Impeachment trial: Van der Veen’s “adulterated evidence” claim, unpacked

In the days following ex-President Donald Trump’s acquittal of an impeachment article alleging incitement to insurrection, his lawyers and allies tried to turn the trial into a weapon with allegations that the House’s impeachment administrators resorted to the manufacture of evidence.

These claims are extremely fragile and cannot withstand a basic examination. But they provide people like Trump’s lawyer, Michael van der Veen and Donald Trump Jr., an excuse to go on TV and complain about how Donald Trump was treated unfairly.

In a Saturday interview with CBS that was seen almost 10 million times as it is being published, van der Veen went so far as to match the January 6 uprising that left five dead with Trump’s treatment during the impeachment trial .

“What happened at Capitol on January 6 is absolutely horrible, but what happened at Capitol during this trial was not far from that,” he said. “The prosecutors in this case have falsified the evidence.”

CBS News presenter Lana Zak responded by trying to figure out what van der Veen meant by saying that Democrats are “adulterated evidence”. It didn’t seem like much.

“To make it clear to our viewers, what you’re talking about now is a check mark that is a check on Twitter that didn’t exist in that particular tweet, a ‘2020’ that should have read ‘2021’ and the selective edition, you say, from the tapes. Is that the adulterated evidence you’re talking about? ” she asked.

Zak’s characterization of van der Veen’s claims was accurate. But before she could finish asking the question, van der Veen – perhaps aware of how fragile his claims sound when put up like that – fired back angrily.

“Wait, wait, wait, wait, isn’t that enough for you? No, no, no. It is not right to treat a little bit of evidence, “he said, adding later:” I don’t believe you asked me a question indicating that it is okay to medicate just a little bit of evidence. “

Van der Veen’s opposing performance was widely praised in right-wing scholars. Less adversary, but equally revealing, was the appearance of Donald Trump Jr. in the Monday night edition of Sean Hannity’s Fox News program, when he even suggested that House managers should be arrested.

“The reality is this: if this weren’t a kangaroo court, you would have Republicans crying out to go after the alleged charge of literally fabricating evidence,” he said. “I mean, imagine any prosecutor in America was caught fabricating evidence against a witness. That would be a justifiable offense. They would be expelled, they would be expelled from their positions, they would be impeached. This is what should happen here, when they are manufacturing, putting fake blue checkmarks, changing tweets, doing all these things to have an effect. “

The reality is that despite Trump’s acquittal, 57 senators – including seven Republicans – voted to condemn him. And even Republican Party lawmakers who voted for absolution on procedural grounds, including minority leader Mitch McConnell, have made it clear that they hold Trump responsible for the January 6 uprising.

However, van der Veen and Don Jr. are trying to make it appear that Trump’s second impeachment trial was just another installment of the anti-Trump witch hunt. But they are betting that people will not waste time to analyze the merits of what they are claiming, because there is no over there over there.

Indignation is performative, not substantive

Complaints about the House’s impeachment managers manipulating evidence first emerged during the presentation of Trump’s attorney David Schoen during the Friday part of the impeachment trial, when he said “we have reason to believe that the House managers manipulated evidence and edited images selectively. “

Schoen’s aim was to discredit the prosecution’s case by challenging the credibility of the House’s administrators, but the specific examples he cited had no bearing on the case.

One had to do with a photo from a New York Times article in which Principal Prosecutor Rep. Jamie Raskin (D-MD) is shown preparing for trial looking at a computer monitor that displays a Trump tweet with the incorrect date at the bottom. Schoen cited this photo to claim that Democrats were preparing evidence, but, as he himself admitted, the error was corrected before the trial.

The other specific claims made by Schoen and van der Veen were also weak. One had to do with the year in a Trump tweet that managers displayed during the trial reading “2021” instead of “2020”. Another had to do with a Twitter account retweeted by Trump being shown with a blue checkmark badge when the account was in fact not verified. Schoen also questioned the accusation about the importance of misspellings in Trump’s tweets, and accused Democrats of “selectively editing” the footage presented during the trial, showing short clips of Trump’s pre-insurrection speech on January 6 instead of longer stretches of it. (The implication is that, since Trump once incited his followers to remain peaceful during a speech in which he referred to “fighting” more than 20 times, it is not the case that he incited anything.)

To be clear, the discrepancies in the tweets are legitimate errors, but they had absolutely no relation to the actual content of the posts in question or the substance of the case of the Chamber’s administrators. And as an adviser to House managers later explained that Schoen dismissed these discrepancies, the errors came about because prosecutors had to recreate Trump’s tweets from scratch after his account was permanently suspended.

“The text has not been changed,” the aide told The Hill. “The final chart accidentally had a blue check mark, but the substance was completely accurate. So, what’s the point of Trump’s lawyers? “

The goal, of course, was not to offer a substantive defense of Trump, but to try to discredit Democrats while offering people like Van der Veen grain for performative outrage during TV hits. And, for that, mission accomplished.