Fact check: Trump’s lawyers make several false allegations in support of impeachment

Arguing that Trump did nothing to incite the U.S. Capitol insurrection on January 6, the lawyers distorted the facts about what happened that day and what happened in the past.

Trump’s lawyer, Michael van der Veen, highlighted Democrats’ comments that he suggested promoting or defending the violence. Trump, he argued, is different from these Democrats.

“Compare the president’s repeated condemnations of violence with the rhetoric of his opponents,” said van der Veen. He then played a video that juxtaposed clips of Trump condemning the violence and calling himself an “ally of all peaceful protesters” with some selectively edited clips of Democrats.

Facts first: This argument and video were misleading by default. Trump actually condemned the violence and called for peaceful protests, but he also repeatedly applauded or defended the violence and aggressive behavior.

Among other things, Trump has done the following since he launched his presidential campaign in 2015: he praised a Republican congressman for assaulting a journalist; urged the police not to worry about hurting the heads of the suspects they are arresting; he said he would like to punch a protester in the face; urged supporters to “take the shit out” of any protester they saw holding a tomato; said a kidnapping plot against Michigan’s Democratic governor, Gretchen Whitmer, may not be a real “problem”; Approvingly told a false story about a US general from the early 20th century who slaughtered Muslim terrorists with bullets dipped in the blood of pigs; said it was a “beautiful sight” when authorities threw a journalist to the ground during a conflict in Minneapolis; mocked a reporter who was shot by a rubber bullet; and applauded Trump supporters who surrounded a Joe Biden campaign bus on the highway, an incident that led to an FBI investigation.

Trump’s lawyer falsely claims that Trump’s first two tweets during the attack on the Capitol called for calm

Van der Veen said that “the first two messages the president sent via Twitter once the Capitol incursion began” urged people to “remain peaceful” and asked “without violence”.

Facts first: This is not true.

Trump’s tweet “stay at peace” at 2:38 pm and the “no violence” tweet at 3:13 pm were his second and third tweeted messages after the Capitol was violated, not the first. Trump’s first tweet was at 2:24 pm: “Mike Pence did not have the courage to do what should have been done to protect our country and our Constitution, giving States the chance to certify a corrected set of facts, not fraudulent or inaccurate ones. that they were asked to certify in advance. The US demands the truth! ”

Rioters had previously entered the United States Capitol building at the time of Trump’s tweet about Pence.

No, the media was not lying that there was an invasion during the 2016 election

Van der Veen said Washington officials, in addition to Trump, were the ones who used reckless and inflamed rhetoric. He said: “The entire Democratic Party and the national media have spent the past four years repeating without any evidence that the 2016 election has been hacked.”

Facts first: The Democratic National Committee and the Hillary Clinton campaign were really hacked during the 2016 election campaign; this is a fact, not a statement made “without any evidence”. THE US intelligence community, special advisor Robert Mueller and the bipartisan Senate Intelligence Committee all concluded that the Russian government was responsible for stealing and leaking internal documents and emails.

If van der Veen was suggesting that “the entire Democratic Party and the national media” spent four years falsely claiming that hackers altered the actual votes or the total votes in the 2016 elections, that would also not be true. We cannot speak for every word spoken by every Democrat or journalist since 2016, but it is clearly incorrect to say that the whole party or the media has spent four years defending that statement. The national discussion of hacking during the 2016 election focused on the actual confirmed hacking that targeted Democrats’ computer systems.

.Source