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A lawyer for Trump said the goal of the impeachment was “to cancel 75 million Trump voters.” (Archive)
Washington:
US senators should acquit Donald Trump, his lawyers said Friday in his impeachment trial for inciting the insurrection, arguing that the Democrats’ real goal was to take “revenge” and “cancel” the right-wing populist movement.
“The impeachment article now before the Senate is an unfair and blatantly unconstitutional act of political revenge,” said attorney Michael van der Veen.
“The Senate must vote quickly and decisively to reject it.”
Democratic impeachment managers rested their case Thursday after two days of often emotional presentations anchored in shocking video footage of a Jan.6 invasion of Congress by Trump supporters.
Trump’s attorneys concluded their case after just three hours.
Senators, who serve as jurors in the impeachment trials, were the next to cross-examine the two sides, with the verdict expected to come by the weekend at the latest.
The impeachment team argues that Trump deliberately stoked national tension after losing re-election to Joe Biden on November 3 with a campaign of lies that claimed there had been massive voter fraud.
On January 6, he staged a fierce rally near the White House, calling on the crowd to march on Congress, which was in the process of certifying Biden’s victory.
The mob then charged at the Capitol building, disrupting certification. Five people, including a police officer and a woman shot during the riots, died as a result of the chaos.
Prosecution managers say Trump, who has never expressed remorse for rooting for the violent crowd, is so dangerous that he should be barred from holding office again.
It would take a two-thirds majority to convict, which means 17 Republicans would need to join the 50 Senate Democrats. This is highly unlikely.
However, if even a handful of Republicans vote to convict, it would be a historic landmark against Trump, fueling a civil war within his party over whether to pursue his populist and divisive vision or return to more moderate values.
“Hypocrisy” of Trump’s accusers
The former president’s lawyers argued that his January 6 speech in which he told supporters to “fight back” was merely rhetorical.
They also argue that the trial itself is unconstitutional because Trump is now out of office and that the true goal of the Democrats is to remove him from the political scene.
“Let’s be clear: this trial is so much more than President Trump,” said defense attorney Bruce Castor.
“It’s about canceling 75 million Trump voters and criminalizing political views. That’s what this trial is really about.”
Seeking to turn the table around the Democrats’ use of video evidence to link Trump to the chaos, the defense attorneys replayed their own compilations showing Democratic lawmakers at different times using the word “fight.”
Democratic senators, along with President Joe Biden and Vice President Kamala Harris, when they were in the 2020 election campaign, are among those shown using the word in speeches and on television.
Trump’s attorney, David Schoen, addressed the senators and members of the House in charge of prosecuting the case against Trump, suggesting that “each and every one of you” had also used the word in political speech.
“Okay, they didn’t do anything wrong. It’s a word people use,” Schoen told them. “But please stop the hypocrisy.”
Trump “fired up” and “incited”
Video footage at the heart of the impeachment managers case showed crowds on Capitol Hill on January 6 chasing Trump’s opponents as top figures, including then-Vice President Mike Pence, fled for safety.
Schoen mocked the video as “an entertainment package” and said Trump could not be held responsible for the protesters’ actions.
But chief impeachment manager Jamie Raskin noted that the Republican leader had been encouraging extremism even in the run-up to Election Day by constantly undermining public faith in the election process.
“This pro-Trump insurrection did not come out of nowhere,” Raskin said. “This was not the first time that Donald Trump had inflamed and incited a mob.”
He said it was imperative that the Senate condemn Trump and prohibit him from running for the White House again in 2024 or facing the risk of the same kind of behavior being repeated.
“Would you bet the future of your democracy on that?”
Joe Biden “anxious”
Earlier, Biden told reporters at the White House that he was “anxious to see what my Republican friends will do, if they stand up,” when it comes to the verdict.
There was little indication of an imminent breakdown of Trump’s firewall, but the verdict will make many in the party uncomfortable either way.
Republican Senator Bill Cassidy of Louisiana said the evidence shown by House trustees was “powerful,” but “how that influences final decisions remains to be seen.”
Other Republican senators have clearly already made a decision and do not intend to break up with Trump, who has threatened to derail their careers if they back impeachment.
“The ‘Not Guilty’ vote is growing,” Republican Sen. Lindsey Graham of South Carolina tweeted.
Republican Sen. Josh Hawley of Missouri told Fox News that the trial was “totally illegitimate.”
A prominent Republican voice and potential future presidential candidate, former UN Ambassador Nikki Haley, told Politico that it is time to resign from Trump, saying, “We cannot allow that to happen again.”
(Except for the headline, this story has not been edited by NDTV staff and is posted from a syndicated channel.)
