Congressional Democrats and former lawyers President Trump
Donald TrumpGraham rejects Merrick Garland’s request for confirmation at Trump’s attorney’s hearing on February 8 to make the First Amendment case at the impeachment trial Biden faces a crossroads in the virus relief bill MORE released competing documents on Tuesday outlining their legal strategies for the Senate’s impeachment trial next week on Trump’s role in inciting a violent crowd to invade the Capitol on January 6.
The House Democrats’ 80-page report blames the deadly siege directly at Trump’s feet, saying he intentionally “whipped [the crowd] in a frenzy. “The ex-president’s new legal team, formed on Sunday night, submitted a 14-page response arguing that the trial is unconstitutional and that Trump’s rhetoric did not inspire the turmoil.
Here are five lessons from the rival instructions.
The summaries highlight different political worlds
Reading the legal documents presented by the two parties is like entering two completely different universes.
Democrats are still enraged by the deadly January 6 uprising and drew a direct line from Trump’s months-long campaign to delegitimize the results of the presidential election with his speech in Washington asking supporters to “fight” for him and the violent crowd that then it besieged for the Capitol.
All House Democrats and 10 Republicans voted last month for Trump’s impeachment for inciting violence, and there is no doubt in the minds of Democrats that the Constitution gives the Senate the right to condemn Trump and prevent him from running for office. again, even now that he is an ordinary citizen.
In fact, Democrats say it is imperative that Trump be punished to ensure that America’s democracy is not threatened in this way ever again.
“President Trump’s conduct must be declared unacceptable in the clearest and most unambiguous terms. This is not a partisan affair. Their actions directly threatened the very foundation on which all other political debates and disagreements unfold, ”says the Democratic report. “They also threatened the constitutional system that protects the fundamental freedoms that we cherish.”
On the Republican side, shock and anger have subsided a few weeks since the insurrection. Forty-five of the 50 Senate Republicans have already voted to reject the trial on the grounds that it is unconstitutional.
In their legal report, Trump’s lawyers argued that the trial proceedings are null and void because a former president cannot be impeached.
They argued that there was no correlation between Trump’s rhetoric and the crowd that later invaded Capitol. The president’s speech about the election that was stolen from him, while unpopular in Washington, is protected by the First Amendment, and any attempt to punish him would violate his civil liberties, argued Trump’s lawyers.
Many Republicans believe Trump is responsible for the deadly turmoil, although many more see the impeachment process as a political effort designed to get Trump out of it once and for all.
Trial to focus on First Amendment, incitement allegations
The House accused Trump last month on a single charge of “inciting insurrection”, largely based on his January 6 speech outside the White House, encouraging supporters to march on Capitol Hill and prevent Congress from certifying victory election of his opponent, President Biden.
The Democrats’ legal document promises to deconstruct that single charge, dissecting it into a series of even more targeted allegations, any of which they maintain should disqualify the president from taking office in the future.
That list includes accusations that Trump abused his powers for personal political benefit, endangered the lives of lawmakers and his own vice president, and threatened national security by encouraging a violation of the Capitol, where protesters stole items from lawmakers’ offices. including a laptop from the President Nancy Pelosi
Nancy PelosiBiden, Republican Party senators agree to more conversations at COVID-19 after “excellent” first meeting McConnell says Taylor Greene’s adoption of conspiracy theories is “cancer” for the Republican Party, country On The Money: Schumer promises that the Senate will accept the “bold” coronavirus bill, rejecting the GOP offer | Republican senators, Biden send positive vibes after a long meeting with WH MORE (D-Calif.).
“If provoking an insurrectionary riot against a Joint Congressional Session after losing an election is not an objectionable offense, it is difficult to imagine what it would be,” wrote the Democrats in their statement, which described the former president as “uniquely responsible” for the deadly attack.
Trump’s allies take a decidedly different view, arguing that he had every right to highlight electoral irregularities and encourage his supporters to protest against a process he considered inherently corrupt – as long as it was done peacefully.
His lawyers’ defense document focuses directly on First Amendment freedoms, arguing that Trump has no responsibility for the actions of supporters who became violent in the heat of the protest. These rioters, their lawyers suggest, simply misinterpreted Trump’s message.
“If the First Amendment only protected the speech that the government considered popular in American culture today, there would be no protection at all,” wrote Trump’s lawyers.
His lawyers are also relying on a procedural defense, meaning that Democrats have violated their impeachment powers by bundling multiple charges into a single article. This, Trump’s lawyers say, makes it “impossible to know if two-thirds of [senators] agreed to the whole article, or only in parts, as a basis for [a] vote to condemn. “
The debate on constitutionality is intense
Does the Constitution allow Congress to impeach a government official when he is out of office?
This issue is central to petitions submitted by both parties, and the matter is likely to consume a significant portion of the time of the trial after it began on February 9.
Democrats spent 23 pages in their report detailing the constitutional case for impeaching a former president and preventing him from running again.
Trump was impeached by the House while he was still in office, so the lawsuit was already underway.
Democrats cited Article 1 of the Constitution, which gives the House the “only power of impeachment” and the Senate “the only power to try all impeachments”, without stipulating whether the individual is still in office.
Democrats stepped back in history to defend their position, arguing that former officials in England were subject to impeachment and disqualifications after leaving office, that there was nothing in the Constitutional Convention to suggest that those who left office are protected from impeachment, and that the authors wanted Congress’ impeachment powers to be comprehensive and broad, especially with regard to the president. They cited examples dating from 1876, when ex-senator William Blount was impeached after leaving office for conspiring to give the British control over parts of Florida and Louisiana.
There are no loopholes that would allow a public official to resign quickly or be fired to avoid facing the consequences for crimes committed in office, Democrats say.
“If the Senate does not try President Trump (and condemn him), he risks declaring to all future presidents that there will be no consequences, no responsibility, in fact no response from Congress if they violate his Oath to ‘preserve, protect and defend the Constitution ‘in its final weeks – and instead cause lethal violence in an illegal effort to maintain power, ”wrote the Democrats. “This precedent would horrify the Creators, who wrote the official presidential oath in the Constitution and did not attach any January exceptions to it.”
The Trump team pointed to Article 2, Section 4 of the Constitution, which states that the president “will be removed from office for impeachment and conviction for treason, bribery or other serious crimes and misdemeanors.”
They say that because Trump cannot be removed from office, the rest of the debate is null and void.
Trump’s lawyers open doors for debate on electoral fraud
Trump’s legal team has signaled that it does not want to make its baseless allegations about electoral fraud the centerpiece of the impeachment trial. However, the former president’s lawyers may have left him vulnerable on that front by addressing him in his defense brief.
The petition touched on the issue only slightly, arguing that Democrats are wrong to say that the former president spread lies about the election being stolen because reasonable people may disagree about whether state changes in electoral laws during the coronavirus pandemic were designed to suppress the GOP vote.
“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 were false,” wrote Trump’s lawyers.
Democrats are eager to litigate what they dubbed “the big lie” that they say has laid the foundation for furious conspiracy theorists to plunder the Capitol.
“Contrary to the Trump lawyers’ public statement that they will not ‘present a theory of electoral fraud’, Trump’s lawyers continue to defend Trump’s Big Lie that the election was stolen,” said a senior adviser to the Trump team. Democratic impeachment.
Democrats hope to explore emotional aspects of the January 6 attack
Unlike Trump’s first impeachment, which was based on a private phone call with a relatively obscure foreign leader, Congress has a personal stake this time. The rioters who breached the Capitol building did so while both chambers were in session, forcing terrified lawmakers to hide while the Capitol Police ran to take them to safe rooms.
Some members of the crowd shouted violent threats against anyone deemed unfair to Trump, including Pelosi and the former vice president Mike Pence
Michael (Mike) Richard PenceTrump lawyer will make First Amendment case in impeachment trial Trump legal change suggests bigger problems The Hill’s Morning Report – Presented by Facebook – Republicans pressure Biden with 0 billion COVID-19 relief alternative MORE. Some offices were looted, their personal items stolen as trophies, while employees crouched under the tables behind doors that could only pray that they would remain locked.
A Capitol Police officer was killed and honored this week for lying in honor on Capitol Hill. Two other police officers committed suicide a few days after the attack.
This combination of fear and personal tragedy will in itself be a way of testifying at the Senate trial, as Democrats intend to revisit those chaotic moments in an effort to maximize the emotional impact on viewers watching the televised trial across the country.
The idea is simple: attack while the anger is hot and emotions are high – a main reason why Pelosi handed the article to the Senate instead of holding it back for longer, as some in his caucus had argued.
But the strategy is unlikely to bear fruit. Senate Republicans are almost certain to exempt Trump from any wrongdoing related to the attack on the Capitol. Democrats, however, are struggling to ensure that votes to absolve them are as uncomfortable as they can cause.