WASHINGTON \u2014 Lawyers for Donald Trump opened his impeachment defense Friday by strenuously denying he played any role in inciting the deadly riot at the U.S. Capitol, blasting the case against him as political vengeance and part of a yearslong Democratic \u201cwitch hunt.\u201d<\/p>\n
An attorney for the former president told senators that Trump was entitled to dispute the 2020 election results and that his doing so, including in a speech that preceded the assault on the Capitol, did not amount to inciting the violence that followed.<\/p>\n
\u201cNothing in the text could ever be construed as encouraging, condoning or enticing unlawful activity,\u201d said Michael van der Veen, one of Trump\u2019s attorneys.<\/p>\n
After a prosecution case rooted in emotive, violent images from the Capitol siege, the impeachment trial shifted to defense lawyers who were prepared to make a fundamental concession: The violence was every bit as traumatic, unacceptable and illegal as Democrats say \u2014 but Trump did not order it.<\/p>\n
Acknowledging the horrors of the January day is meant to blunt the visceral impact of the House Democrats\u2019 case and quickly pivot to what Trump\u2019s defenders see as the core \u2014 and more winnable \u2014 issue of the trial: Whether Trump can be held responsible for inciting the deadly Jan. 6 riot.<\/p>\n
The argument is likely to appeal to Republican senators who want to be seen as condemning the violence but without convicting the president.<\/p>\n
\u201cThey haven\u2019t in any way tied it to Trump,\u201d David Schoen, one of the president\u2019s lawyers, told reporters near the end of two full days of Democrats\u2019 arguments aimed at doing just that.<\/p>\n
He previewed the essence of his argument Tuesday, telling the Senate jurors: \u201cThey don\u2019t need to show you movies to show you that the riot happened here. We will stipulate that it happened, and you know all about it.\u201d<\/p>\n
In both legal filings and in arguments this week, Trump\u2019s lawyers have made clear their position that the people responsible for the riot are the ones who actually stormed the building and who are now being prosecuted by the Justice Department.<\/p>\n
Anticipating defense efforts to disentangle Trump\u2019s rhetoric from the rioters\u2019 actions, the impeachment managers spent days trying to fuse them together through a reconstruction of never-been-seen video footage alongside clips of the president\u2019s monthslong urging of his supporters to undo the election results.<\/p>\n
Democrats, who concluded their case Thursday, used the rioters\u2019 own videos and words from Jan. 6 to try to pin responsibility on Trump. \u201cWe were invited here,\u201d said one Capitol invader. \u201cTrump sent us,\u201d said another. \u201cHe\u2019ll be happy. We\u2019re fighting for Trump.\u201d<\/p>\n
The prosecutors\u2019 goal was to cast Trump not as a bystander but rather as the \u201cinciter in chief\u201d who spread election falsehoods, then encouraged supporters to come challenge the results in Washington and fanned the discontent with rhetoric about fighting and taking back the country.<\/p>\n
The Democrats also are demanding that he be barred from holding future federal office.<\/p>\n
\u201cThis attack never would have happened but for Donald Trump,\u201d Rep. Madeleine Dean, one of the impeachment managers, said Thursday as she choked back emotion. \u201cAnd so they came, draped in Trump\u2019s flag, and used our flag, the American flag, to batter and to bludgeon.\u201d<\/p>\n
For all the significance the impeachment of a president is meant to convey, this historic second trial of Trump could wrap up with a vote by this weekend, particularly since Trump\u2019s lawyers focused on legal rather than emotional or historic questions and are hoping to get it all behind him as quickly as possible.<\/p>\n
With little hope of conviction by the required two-thirds of the Senate, Democrats delivered a graphic case to the American public, describing in stark, personal terms the terror faced that day \u2014 some of it in the very Senate chamber where senators are sitting as jurors. They used security video of rioters searching menacingly for House Speaker Nancy Pelosi and Vice President Mike Pence, smashing into the building and engaging in bloody, hand-to-hand combat with police.<\/p>\n
They displayed the many public and explicit instructions Trump gave his supporters \u2014 long before the White House rally that unleashed the deadly Capitol attack as Congress was certifying Democrat Joe Biden\u2019s victory. Five people died in the chaos and its aftermath.<\/p>\n
\u201cWhat makes you think the nightmare with Donald Trump and his law-breaking and violent mobs is over?\u201d asked Rep. Jamie Raskin, D-Md., the lead prosecutor. He said earlier, \u201cWhen Donald Trump tells the crowd, as he did on Jan. 6, \u2018Fight like hell, or you won\u2019t have a country anymore,\u2019 he meant for them to \u2018fight like hell.\u2019\u201d<\/p>\n
At the White House, Biden said he believed \u201csome minds may be changed\u201d after senators saw the security video, though he had previously acknowledged that conviction was unlikely. By Thursday, many seemed prepared to move on.<\/p>\n
\u201cI thought today was very repetitive, actually. I mean, not much new. I was really disappointed that they didn\u2019t engage much with the legal standards,\u201d said Republican Sen. Josh Hawley of Missouri.<\/p>\n
Several Republican senators, including Ted Cruz of Texas and Mike Lee of Utah, conferred Thursday with Trump\u2019s lawyers. Cruz told reporters that the senators were discussing legal strategy \u2014 something that would never be permissible in a criminal case. There\u2019s no rule against the Senate jurors strategizing with the lawyers in an impeachment trial, though Democrats can use it to raise questions about impartiality.<\/p>\n
The presentation by Trump\u2019s lawyers is low-risk in one sense given the likelihood of acquittal. But it is also being closely watched because of an uneven performance on Tuesday when one defense lawyer, Bruce Castor, gave such meandering arguments that Trump raged from his home in Florida.<\/p>\n
They are highlighting different parts of the same speech focused on by prosecutors, when Trump told supporters assembled at the Ellipse outside the White House to \u201cfight like hell.\u201d<\/p>\n
They note that Trump in the same speech encouraged the crowd to behave \u201cpeacefully,\u201d and they contend that his remarks \u2014 and his general distrust of the election results \u2014 are all protected under the First Amendment. Democrats strenuously resist that assertion, saying his words weren\u2019t political speech but rather amounted to direct incitement of violence.<\/p>\n
The defense lawyers also returned to arguments made Tuesday that the trial itself is unconstitutional because Trump is no longer in office. The Senate rejected that contention as it voted to proceed with the trial.<\/p>\n
By Thursday, senators sitting through a second full day of arguments appeared somewhat fatigued, slouching in their chairs, crossing their arms and walking around to stretch.<\/p>\n
One Republican, Sen. Jim Inhofe of Oklahoma, said during a break: \u201cTo me, they\u2019re losing credibility the longer they talk.\u201d<\/p>\n
Republican Sen. Marco Rubio said the facts of Jan. 6, though \u201cunpatriotic\u201d and even \u201ctreasonous,\u201d were not his chief concern. Rather, he said Thursday, an impeachment trial for someone no longer in office \u201csets a very dangerous precedent.\u201d<\/p>\n