The legal team’s initial written response to the House’s impeachment article against Trump, submitted to the Senate on Tuesday, focuses on debatable constitutional arguments, particularly the claim that someone who is no longer in office cannot be convicted by the Senate. . (Many legal experts disagree.) But the answer also includes defenses to some of Trump’s claims that are obviously not true – including the crazy claim that he actually won the election.
The House’s impeachment article alleges that Trump incited the Capitol insurrection on January 6. He claims that at the beginning of the same day, Trump delivered a forthcoming speech in which he repeated “false claims that ‘we won this election, and we won it by a landslide.'”
The response of Trump’s lawyers, Bruce L. Castor, Jr. and David Schoen? Yes, Trump delivered a speech and exercised his First Amendment right to express his opinion – but if the House is claiming that his opinion “that the election results were suspect” is factually inaccurate, Trump “denies that claim”.
This is, frankly, ridiculous. Trump justly lost. Joe Biden was legitimately elected president. Trump’s opinion is factually inaccurate. The end.
Another section of the Trump team’s response rejects the House’s statement that in the months before January 6, Trump “repeatedly issued false statements” in which he claimed that “the election results were the product of widespread fraud”. The Trump team questions the legitimacy of changes in the pandemic era in state and local electoral procedures and then argues: “There is insufficient evidence on which a reasonable lawyer could conclude that the 45th president’s statements were accurate or not, and he therefore denies that they are false. “
This is very, very wrong. There is abundant evidence that several of Trump’s specific claims about alleged fraud are false. And Trump and his allies have completely failed, in court and elsewhere, to prove their most vague conspiratorial claims that the election was “rigged” and “stolen”.
Another big lie
The Trump team’s response makes a third statement that is transparently false: “It is denied that President Trump made any effort to subvert the certification of the results of the 2020 presidential election.”
To subvert can mean to overthrow, to overthrow, to undermine – and whatever definition you choose, Trump clearly tried to do that.
We don’t even have to go into Trump’s prolonged behind-the-scenes effort to change the outcome of the election; he waged much of his campaign in public. For example, on the morning of January 6, the day of the insurrection and certification, Trump tweeted that he wanted then Vice President Mike Pence to refuse to certify the results: “States want to correct their votes, which they now know were based in irregularities and fraud, in addition to corrupt process he never received legislative approval. All Mike Pence has to do is send them back to the United States, AND WE WON. Do it Mike, this is a moment of extreme courage! “
In his speech at the end of the day, Trump asked Pence again to “pass us by.” When Pence didn’t – Pence never had the constitutional power to reject Biden’s certification of victory – Trump criticized him in a second tweet.
Trump is unlikely to face a penalty in the Senate for continuing to propagate his lies. Most Republicans in the Senate of 50 Republicans and 50 Democrats look set to vote against their sentencing, and the sentencing requires the support of two-thirds of the senators present.
But it is telling that Trump will not even keep the truth when it is apparent that he is likely to win anyway.
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