Impeachment: Madonna, Depp and other keys of Trump’s lawyers at trial

He must be a rare peer headline, but the pop queen was one of the protagonists of the fourth day of political trial against former President Donald Trump.

Trump’s team of lawyers presented their defense arguments in the case against the former president, noting that the trial against him is a “political revenge” and that it had nothing to do with the assault on the Chapters. Here is a brief summary of the day.

important: the Senate is expected to give its verdict on Saturday after a vote. Most likely, due to the politicization of the process, Donald Trump will be acquitted.

The keys:

• Trump’s lawyers spent 2 hours and 31 minutes of the 16 hours they had to present their arguments. Democrats, on the other hand, spent about 10 hours presenting their evidence. Less than three hours to defend the case. More than overconfidence, the arguments presented point to the fact that such a short time demonstrates a lack of preparation in the defense strategy and the lack of weighty arguments to defend your client.

• Trump’s lawyers noted that when his client told his followers they had to “fight like hell” he didn’t think so in a literal way. He was using a rhetorical figure, they pointed out. “It’s just an expression,” they tried to defend.
• Bruce Castor, one of Trump’s attorneys, noted that the trial managers – Democrats acting as prosecutors in the case – spent more than 14 hours showing images of how horrible the attack on the ‘Capitol, but did not spend time legally relating the attack to the former president. This is not true. Although the Democrats’ argument may have been better, they did link Trump directly to the attack.
• Lawyers used a video montage showing some Democrats, such as Elizabeth Warren and Nancy Pelosi, with anti-Trump pronouncements they considered “violent.” All this trying to point to a “hypocrisy” on the part of the leaders of this party.
• In the video released Friday, Trump’s lawyers also inserted clips of Madonna and Johnny Depp commenting against the former president. “

1. “When was the last time an actor assassinated a president?” Depp said in 2017. The actor apologized for the out-of-place comment.
2. “I’ve been thinking a lot about blowing up the White House,” Madonna said during the 2017 Women’s March. She then noted that her comment was taken out of context.

• But if all politicians, and even celebrities, use violent language, why did only Trump supporters act that way ?. That’s a question Philip Bump asks in an analysis by The Washington Post.
• After the video, David Schoen, another Trump lawyer, accused Democrats of selectively “editing” the former president’s words when he said “we will fight like hell and if you don’t fight like hell you won’t you will have a country “. But that was precisely what Trump’s lawyers did: they pulled out several clips from Democrats years ago with out-of-context statements that, it should be noted, did not lead to an episode of violence like the Capitol assault. .
• Trump’s lawyers declined to answer the question of whether his client had won the 2020 election. Which says a lot about the defense.

We recommend: The questions that Trump’s defense will have to answer at trial

• Trump’s lawyers said the former president did not know that the life of his vice president, Mike Pence, was in danger.
• The former president’s legal team has pointed out that his client was a protector of “law and order,” while citing his reaction to the 2020 protests as an example of this. Trump’s lawyers suggested Democrats excused the excesses committed by protesters during the Black Lives Matters movement marches.
• They also pointed out that this was not an “insurrection”. The Department of Justice has used this term from the outset.
• Trump’s lawyers based their defense on free speech. That the former president had the right to say everything he said because he was protected by the First Amendment. They never focused on analyzing what Trump said. They ended up showing a very broad and reductionist view on this concept, as there are limits to this right when it comes to defamation. As The Washington Post notes, “No case law cited says that a president or any official has anything that amounts to an absolute right to freedom of expression.”
• The Senate has already asked him questions about the case’s managers and Trump’s defense.
• The Senate is expected to give its verdict on Saturday after a vote. Most likely, due to the politicization of the process, Donald Trump will be acquitted.

We recommend: Republican senators secretly met with Trump’s lawyers