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Former President Donald Trump speaks to supporters this morning of the Capitol uprising.
WASHINGTON – During a three-hour presentation on Friday afternoon, former President Donald Trump’s lawyers underestimated the scale of the violent uprising in the US Capitol on January 6 and presented false and misleading information about the riots.
Trump’s indictment on Friday, in fact, came down to accusing Democrats of violating the former president’s freedom of speech under the First Amendment and denying his words out of context, denying that he meant it literally. he told his supporters on January 6 to ‘fight’. like hell ”shortly before the mob descended on the Capitol, insisting that the Democrats were hypocrites because they had also used the word” fight “in the past.
Trump’s lawyers have been trying to shift the focus away from the hours of video recordings and timeline reconstructions that House indictment managers have offered over the past two days. They refer to a ‘small group’ who ‘hijacked’ the January 6 demonstrations – more than 200 people have been charged, and law enforcement officials said there are still hundreds of open investigations – and falsely suggested that the mob was politically diverse. (The evidence overwhelmingly identified the participants as Trump supporters.) They linked evidence presented by prosecutors and defense attorneys directly through the uprising to Trump’s conduct after the election and his January 6 speech.
“The reality is that Mr. Trump in no way instructed these people to fight or use physical force,” attorney Michael van der Veen argued, pointing out that the former president also told his supporters that day to go to the Capitol and “let your voice be heard peacefully and patriotically.”
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In indictments, prosecutors outlined a pattern of Trump supporters explaining in their own words – through posts and videos on social media, interviews with reporters, and in some cases directly to the FBI – that they came to Washington, DC has. , at the insistence of the former president, prepared for a violent confrontation or was spoiled for battle, and understood that they were following his instructions and that he was approved when they descended on the Capitol.
Prosecutors on Thursday described how Jessica Watkins, a member of the militant group Oath Keepers, who is accused of conspiracy and other crimes related to the uprising, “waited for Trump to move in the direction” after the election.
Van der Veen instead accused the House’s accusation managers of trying to blame Trump ‘based on double hearsay statements by fringe groups based on no real evidence other than rank speculation.’ He also falsely claimed that ‘the leader of antifa’ was one of the first people arrested at the Capitol. No one charged so far is described by the government as a member of antifa, let alone a leader.
The lawyer did not specify who he was referring to – but shortly after the riot, images of John Earle Sullivan began circulating on the right side of the internet. Sullivan, a man in Utah who was arrested and charged with entering the Capitol illegally, was involved in organizing racial demonstrations in Salt Lake City, but said he was not affiliated with Antifa or Black Lives Matter. . The Washington Post reports that activists in Utah were suspicious of him and his motives. He also claimed that he was not politically connected and that he was filming the events at the Capitol as a journalist. The government did not agree with the latter argument and offered quotes from videos where it could be heard that Sullivan was encouraging rioters.
Van der Veen argued that it was “clear that extremists of different stripes and political persuasions planned and planned the attack in advance”. Prosecutors have provided evidence that small groups of accused plotted that day for violence – but to date, the accused have been identified as Trump supporters, largely based on their public social media posts.
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Trump’s indictments, Bruce Castor (left) and Michael van der Veen (right).
Trump’s lawyers have devoted much of their submission to arguments that the charges against the former president and the indictment itself are unconstitutional. Van der Veen argued that protecting the freedom of speech of the first amendment should protect Trump. He angrily condemned a group of more than 100 constitutionalists and jurists who signed a letter before the trial, calling the first amendment ‘argument’ legally frivolous’, an outrageous attempt to oust Trump’s legal team. called ‘intimidate’.
The overarching legal precedent set by both Trump’s attorneys and managers of indictments is Brandenburg teen Ohio, a 1969 decision of the U.S. Supreme Court. The judges at the time drew a line between advocacy speech protected by the First Amendment – including hate speech and speech advocating violence – and speech “aimed at inciting or producing threatening lawless action and likely to incite such action or produce. “
To bolster the argument that Trump’s speech on January 6 does not meet the legal standard for inciting ‘threatening’ violence and that the trial will set a dangerous precedent in the future for the indictment of other elected officials. officials, the former pres. plenty of time to replay the video montages of Democrats with the word ‘fight’. The video, shown twice by Trump’s team, lasted nearly ten minutes and featured clips of Democratic senators watching the trial; it included nearly two minutes in which Senator Elizabeth Warren said the word ‘fight’ during her presidential campaign.
His lawyers also tried to contrast the violence on January 6 and the widespread Black Lives Matter protests during the summer of 2020. Democratic politicians talk about protests.
Bruce Castor, another member of Trump’s legal team, reiterated a statement he made earlier this week that Trump and his legal team were exposing the January 6 violence. He concluded the presentation by arguing that the trial was an example of ‘constitutional’. cancel culture ”and accuse Democrats of trying to silence the protected speech with which they disagree. He also explained that they had decided not to use most of the 16 hours they were given to argue, so that the Senate could ‘take back those hours’ and use them to provide COVID relief to the American people. ‘.
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Trump’s situation is unique in American history – he is one of three presidents charged, the first to be charged twice, and the previous Senate hearings each took place while the president was still in office. Lawyers and the Democratic indictments have argued that there are historical precedents for prosecuting an executive after leaving government. In 1876, the then Secretary of War, William Belknap, resigned shortly before being indicted by the House for ‘criminally disregarding his duty as Secretary of War and basically prostituting his high office to his lust for private gain’. He was tried and eventually acquitted in the Senate.
The Constitution does not directly address the question of whether a president can be charged while in office and then be heard in the Senate after leaving. Lawyers do not agree on how to answer this question – Trump has had some prominent supporters when it comes to his argument that the trial is unconstitutional – but the Congressional Research Service noted in a report on the subject last month that it looks like as if the Democrats are on a stronger base, at least academically.
One jurist quoted by Trump’s lawyers in their statement even said they misquoted him as concluding that Trump could not be blamed. Brian Kalt, a professor at Michigan State University College of Law, wrote an article on legal reviews in 2001 on long-term accusations and cited evidence from both sides. However, he made clear in a Twitter thread on February 8, and the next day in a Slate open, that the article is ‘the preference for late impeccability’.
Trump’s exposition calls my article on late 2001 indictment very much: https://t.co/ozArTm1aVe The article preferred late indictment, but it contains all the evidence I found on both sides – much to use . But in different places they give a wrong idea of what I wrote. 1/4
Democrats have succeeded in convincing a majority of the Senate, including a handful of Republicans, to reject Republican Senator Rand Paul’s attempt to block the trial on constitutional grounds. But the vote also showed Trump’s substantial support under the IDP, and the strong chance the Democrats are experiencing to get the two-thirds majority needed to get convicted.
Article I of the Constitution gives the House of Representatives the power to prosecute and the Senate the power to condemn or not. It also spells out the two possible consequences of a conviction: dismissal from office and inability to hold office in the future. Meanwhile, Article II, which addresses the powers and functions of the executive, stipulates that the president and other public officials “shall be removed from office” if charged and then convicted of treason, bribery or other high crimes. Crimes. ”
Trump’s lawyers have argued that Article II’s reference to removal due to accusation makes the trial unconstitutional: because Trump is no longer in office, he cannot be removed.
But Democrats and constitutionalists have rejected it, saying Article I has no language that limits the Senate to only sitting presidents, unlike the former. These scholars say Article II makes clear what the basic penalty for conviction is, and not that the Senate cannot hold a trial at all if removal is no longer an option.