The 38-minute video below shows how Donald J. Trump’s persistent repetition of lies and calls to action over two months created an alternate reality that he won re-election. Mr. Trump’s words, which were echoed and amplified by the rioters who stormed the Capitol on Jan. 6, are a central focus of his second impeachment trial.
Video inside article…
The Democratic Impeachment group are really bringing it today with Rep Raskin’s powerful opening remarks to Rep Neguse, Rep Joaquin Castro and Rep Swallwell.
This is riveting to see all the inciting of violence by the sheer number of lies that Trump said about what he promoted that the election was stolen.
House Democrats on Wednesday offered a small window into their Day Two impeachment argument before the Senate, promising to air new video footage providing an “extraordinary” glimpse of both the violence and heroics that accompanied the Jan. 6 attack on the Capitol.
“We’ll be using footage never seen before that shows a view of the Capitol that is quite extraordinary, and a view of the attack that has never been public before, which you will see for the first time, starting today,” a senior aide to the impeachment team told reporters Wednesday morning on a phone call.
##The former president’s defense team brings together an Alabama civil rights and criminal defense lawyer and a former Pennsylvania prosecutor best known for not charging Bill Cosby.
This is what a hero looks like:
The security footage is so damaging…and all of them Congressional member and staff who in fear for their lives and the melee that ensued from the rioters/insurrectionist. Here’s Officer Goodman redirecting Sen Romney to stay away from the danger.
Prosecutors in Donald Trump’s impeachment trial laid out their case Wednesday that he was no “innocent bystander” but the “inciter in chief” of the deadly Capitol riot who spent months spreading election lies and building a mob of supporters primed for his call to stop Joe Biden’s victory.
Opening the first full day of arguments, the House Democrats methodically presented evidence from the former president himself – hundreds of Trump tweets and comments that culminated in his Jan. 6 rally cry to go the Capitol and “fight like hell” to overturn his defeat. Trump then did nothing to stem the violence and watched with “glee,” they said, as the mob ransacked the iconic building. Five people died.
Senators, many with minds already made up, nevertheless sat riveted as jurors. They met in the same chamber the rioters stormed that day, battling through police barricades moments after the lawmakers had been rushed to a secret shelter. For the first time, the senators saw detailed security video of the break-in and heard grim emergency calls from Capitol police pleading for back-up as they were overwhelmed.
“To us it may have felt like chaos and madness, but there was method to the madness that day,” said Rep. Jamie Raskin, D-Md., the lead prosecutor, who pointed to Trump as the instigator.
“And when his mob overran and occupied the Senate and attacked the House and assaulted law enforcement, he watched it on TV like a reality show. He reveled in it.”
The day’s proceedings unfolded after Tuesday’s emotional start that left the f ormer president fuming when his attorneys delivered a meandering defense and failed to halt the trial on constitutional grounds. Some allies called for yet another shakeup to his legal team.
Trump is the first president to face an impeachment trial after leaving office and the first to be twice impeached. He is charged with “incitement of insurrection” with fiery words his defense lawyers say are protected by the Constitution’s First Amendment and just figures of speech.
The prosecutors are arguing that Trump’s words were part of “the big lie” — his relentless efforts to sow doubts about the election results. Those began long before the votes were tabulated, revving up his followers to “stop the steal” though there was no evidence of substantial fraud.
Trump knew very well what would happen when he took to the microphone at the outdoor White House rally that day, almost to the hour that Congress gaveled in to certify Biden’s win, said Rep. Joe Neguse, D-Colo.
“This was not just a speech,” he said.
Trump’s supporters were prepped and armed, ready to descend on the Capitol, Neguse said. “When they heard his speech, they understood his words.”
Security remained extremely tight Wednesday at the Capitol, fenced off with razor wire and patrolled by National Guard troops.
The footage of the guy with a bullhorn literally repeating Trump’s attack tweet on Pence WORD FOR WORD is so damning.
The video:
Senate Dem messaging is dead on.
Wow.
WSJ - Editorial Board calls oui Trump’s disgraceful conduct.
The Trump Impeachment Evidence
He might be acquitted, but he won’t live down his disgraceful conduct.
By The Editorial Board
Feb. 10, 2021 6:32 pm ET
Whether a former President ought to be subject to an impeachment trial is a matter of constitutional debate. Whether it’s prudent, if acquittal appears likely, is a related question. But wherever you come down on those issues, the House impeachment managers this week are laying out a visceral case that the Capitol riot of Jan. 6 was a disgrace for which President Trump bears responsibility.
Long before November, Mr. Trump was saying that the only way he could lose the election was if it were rigged. On the night of the vote, he tweeted, “they are trying to STEAL the election.” In his speech that night, he called it “a fraud on the American public,” and said, “frankly we did win.” Is it a surprise that some of his fans took his words to heart?
Instead of bowing to dozens of court defeats, Mr. Trump escalated. He falsely claimed that Vice President Mike Pence, if only he had the courage, could reject electoral votes and stop Democrats from hijacking democracy. He called his supporters to attend a rally on Jan. 6, when Congress would do the counting. “Be there, will be wild!” Mr. Trump tweeted. His speech that day was timed to coincide with the action in the Capitol, and then he directed the crowd down Pennsylvania Avenue.
Mr. Trump’s defenders point out that he also told the audience to make their voices heard “peacefully.” And contra Rep. Eric Swalwell, who argued the incitement to attack the Capitol was “premeditated,” it’s difficult to think Mr. Trump ever envisioned what followed: that instead of merely making a boisterous display, the crowd would riot, assault the police, invade the building, send lawmakers fleeing with gas masks, trash legislative offices, and leave in its wake a dead Capitol officer.
But talk about playing with fire. Mr. Trump told an apocalyptic fable in which American democracy might end on Jan. 6, and some people who believed him acted like it. Once the riot began, Mr. Trump took hours to say anything, a delay his defenders have not satisfactorily explained. Even then he equivocated. Imagine, Rep. Joe Neguse said, if Mr. Trump “had simply gone onto TV, just logged on to Twitter and said ‘Stop the Attack,’ if he had done so with even half as much force as he said ‘Stop the Steal.’”
The impeachment managers hurt their case by blaming only Mr. Trump for earlier clashes. “ Donald Trump, over many months, cultivated violence,” said Stacey Plaskett, the delegate for the Virgin Islands. But often those events were showdowns between left and right, with both seeking trouble. “When darkness fell,” the Washington Post reported after one melee, “the counterprotesters triggered more mayhem as they harassed Trump’s advocates, stealing red hats and flags and lighting them on fire.”
Yet there’s no defense for Mr. Trump’s conduct on Jan. 6 and before. Mitch McConnell is reportedly telling his GOP colleagues that the decision to convict or acquit is a vote of conscience, and that’s appropriate. After the Electoral College voted on Dec. 14, Mr. Trump could have conceded defeat and touted his accomplishments.
Now his legacy will be forever stained by this violence, and by his betrayal of his supporters in refusing to tell them the truth. Whatever the result of the impeachment trial, Republicans should remember the betrayal if Mr. Trump decides to run again in 2024.
Day 3 of Hearings/Day 2 of Democratic Impeachment managers presentation
Skepticism as to what the Republicans will do in terms of a final vote - “given how calcified the nation’s politics are at this point.”
Whether Trump’s lawyers may do a short presentation and have time for a vote must past Saturday
A particularly dark headline for now liberal Drudge Report
The Justice Department is now making clear that a leader among the Oath Keepers paramilitary group – who planned and led others in the US Capitol siege to attempt to stop the Biden presidency – believed she was responding to the call from then-President Donald Trump himself.
“As the inauguration grew nearer, [Jessica] Watkins indicated that she was awaiting direction from President Trump,” prosecutors wrote in a filing Thursday morning.
This is the most direct language yet from federal prosecutors linking Trump’s requests for support in Washington, DC, to the most militant aspects of the insurrection.
Previously, the Justice Department has somewhat held back on linking Trump’s words so closely to the extremist group’s actions during the riot. At least four defendants this week have argued in court they followed Trump’s direction to go to the Capitol building on January 6.
The Justice Department filing continued: “Her concern about taking action without his backing was evident in a November 9, 2020, text in which she stated, 'I am concerned this is an elaborate trap. Unless the POTUS himself activates us, it’s not legit. The POTUS has the right to activate units too. If Trump asks me to come, I will. Otherwise, I can’t trust it.’ Watkins had perceived her desired signal by the end of December.”
Counter narrative by Trump lawyer Schoen trying to critique the Dems presentation
NYT ongoing comments
Adding
What the other Trump lawyer, Castor is saying
Ten weeks before the election and four months before President Donald Trump summoned his supporters to Washington and called on them to “walk down Pennsylvania Avenue” to the U.S. Capitol, where they staged a brutal and chaotic insurrection, one of his staunchest allies sat for an interview, the Capitol visible behind him. There was no sign yet of the fury that would soon overtake its dome, but evangelical leader Franklin Graham painted a harrowing picture of a battle on the horizon.
What would happen, the Christian Broadcasting Network’s David Brody asked, if Trump lost? Graham’s reply stated plainly the stakes as he saw them. “I’m just asking that God would spare this country for another four years to give us a little bit more time to do the work before the storm hits,” he said. “I believe the storm is coming. You’re going to see Christians attacked; you’re going to see churches close; you’re going to see a real hatred expressed toward people of faith. That’s coming.” Graham said of Trump: “God has put him in this position” to defend “Western civilization as we have known it.” The Democrats, by contrast, were “opposed to faith.”
While Trump may have incited the riot at the Capitol that led to his second impeachment, many of his followers already had all the encouragement they needed: They believed God wanted them to do this.
Contrary to Graham’s dire warnings, we have not seen any of the kinds of violence directed at Christians that he predicted the Biden administration would bring. We have, however, seen a regular churchgoer inaugurated as president in a ceremony suffused with the language of faith. We have also seen a shocking act of violence committed by Christians: an assault on a symbol of American democracy that left the halls of Congress strewn with shattered glass, 140 police officers injured, and one officer and four others dead. Not only was this assault accompanied by Jesus flags, Bible quotes and loudspeaker sermons, it was undertaken — according to many of the attackers themselves — in Christianity’s name.
No matter such claims, the Capitol attackers of course do not represent the Christian faith as a whole. Christians across the country, along with members of every religious group, immediately and forcefully decried the events of Jan. 6 as madness. Yet at the same time, it was not incidental that Christians made up the core of the mob; their actions were a natural and perhaps inevitable outgrowth of the kind of rhetoric that Graham and other prominent faith leaders used for months to describe the election.
In Trump’s final days in the White House, it was often difficult to tell where puffery ended and the putsch began, but the religious framing of the effort to keep him in office was always clear. The question of who would occupy the White House after Jan. 20 had implications that were literally apocalyptic. Armed with this understanding — relentlessly pushed by prominent voices in Christian media, including presidential spiritual adviser Paula White, who virally denounced “demonic plans and networks” working on Joe Biden’s behalf, and author and radio host Eric Metaxas, who said that “this is God’s battle even more than our battle” — many of the insurrectionists believed that Trump would remain in power because the necessity of that outcome was entwined with deeper beliefs. “Jesus is my savior,” one popular flag seen during the Capitol siege said, “Trump is my president.” In their minds, it was not just the commander in chief who wanted the election results overturned, it was the Lord on high.
…
At Trump’s Senate impeachment trial, House managers have not mentioned the role of religion in the insurrection. This is most probably strategic and understandable. The influence of the insurgents’ theological assumptions is complex and would only distract from the crucial question of the president’s culpability. But as the trial continues, it’s worth keeping in mind that there are many ways to incite a riot. Trump may have shouted fire in a crowded theater, lighted the fire and then watched as it nearly consumed the nation, but it would not have burned so brightly had religious justifications not fanned the flames.