asked Cassidy. “Does this show that Trump was tolerant of Vice President Pence’s harassment?”
Van der Veen then disputed the facts in Cassidy’s question, arguing that he had “no idea” and added that he was “sure” Trump was concerned about Pence’s welfare as the crowd approached him. Again, Trump counsel attacked the Democrats for allegedly not investigating questions their client had the answer to and which he refused to provide.
At the time, Rep. Jamie Raskin (D-MD), the leading Democratic impeachment manager, had enough. “Instead of yelling and yelling at us,” we didn’t have time to find out all the facts about what your client, Raskin said, “bring your client here, and have him testify under oath.”