So basically, Trump absolutely tried to have Pence killed. Got it.
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Impeachment trial/Day 4 - Trump lawyer Michael van der Veen starts the day with clips of the Dems in 2017 trying to verify The 2016 votes. He tries to Trump as a Law and Order president.
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You know, this guy might have meant “incitement to resurrection” given how many white evangelicals see Trump as the second coming of Jesus Christ Incorporated.
When defending a defendant for murder, the natural thing to do is to bring up other murders the defendant committed previously, right?
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A mashup of ‘whataboutism’ and not adhering to facts advocated by Impeachment Defense Managers.
Lawyers for Donald J. Trump began an incendiary but brief defense of the former president on Friday, calling the House’s charge that he incited an insurrection at the Capitol on Jan. 6 a “preposterous and monstrous lie” as they falsely equated his conduct to Democrats’ use of combative rhetoric.
With Mr. Trump’s second impeachment trial moving toward a rapid verdict, his lawyers used its fourth day to channel the former president’s own combative style and embrace of falsehoods to claim, contrary to facts, that Mr. Trump never glorified violence during his presidency and that he consistently called for peace as the rampage at the Capitol unfolded. Showing video clips of Democrats urging their supporters to “fight” and Mr. Trump venerating “law and order,” they sought to rewrite not just the narrative of his campaign to overturn the election but that of his entire presidency.
“Like every other politically motivated witch hunt the left has engaged in over the last four years, this impeachment is completely divorced from the facts, the evidence and the interests of the American people,” said Michael T. van der Veen, one of Mr. Trump’s lawyers. “The Senate should promptly and decisively vote to reject it.”
Using a favorite tactic of Mr. Trump’s, his lawyers also sought to defend his behavior by citing that of others, arguing that he could no more be held responsible for the Capitol assault than Democrats could for the violence that erupted at some racial justice protests last summer.
Their presentation unfolded after nine House prosecutors spent two days laying out a meticulous case against the former president — dramatized with never-before-seen video of the Jan. 6 riot — portraying the rampage as the direct result of Mr. Trump’s monthslong campaign to overturn the election. Desperate to cling to power, the Democrats argued, Mr. Trump goaded his followers into joining his effort and would do so again if the Senate failed to convict him and bar him from holding office in the future.
Mr. van der Veen insisted on Friday that Mr. Trump had only ever been interested in election security reforms, like voter ID laws — an assertion that directly contradicted months of public and private actions by Mr. Trump. He said the president intended for the Jan. 6 rally he hosted before the attack to be peaceful, but that it had been “hijacked” by extremists, including from the far left — another claim disproved even by Republicans. At one point, he also appeared to blame Congress’s political leaders for not being prepared for the attack.
“Unlike Democrats, Mr. Trump has been entirely consistent in his opposition to mob violence,” he said. Two days earlier, Democrats had shown video of Mr. Trump repeatedly encouraging or looking past violence when it was done in his name.
At another point, Mr. Trump’s lawyers sought to vindicate his widely condemned 2017 remark that there had been “very fine people on both sides” of a neo-Nazi rally in Charlottesville, Va.
The defense team also planned to assert that Mr. Trump’s conduct did not meet the legal definition of incitement and that the Senate “lacks jurisdiction” to convict anyway now that the 45th president has left office, even though the Senate already voted to decide that it had the right to hold his trial.
Confident they have enough votes from Republicans to acquit Mr. Trump for the second time in little more than a year, they planned to use no more than four of the 16 hours they were allotted, according to people familiar with the planning. That could clear the way for the next phase of the trial, in which senators have up to four hours to pose questions to the prosecutors and defense lawyers, as early as Friday.
Response from the House Managers NYT Live blog
Trump’s lawyers using tons of video on Dems using the words “Fight”
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While this falls under Opinion I am putting it here. Sherrilyn Ifill is council to NAACP and she makes many good points as to the actions of the lawyers in government and who represent points of view to enhance their party. #SeeBarr/Sessions/Cruz/Hawle/Graham etc.
Every day, we learn more about the concerted attack on American democracy perpetuated to overturn the results of the 2020 presidential election. But the violent storming of the Capitol was only its most visible and ugly climax. What has become disturbingly and abundantly clear is that whether through former President Donald Trump’s relentless and meritless lawsuits, the plot in the Department of Justice to remove the acting attorney general, or a congressional plan in which members — including two former Supreme Court clerks — perpetuated false unsubstantiated claims of massive voter fraud, attorneys played a central role in enabling the most dangerous assault on American democracy in more than a century.
The appalling conduct of the lawyers at the highest levels of government who behaved so shamelessly in seeking to maintain Trump in office was not an aberration, but a continuation. Throughout Trump’s presidency, lawyers were centrally involved in perpetuating some of its most repugnant excesses. Attorney General Jeff Sessions helped develop the concept of family separation as a migration deterrent. His deputy, Rod Rosenstein, reportedly signed off on applying the policy no matter the age of the child. Sessions’s successor, Bill Barr, misrepresented the Mueller team’s findings and interfered with the sentencing of Trump advisers Paul Manafort and Roger Stone.
Despite this, there was little condemnation from the leadership institutions of our profession. The American Law Institute invited Mr. Barr to speak just months after his hijacking of the Mueller report, and ensured that there was no opportunity for questions from the audience. And neither judicial nor prosecutors’ associations ever issued condemnatory statements when Mr. Trump incited threats against the Black jury forewoman in Mr. Stone’s case.
The upending of norms and standards carried into the legislative and judicial branches as well. Many cabinet and judicial nominees, beginning with Mr. Sessions himself, made a mockery of the Senate Judiciary Committee confirmation process by providing misleading information on their confirmation questionnaires — which are submitted under penalty of perjury. Neither Mr. Sessions nor other nominees were held accountable for these misrepresentations. Instead, almost all were confirmed.
The Judiciary Committee — principally made up of lawyers — split along party lines, with many Republican lawyer members recommending the confirmation of Federal District Court nominees who had no discernible litigation experience, and of Appellate and District Court nominees who received rare “not qualified” ratings by the American Bar Association.
During their confirmation hearings, over two dozen Trump administration nominees to the federal bench refused to say that the landmark school desegregation case, Brown v. Board of Education, was correctly decided — despite universal acceptance that Brown is fundamental to the rule of law itself.
Just as the president, members of Congress, and insurrectionists must be held accountable for their actions, the legal profession must urgently take collective stock of why so many prominent legal institutions and leaders were embroiled in supporting one of the most corrupt and destructive presidencies in our history.
There is precedent for this kind of institutional reckoning. The South African Truth and Reconciliation Commission (T.R.C.) hearings were a wrenching, but necessary confrontation with the brutal reality of apartheid. These hearings — which unfolded before a global audience — were remarkable for their frank, honest, and terrifying accounts of abuses committed by the white supremacist apartheid regime. The T.R.C. hearings were regarded as a necessary confrontation with the full measure of widespread complicity with apartheid, as the country set a new course toward a democratic future.
One of the most important, but less well-known efforts of the T.R.C. was its institutional hearings, which examined civil society’s role in perpetuating the apartheid regime’s abuses. The three days of legal system-focused proceedings were the most riveting of the institutional hearings — and among the most controversial.
The T.R.C.’s legal hearings offer a useful way of thinking about how our legal system might confront actions taken during the Trump administration. Rather than a government-created tribunal, though, our profession should be prepared to examine its own conduct in this period that has brought us to the brink of democratic collapse — and make bold changes to strengthen its foundations.
It begins with a recognition that in a world in which raw power has come to transcend the unspoken code of civility and integrity among political lawyers, more is needed than the mere expectation that lawyers in government will behave honorably. The tenure of Bill Barr makes clear that the presumption that the Department of Justice will maintain an appropriate measure of independence from the White House can simply no longer be left to the personal ethics of individual attorneys general. We need a revision of the rules that govern recusal by attorneys in the Department of Justice. An independent nonpartisan tribunal of ethics experts should be empaneled to issue recusal advisories and orders for the Department of Justice’s leadership.
The Model Rules of Professional Conduct bar attorneys from abusing the legal process, and yet for weeks on end a cohort of attorneys — including attorneys general from 17 states who supported the Texas lawsuit seeking to delay the election certification — did just that on the president’s behalf following his electoral loss in November. Is it enough that nearly every judge they faced booted out their cases unceremoniously? Is that sufficient deterrence to other attorneys to refrain from the egregious conduct that unnecessarily expended court resources, but also kept alive a fraudulent narrative advanced by the president that the election had been “stolen,” which ultimately led to the violent attack on the Capitol on Jan. 6? Obviously not. Attorneys must face professional censure for such conduct, and the law firms where these lawyers serve as partners should be compelled to review their own standards for leadership.
Without question, these changes will be difficult and controversial. But we must have a full accounting and examination of our profession’s role in contributing to the erosion of our democracy. Even now, the outcome of Mr. Trump’s second impeachment trial will depend on the integrity and courage of lawyers, who make up a majority of the United States Senate. As a profession we must confront ourselves if lawyers are to be worthy of the mantle of leadership that is so routinely and unquestioningly conferred upon us, and if we are to protect the rule of law in our democracy.
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I agree…
adding
Trump ‘did not cause the riots,’ says his lawyer, who doesn’t mention ex-president’s invitation for his supporters to come to D.C.
By Ann E. Marimow
In concluding his defense of the former president, Trump’s lawyer Bruce L. Castor Jr. tried to distinguish between the physical attack on the Capitol and the former president’s words to his supporters that day.
He laid out a timeline that he said showed the siege was planned and distinct from Trump’s false claims about Biden’s election victory. Some of Trump’s supporters had gathered outside the Capitol, he noted, even before the president’s speech began.
“All of these facts make clear the January 6th speech did not cause the riots. The president did not cause the riots. He neither explicitly or implicitly encouraged the use of violence or lawless action,” said Castor, who emphasized Trump’s call to “peacefully and patriotically” march down Pennsylvania Avenue to stop the certification of the election.
Castor, however, did not mention that Trump had essentially invited supporters to come to Washington on Jan. 6 in an earlier tweet in which he said: “Be there, will be wild.”
He also left out that more than an hour after police reported that the Capitol had been overwhelmed by the angry mob, Trump tweeted criticism of his vice president, who was presiding over the election certification.
“Mike Pence didn’t have the courage to do what should have been done to protect our Country and our Constitution … USA demands the truth!” Trump tweeted.
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Q & A - Trump’s lawyers were horrible
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Ted Cruz is being as unsubtle as a sharpie hurricane…
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Q & A House Managers respond to question on what Trump was doing during the Insurrection
at 4:29P since 1 or 2p, when Trump continued to do nothing.
And what about Mike Pence’s welfare, did the President do anything to help Pence.
Reponse from Trump’s lawyer
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What did Trump want??? This.
Stall out the Electoral College process. He wanted it ALL to stop (Congress to stop) - not the insurrectionists.
Question from Sen Padilla (D-CA) - former head of Elections in CA =
How did the plot to unconstitutionally keep Trump on Power lead to the radicalization of Trump’s followers and the attack on the Capitol?
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Trump’s lawyer - van der Veen has a hissy fit and avoids a question on disqualifying the President.
Q - If the Senate’s pwer to disqualify is not derivative of he power to remove, a convicted President, could the Senate disqualify a sitting President but not remove him/her?
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Trump’s lawyer is stuck in his circular argument…not answering a simple question - Did Trump win the election?
And some remarks from Garry Kasparov on what Trump’s defense represents
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Powerful oration by Rep Plaskett on what it means to be a black woman in America and her asking why the T lawyers made so many references to Black women alone in saying the word ‘Fight?’ Black women who have fought along side many Americans for Justice.
And she can do a take down as well
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A telling recounting of a phone call with Rep Kevin McCarthy (R-CA) who said Trump was little concerned with bringing help to the Capitol, and call off the mob and that Trump shouted down McCarthy…
Could be significant to anyone with a conscious on Impeachment.
In an expletive-laced phone call with House Republican leader Kevin McCarthy while the Capitol was under attack, then-President Donald Trump said the rioters cared more about the election results than McCarthy did.
"Well, Kevin, I guess these people are more upset about the election than you are," Trump said, according to lawmakers who were briefed on the call afterward by McCarthy.
McCarthy insisted that the rioters were Trump’s supporters and begged Trump to call them off.
Trump’s comment set off what Republican lawmakers familiar with the call described as a shouting match between the two men. A furious McCarthy told the President the rioters were breaking into his office through the windows, and asked Trump, “Who the f–k do you think you are talking to?” according to a Republican lawmaker familiar with the call.
The newly revealed details of the call, described to CNN by multiple Republicans briefed on it, provide critical insight into the President’s state of mind as rioters were overrunning the Capitol. The existence of the call and some of its details have been previously reported and discussed publicly by McCarthy.
The Republican members of Congress said the exchange showed Trump had no intention of calling off the rioters even as lawmakers were pleading with him to intervene. Several said it amounted to a dereliction of his presidential duty.
"He is not a blameless observer, he was rooting for them," a Republican member of Congress said. “On January 13, Kevin McCarthy said on the floor of the House that the President bears responsibility and he does.”
Speaking to the President from inside the besieged Capitol, McCarthy pressed Trump to call off his supporters and engaged in a heated disagreement about who comprised the crowd. Trump’s comment about the would-be insurrectionists caring more about the election results than McCarthy did was first mentioned by Rep. Jaime Herrera Beutler, a Republican from Washington state, in a town hall earlier this week, and was confirmed to CNN by Herrera Beutler and other Republicans briefed on the conversation.
“You have to look at what he did during the insurrection to confirm where his mind was at,” Herrera Beutler told CNN. "That line right there demonstrates to me that either he didn’t care, which is impeachable, because you cannot allow an attack on your soil, or he wanted it to happen and was OK with it, which makes me so angry."
"We should never stand for that, for any reason, under any party flag," she added, voicing her extreme frustration: “I’m trying really hard not to say the F-word.”
"I think it speaks to the former President’s mindset," said Rep. Anthony Gonzalez, an Ohio Republican who voted to impeach Trump last month. "He was not sorry to see his unyieldingly loyal vice president or the Congress under attack by the mob he inspired. In fact, it seems he was happy about it or at the least enjoyed the scenes that were horrifying to most Americans across the country."
As senators prepare to determine Trump’s fate, multiple Republicans thought the details of the call were important to the proceedings because they believe it paints a damning portrait of Trump’s lack of action during the attack. At least one of the sources who spoke to CNN took detailed notes of McCarthy’s recounting of the call.
Trump and McCarthy did not respond to requests for comment.
It took Trump several hours after the attack began to eventually encourage his supporters to “go home in peace” – a tweet that came at the urging of his top aides.
At Trump’s impeachment trial Friday, his lawyers argued that Trump did in fact try to calm the rioters with a series of tweets while the attack unfolded. But his lawyers cherry-picked his tweets, focusing on his request for supporters to “remain peaceful” without mentioning that he also attacked then-Vice President Mike Pence and waited hours to explicitly urge rioters to leave the Capitol.
It’s unclear to what extent these new details were known by the House Democratic impeachment managers or whether the team considered calling McCarthy as a witness. The managers have preserved the option to call witnesses in the ongoing impeachment trial, although that option remains unlikely as the trial winds down.
The House Republican leader had been forthcoming with his conference about details of his conversations with Trump on and after January 6.
Trump himself has not taken any responsibility in public.
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Another lie here
An attorney for Donald Trump falsely claimed during his impeachment trial Friday that the Democrats prosecuting the case withheld key evidence from the ex-president’s legal team, according to a senior congressional aide familiar with the matter.
David Schoen, one of Trump’s three defense lawyers, told senators at the unprecedented trial that the ex-president’s team was not privy to the previously unseen surveillance footage of the Jan. 6 attack on the U.S. Capitol that the House impeachment managers showed during Wednesday’s proceeding.
But a senior Democratic aide for the impeachment managers disputed Schoen’s claim.
“The Trump team was given the full trial record, including ALL video and audio used, prior to the start of the trial,” the aide said.
A spokesman for Trump’s legal team did not return a request for comment.
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Lots of evidence to the contrary that Trump didn’t know. No one is going to carry that water for T here, especially Pence’s group.
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