WASHINGTON (AP) – Democrats are using Donald Trump’s Senate impeachment trial as a political “weapon” to prevent the former president from seeking the job again and are pursuing a case that is “undemocratic” and unconstitutional, said one from his lawyers on Monday night.
Trump will face trial next week on charges that he incited a terrible and deadly siege on the United States Capitol on January 6, when a crowd of city supporters for a rally in support of the president stormed the police and stormed the building. The House passed a single impeachment article against Trump a week before he stepped down. A trial would allow Democrats to present evidence against Trump and hold him publicly responsible for the attack.
However, if a Senate trial is constitutional it is a point of contention because Trump is no longer in office and, if convicted, cannot be removed from a position he does not hold. Democrats point to an 1876 impeachment of a war secretary who had already resigned and to the views of many jurists. The Senate could vote to prevent Trump from taking federal office if he were convicted, which is a goal that Democrats support.
On the eve of expected legal instructions from lawyers on both sides, the appearance of Trump’s lawyer David Schoen on Fox News predicted some of the arguments he plans to make at the trial, calling the case unnecessary, as well as unconstitutional and undemocratic. .
“It is also the most reckless legislative action I have seen in my life,” said Schoen.
Trump is the first president in American history to face two charges. He was acquitted in a Senate trial last year for his contacts with his Ukrainian counterpart. Impeachment, said Schoen, “is the weapon they tried to use against him”.
The new case was an effort to prevent Trump from running for office again, said Schoen, “and this is the most undemocratic one can imagine.”
Schoen, a criminal defense and civil rights attorney, and Bruce Castor, a former Pennsylvania county attorney, were announced as Trump’s legal team on Sunday night, the day after it was revealed that the former president had separated from another group of lawyers in what one person described as a mutual decision.
In an interview with The Atlanta Journal-Constitution, Schoen said he did not plan to argue that Trump lost the election because of fraud, as Trump has repeatedly insisted, and would instead argue that the trial itself is unconstitutional, since Trump has already left the position and that his words were protected by the First Amendment and did not incite a riot.
House Democrats plan to expose what happened on January 6 in graphic detail – an effort to reach out to Senate Republicans who avoided talking about the attack itself and Trump’s role in it, rather than focusing on the trial process. impeachment. They are expected to play videos and verbally narrate the violence of the day in hopes of stirring up Republicans, many of whom fled the Senate that day when the rebels invaded.
The House’s nine impeachment managers who will discuss the case must also state how they believe Trump’s actions over the past few months led to this and eventually prompted the rebels to act.
His arguments will include a look at Trump’s “prolonged effort” to persuade his supporters to believe his false claims that the election was stolen – and describe how his calls for Washington to come and his words immediately before the attack caused it directly.
The crowd that invaded the Capitol while the House and Senate registered electoral votes not only looted the building, but repeatedly summoned House Speaker Nancy Pelosi and Vice President Mike Pence, who was in the building to preside over the count.
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Associated Press writer Jill Colvin contributed to this report.
Originally published