WASHINGTON (AP) – The legal adultery surrounding Donald Trump’s indictment is underway, with subjects filed this week outlining radically different positions ahead of the Senate hearing next week.
Home prosecutors and the former president’s defense team are making their arguments over Trump’s role in the January 6 riot at the US Capitol and about the legality of even trial. They also discuss the first amendment and a blunt assessment by the Democrats that the riot poses a threat to the presidential succession.
Take away from the arguments from both sides:
“SIMPLY RESPONSIBLE”
Who is responsible for the riot? Democrats say there is only one answer, and that is Trump.
The Democrats claim that Trump was “solely responsible” for the January 6 attack by “creating a gunpowder barrel, hitting a match and then seeking personal benefit from the ensuing devastation.” They say it’s impossible ‘to imagine the riot as it would be without Trump’s encouragement, and they even mention a fellow Republican, Representative Liz Cheney of Wyoming, who said essentially the same thing.
Trump’s lawyers, on the other hand, suggest he cannot be held responsible because he never encouraged anyone to ‘act destructively’. They concede that there was an illegal violation of the Capitol that resulted in deaths and injuries. But they say the people who are ‘responsible’, those who entered the building and vandalized it, are being investigated and prosecuted.
FIRST CHANGE ERROR LINE
Trump’s lawyers do not dispute that he told supporters to fight like hell before the Capitol siege. However, the defense says that Trump, like any citizen, is protected by the first amendment to “express his conviction that the election results were suspicious.” He was of the opinion that he was entitled to express it, and if the First Amendment protected only popular speech, it would be ‘no protection at all’.
House Democrats do not see it that way. First, they say the first amendment is intended to protect private citizens against the government, and not to allow government officials to abuse their power. And while a private citizen has the right to campaign for totalitarianism or the overthrow of the government, “no one will seriously suggest” that a president who assumes the same positions should be acquitted.
LINE OF SUCCESS
Prosecution officials say loyalists added by Trump directly endangered the safety of lawmakers fleeing the House and Senate when the riots erupted.
Among those affected were the most senior leaders of the government.
Those who followed in the queue for the presidency after Trump – then Vice President Mike Pence, House Speaker Nancy Pelosi and Senate Pro Tempore Chuck Grassley – were all in the Capitol and had to flee for safety. Trump’s actions not only “endangered the lives of every single member of Congress,” the Democrats wrote, but also “endangered the peaceful transition of power and succession.”
In the brief description, the threats to Pence and Pelosi are outlined when rioters stormed the building and “specifically hunted”. According to the document, which cites media and videos, insurgents shouted, “Hang Mike Pence!” and called him a traitor because he indicated he would not challenge the election the way Trump wanted. It is alleged that one person said that Pelosi ‘would have been torn to pieces’ if she had been found.
The Democrats also describe the terror that lawmakers and staff members experienced during the siege. “Some members called loved ones for fear they would not survive the assault by President Trump’s insurgent mob,” the indictment officials wrote.
DENY, DENY, DENY
That’s the message from Trump’s defense team, who used the word ‘deny’ or ‘deny’ 29 times in his 14-page statement.
Trump’s team denies the trial could be held because he is no longer in office. They deny that he 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 whipped his supporters into a frenzy by convincing them, despite overwhelming evidence against it, that the election had been stolen from him. .
When Trump told the crowd, “If you do not fight like hell, you will no longer have a country,” he simply pressed the “need to fight for electoral security in general,” Trump’s lawyers claim. . He did not try to interfere with the counting of election votes, although he demanded that Pence do exactly that.
“It is denied that President Trump ever endangered the security of the United States and its government institutions,” they wrote. “It is denied that he threatened the integrity of the democratic system, interfered with the peaceful transition of power and hindered an equal branch government.”
On the contrary, they say, he “performed wonderfully in his role as president and at all times did what he was in the best interests of the American people.”
There was no widespread fraud in the election, which was confirmed by a series of election officials across the country and by former Attorney General William Barr. Almost all of the legal challenges for the election posed by Trump and his allies have been rejected.
HISTORY LESSONS
Both sides are at odds or a trial is permissible now that Trump has left office – and the seemingly angry argument could be the key to his acquittal.
Trump’s lawyers say the case is difficult because he is no longer in the White House and therefore the Senate does not have the jurisdiction to try him in an indictment. Many Senate Republicans agree, and 45 of them voted on that basis to end the trial before it began. A two-thirds Senate vote is needed for Trump’s conviction.
It is true that no president has faced an accusation process after leaving office, but House executives say there are enough precedents. They mention the case of former war secretary William Belknap, who resigned in 1876 a few hours before he was charged with a setback scheme. The House charged him anyway, and the Senate then tried him, though he was eventually acquitted. Democrats also note that Trump was charged by the House while he was still president.
The drafters of the Constitution were intended for the prosecution to sanction current or former officials for acts committed in their office – without a “January exception”, the Democrats wrote. Not only that, they say, the Constitution explicitly allows the Senate to disqualify a former official he is guilty of from future office.
The possibility, according to them, makes the case against Trump – who could institute another White House in 2024 – anything but a dispute.