WASHINGTON (AP) – After a case of processing rooted in violent and emotional images of the siege of the Capitol, Donald Trump’s impeachment trial moves 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.
Recognizing the horrors of January is intended to cushion the visceral impact of the House Democrats case and quickly pivot toward what Trump advocates consider the central and most win-win issue of the trial: whether Trump can be held accountable for inciting the deadly riot of January 6th.
The argument is likely to appeal to Republican senators who want to be convicted of violence but without condemning the president.
“They haven’t related it in any way to Trump,” David Schoen, one of the president’s lawyers, told reporters at the end of two full days of Democrats ’arguments aimed at doing just that.
He previewed the gist of his argument on Tuesday and told Senate juries, “They don’t need to show you movies to show you that the riot happened here. We’ll stipulate it happened and you know it all.”
In both legal proceedings and this week’s arguments, Trump’s lawyers have made clear their position that those responsible for the riot are the ones who stormed the building and are now being prosecuted by the Justice Department.
Anticipating defense efforts to disassociate Trump’s rhetoric from the actions of the riots, the dismissal managers spent days trying to merge them together through a reconstruction of unreleased videos alongside clips from the months the president urged his followers to undo the election results.
Democrats, who concluded their case Thursday, used the January 6 riot police ‘own videos and words to try to define Trump’s responsibility. “We were invited here,” said a Capitol invader. “Trump sent us,” another said. “She is OK. We are fighting for Trump. “
Prosecutors’ goal was to launch Trump not as a spectator, but as a “chief instigator” who spread election falsities, and then encouraged supporters to challenge the results in Washington and fueled discontent with the rhetoric about struggle and recovery of the country.
Democrats are also demanding that he be banned from holding future federal office.
“This attack would never have happened except for Donald Trump,” Rep. Madeleine Dean, one of the dismissal managers, said Thursday as she drowned out the excitement. “And so they came, they included the Trump flag and they used our flag, the American flag, to beat and attack.”
For all the significance that the removal of a president has to convey, this second historic trial against Trump could end with a vote this weekend, mostly because Trump’s lawyers focused on legal rather than emotional or historical issues and hope Get it behind you as quickly as possible.
With little hope of conviction on the part of the necessary two-thirds of the Senate, the Democrats delivered a graphic case to the American public, in which the terror they faced that day was described in personal and strong terms; juries. They used a security video of rioters threateningly searching for House Speaker Nancy Pelosi and Vice President Mike Pence, who burst into the building and bloodily clashed with police.
They showed the numerous public and explicit instructions Trump gave his supporters, long before the White House rally that unleashed the Capitol’s deadly attack as Congress certified Democrat Joe Biden’s victory. Five people died in the chaos and its aftermath.
“What makes you think the nightmare is over with Donald Trump and his violent, law-breaking troops?” asked Rep. Jamie Raskin, D-Md., The Chief Prosecutor. He said before, “When Donald Trump told the crowd, as he did on Jan. 6, ‘Fight like hell, or you’ll never have a country again,’ he wanted them to” fight like hell. “
At the White House, Biden said he believed “some ideas could be changed” after senators watched the security video, though he had previously acknowledged the conviction was unlikely. By Thursday, many seemed ready to move on.
“I thought it was very repetitive today. I mean, there’s not much new. I was very disappointed that they didn’t commit too much to the legal rules, ”said Republican Sen. Josh Hawley of Missouri.
Several Republican senators, including Ted Cruz of Texas and Mike Lee of Utah, conferred on Trump’s lawyers Thursday. Cruz told reporters that senators were discussing the legal strategy, which would never be admissible in a criminal case. There are no rules against Senate jurors who make strategies with attorneys in an impeachment trial, though Democrats can use it to raise questions about impartiality.
The presentation of Trump’s lawyers is low-risk in a sense, given the likelihood of acquittal. But it is also being closely monitored due to an uneven performance on Tuesday, when a defense attorney, Bruce Castor, gave such serious arguments that Trump swept from his home in Florida.
They are expected to highlight different parts of the same speech focused by prosecutors, when Trump told supporters gathered at the Ellipse outside the White House to “fight like hell.”
They will claim that Trump in the same speech encouraged the crowd to behave “peacefully” and that his observations – and his general distrust of election results – are protected under the First Amendment. Democrats strongly resist this claim, saying their words were not political speech, but were tantamount to directly inciting violence.
Defense attorneys are likely to return to the arguments presented Tuesday that the trial itself is unconstitutional because Trump is no longer in office. The Senate rejected that dispute Tuesday as it voted to continue the trial, but Republican senators have indicated they are still interested in the argument.
On Thursday, senators sitting for a second full day of arguments seemed a little tired, leaning back in their chairs, crossing their arms and walking to stretch.
One Republican, Senator Jim Inhofe of Oklahoma, said during a pause, “For me, they lose credibility when they talk the most.”
Republican Sen. Marco Rubio said the Jan. 6 events, while “unpatriotic” and even “treacherous,” were not his main concern. Rather, he said Thursday, that a dismissal trial for someone who no longer holds office “sets a very dangerous precedent.”