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WASHINGTON – Donald Trump’s impeachment team defended him Friday by flatly denying he encouraged the deadly Jan. 6 attack on Congress, insisting that as a “law and order” president he abhorred mob violence.
They sought to puncture the House manager’s case that he incited the attack by reconstructing the timeline of an attack that began even before Trump finished riling up the crowd that would soon swarm the Capitol.
The defense rested its case after just three hours, and the Senate recessed Friday evening, putting the trial on a record pace for a presidential impeachment. A verdict is likely on Saturday after just five days of trial.
“To claim that the president in any way wished, desired, or encouraged lawless or violent behavior is a preposterous and monstrous lie,” and “patently absurd,” said Michael van der Veen, one of Trump’s lawyers. “History will record this shameful effort as a deliberate attempt by the Democrat party to smear, censor and `cancel’ not just President Trump, but the 75 million Americans who voted for him.”
For 12 hours of trial over the previous two days, House prosecutors showed clip after clip of Trump glorifying road rage attacks on Biden backers, promising to pay legal bills for rallygoers who accosted protesters, and fueling outrage with false claims about a stolen election.
Just before the attack, Trump told supporters that, “If ou don’t fight like hell, you’re not going to have a country anymore.”
The defense downplayed the use of the term “fight” as a common figure of speech — protected speech — while glossing past the actual violence that ensued after Trump’s bellicose rhetoric.
To illustrate that point, the defense played a 9-minute montage of Democrats and some celebrities using the word “fight,” set to heart-throbbing music, and a shorter compilation later focused on the phrase “fight like hell.”
The clips included most Senate Democrats, House impeachment managers, and President Joe Biden and Vice President Kamala Harris, mostly speaking in a political sense but in some instances, with suggestions of physical violence.
“Please stop the hypocrisy,” said David Schoen, another defense lawyer.
The prosecution had anticipated that line of argument, using their time to draw a bright line between heated rhetoric, and heated rhetoric to an angry crowd primed for violence with lies about a stolen election, by a president who glorified violence as patriotic when it advances his aims — rhetoric delivered just before a deadly riot that amounted to assault on the democratic process and the legislative branch of the federal governmen
Thousands converged on the Capitol, bashing windows with stolen riot shields, brawling with officers and causing lawmakers to flee for safety.
Even so, van der Veen insisted that nothing Trump told the rally before the riot could be construed as condoning any sort of unlawful act.
“Far from promoting insurrection against the United States, the president’s remarks explicitly encouraged those in attendance to exercise their rights peacefully and patriotically,” he said.
Sen. Mazie Hirono, D-Hawaii, called it “pathetic and amateurish” for Trump’s team to paint his words as innocuous, “an alternative universe recitation of what was really going on in that crowd.”
Chronology of a riot
While the House prosecutors painted a picture of a monthslong pattern of incitement that culminated Jan. 6, the defense kept a tight focus on events that day.
The timeline proved an especially potent line of argument.
Indictments and arrest documents show that many rioters came to Washington eager for a melee, supporting the idea that the attack was preplanned. Trump’s team noted that the initial skirmishes started during Trump’s 70-minute speech a mile away, suggesting that he couldn’t possibly have incited those particular rioters.
· By 11:15 a.m. EST, some of Trump’s supporters had already gathered at the reflecting pool at the foot of Capitol Hill.
· Trump spoke from noon to 1:10 p.m.
· Attackers overran bicycle-type barriers and police at 12:49 p.m.
· As Trump’s speech was ending, the Capitol Police chief called the House and Senate sergeants at arms seeking reinforcements, including National Guard.
“The criminals at the Capitol weren’t there at the Ellipse to even hear the president’s words,” defense lawyer Bruce Castor said. “The Jan. 6 speech did not cause the riots. The president did not cause the riots.
“The president’s lawyers blew the House managers’ case out of the water,” said Sen. Ron Johnson, R-Wisc.
House managers reminded senators during a question phase that bled into Friday evening that Trump had spent weeks spreading the “big lie” that the election had been stolen, and inviting supporters to Washington to interfere in the certification of Biden’s victory.
Trump issued his first of many calls to action on Jan. 6 a full 18 days earlier, promising a “wild” and historic day.
“These insurgents were planning armed violence … because he had been priming them, because he had been amping them up,” Rep. Joaquin Castro, D-San Antonio, told the Senate in answer to the first question of the afternoon. “That mob didn’t come out of thin air. … You tell somebody that an election victory is being stolen from them, that’s a combustible situation.”
Question time
Senators on both sides used their written questions to drive preferred narratives.
“Isn’t this simply a political show trial that is designed to discredit President Trump and his policies and shame the 74 million Americans who voted for him?” asked Sen. Bill Hagerty, R-Tenn.
Van der Veen sidestepped a question about when exactly Trump learned of the breach at the Capitol and what he did about it, instead accusing House managers of not taking time to investigate such details.
Sens. Ed Markey and Tammy Duckworth, Democrats, repeated the question, this time for prosecutors.
“The reason this question keeps coming up is because the answer is — nothing,” responded Stacey Plaskett, delegate from the Virgin Islands.
Oregon Sen. Jeff Merkley, a Democrat, used a question to sum up the case:
“If a president spins a big lie to anger Americans and stokes the fury by repeating the lie at event after event, and invites violent groups to DC on the day and hour necessary to interrupt the Electoral College count, and does nothing to stop those groups from advancing on the Capitol, and fails to summon the National Guard to protect the Capitol, and then expresses pleasure and delight that the Capitol was under attack, is the president innocent of inciting an insurrection because in a speech, he says, be peaceful?”
Texas Sen. Ted Cruz used a question to accuse House Democrats of fabricating a new three-part definition of incitement not based in the criminal code: Was violence foreseeable? Did Trump encourage violence? Was his behavior willful?
Trump’s lawyers likewise complained about a lack of “due process.” But they, and Cruz, were quick to point out fundamental differences between impeachment and a courtroom trial when it suited them — as when they defended Cruz’s meetings to advise the Trump team during the trial.
That would be improper for a trial judge or juror.
“Get real,” Rep. Jamie Raskin of Maryland, the lead impeachment manager, responded to Cruz’s query. “We have an opportunity now to declare that presidential incitement to violent insurrection against the Capitol and the Congress is completely forbidden in the United States.”
Texas Sen. John Cornyn asked the final question: Democrats accused Trump’s side of trying to carve out a “January exception” that lets a lame duck escape impeachment in the final weeks of his presidency. Can’t ex-presidents face criminal charges for conduct in office, he asked.
Castor used it as an opening to push back against the “January exception” critique, saying his side makes no such assertion.
Raskin called it an “excellent question.”
Like Castor, he agreed that a president can face criminal charges, during or after his time in office. But, he said, impeachment isn’t about punishment.
“The reason that the Framers gave Congress … the power to try, convict, remove and disqualify was to protect the republic,” he said.
Moments later, in a respite from the partisanship of the trial, senators rose to their feet in an ovation for Officer Eugene Goodman, one of the heroes of Jan. 6, then voted to award him a Congressional Gold Medal.
‘Whataboutism’
In what Democrats called an exercise in “whataboutism,” the defense showed footage from Jan. 6, 2017, when Rep. Sheila Jackson Lee of Houston and others, including Raskin, voiced objections as Congress certified Trump’s victory over Hillary Clinton.
Biden himself, nearing the end of his term as vice president, was presiding, just as Mike Pence presided on Jan. 6, 2021.
“There is no debate in order,” Biden declared over and over, banging his gavel and cutting off the House members.
In 2017, no senators joined the objections, precluding debate on state-certified results. And Hillary Clinton had conceded, unlike Trump four years later.
The day of the riot, Cruz and Josh Hawley of Missouri led objections that triggered hours of debate. More than half the Republicans in Congress — eight senators and 139 House members, including all but seven of 23 Texas Republicans — voted to nullify millions of votes.
The defense team also showed footage of prominent Democrats musing about punching Trump, or joking about killing opponents, hoping to inure the Senate jury to Trump’s inflammatory language.
Said van der Veen, “This is not ‘whataboutism.’ … I am showing you this to make the point that all political speech must be protected.”
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Free speech claim
Trump’s lawyers also invoked a First Amendment defense, asserting that everything Trump said before the riot was protected political speech.
Democrats scoffed.
“He doesn’t just shout fire in a crowded theater,” Raskin told senators, likening Trump to a rogue fire chief. “He summons the mob and sends the mob to go burn the theater down. … And when we say we don’t want you to be fire chief ever again, he starts crying about the First Amendment.”
It would take 17 Republicans to help Democrats reach the two-thirds needed for conviction.