WASHINGTON (AP) – The legal dispute over Donald Trump’s impeachment trial is ongoing, with briefs filed this week presenting radically different positions ahead of next week’s Senate trial.
House prosecutors and the former president’s defense team present their arguments about Trump’s role in the Jan. 6 riot at the U.S. Capitol and about the legality of even holding a trial. They are also debating the First Amendment and a blunt assessment by Democrats that the riot posed a threat to the line of presidential succession.
To take away from the arguments of both parties:
“SINGULARLY RESPONSIBLE”
Who is responsible for the riot? Democrats say there is only one answer and that is Trump.
Democrats claim Trump was solely “responsible” for the Jan. 6 attack “by creating a powder keg, getting a party, and then seeking personal gain because of the havoc.” They say it’s “impossible” to imagine the riot unfolding without Trump’s will, and they even cite as a support a Republican colleague, Rep. Liz Cheney of Wyoming, who said essentially the same thing.
Trump’s lawyers, on the other hand, suggest he can’t be held responsible because he never incited anyone to “behave destructively.” They admit that there was an illegal Capitol infraction that resulted in deaths and injuries. But they say the people who are “responsible,” the ones who entered the building and vandalized it, are being investigated and prosecuted.
FIRST LINE OF MODIFICATION FAILURES
Trump’s lawyers do not dispute that he told supporters to “fight like hell” before the Capitol siege. But the defense says Trump, like any citizen, is protected by the First Amendment to “express his belief that election results were suspicious.” They say he had the opinion that he had a right to express it and that if the First Amendment only protected popular discourse, it would be “no protection”.
House Democrats don’t see it that way. On the one hand, they say the First Amendment is intended to protect private citizens from government, not to allow government officials to abuse their power. And while a private citizen may have the right to defend totalitarianism or the overthrow of the government, “no one would seriously suggest” that a president who adopts these same positions be immune to impeachment.
LINE OF SUCCESSION
Dismissal managers claim that Trump-driven loyalists directly endangered the safety of lawmakers fleeing the House and Senate as riots erupted.
Among those affected were senior government leaders.
Those in the line of succession to the presidency after Trump – then-Vice President Mike Pence, House Speaker Nancy Pelosi, and Pro Tempore Senator Chuck Grassley – were all in the Capitol and forced. to flee for safety. Trump’s conduct not only “endangered the lives of all members of Congress,” Democrats wrote, but also “endangered the peaceful transition of power and the line of succession.”
The summary details the appalling threats to Pence and Pelosi as riot police stormed the building and “specifically hunted” them. According to the document, which cites media and videos, the insurgents shouted, “Hang Mike Pence!” and called him a traitor because he had indicated that he would not challenge the election count, as Trump wanted. One person would have said that Pelosi would have been “broken into pieces” if they had found her.
Democrats also describe the terror felt by lawmakers and officials during the siege. “Some members called their loved ones out of fear that they would not survive the assault of President Trump’s insurrectionary mafia,” those responsible for the ouster wrote.
DENY, DENY, DENY
That’s the message from Trump’s defense team, which used the word “deny” or “deny” a whopping 29 times in its 14-page summary.
Trump’s team denies that the impeachment trial can be held because he is no longer in office. They deny that he has incited his supporters to violence. And they deny that he did anything wrong on January 6 or the weeks leading up to the riot, when he ravaged his followers in a frenzy by convincing them, despite overwhelming evidence to the contrary, that they had stolen his election.
When Trump told the crowd, “If you don’t fight like hell, you’ll no longer have a country,” he was just pressing the “need to fight for electoral security in general,” Trump’s lawyers say. He was not trying to interfere with the counting of election votes, although he had demanded that Pence do exactly that.
“It denies that President Trump has ever endangered the security of the United States and its government institutions,” they wrote. “It denies threatening the integrity of the democratic system, interfering with the peaceful transition of power and endangering an egalitarian branch government.”
Rather, they say, “he acted admirably in his role as president, doing at all times what he believed was in the best interest of the American people.”
There was no widespread election fraud, as confirmed by several election officials across the country and former Attorney General William Barr. Almost all of the legal challenges of the election presented by Trump and his allies were fired.
HISTORY LESSON
Both sides disagree on whether a trial is admissible now that Trump has left office, and the seemingly arcane argument could be key to his acquittal.
Trump’s lawyers say the case is debatable as he is no longer in the White House and therefore the Senate has no jurisdiction to try him in a dismissal case. Many Senate Republicans agree and 45 of them voted on that basis to end the trial before it began. A two-thirds Senate vote would be required for Trump’s conviction.
It is true that no president has faced indictment proceedings after leaving office, but House managers say there is a broad precedent. They cite the case of former Secretary of War William Belknap, who resigned in 1876 just hours before he was accused of a retreat plan. The House charged him anyway and the Senate tried him, though he was eventually acquitted. Democrats also point out that Trump was indicted by the House while he was still president.
The drafters of the Constitution intended for the power of dismissal to sanction current or former officials for acts committed during office, without any “January exception,” the Democrats wrote. As they say, not only that, the Constitution explicitly allows the Senate to disqualify from office a former official who convicts.
This possibility, they suggest, makes the case against Trump (who could mount another White House in 2024) all the less debatable.