The impeachment trial begins this week as Democrats seek to link Trump to Capitol unrest

The impeachment trial begins this week as Democrats seek to link Trump to Capitol unrest

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House managers are diligently preparing a presentation for when the trial begins on Tuesday, relying on the hours of videos available from January 6 to try to illustrate in visceral detail how the rioters were incited by Trump and his months of lies that the election was stolen from him.

Trump’s legal team plans to argue that Trump did not incite troublemakers and that a former president’s trial is unconstitutional after the House rushed to accuse Trump without giving him a chance to mount any defense.

On Monday, both the House’s impeachment managers and Trump’s lawyers will file new documents before the trial begins. The Trump team is scheduled to file its pre-trial petition at 10 am ET, which will be a more detailed account of the former president’s defense after the initial response to the House impeachment presented last week.

House managers will file a response to Trump’s initial action at around 12 pm ET, giving them the opportunity to dismiss claims that Trump and most Senate Republicans are making the trial itself unconstitutional.

The parameters of the trial – which will be the first time in US history a former president is tried – have yet to be defined. Senate majority leader Chuck Schumer and Senate minority leader Mitch McConnell are negotiating the organizational resolution, which will dictate how long each side will have to make its case and how witnesses can be considered. The Senate will vote on the resolution before the trial’s arguments begin, and both Democrats and Republicans are hopeful it will have bipartisan support.

All sides expect a shorter trial than Trump’s three-week impeachment trial in 2020, but the exact length of time for arguments is still undecided.

‘I think it’s very unlikely’

Even Republican senators open to vote to condemn Trump say they recognize that votes do not exist for a guilty verdict, which would require 17 Republican senators to join each Democrat to vote for the conviction. Last month, 45 of the 50 Senate Republicans voted in favor of a procedural motion to end the trial on constitutional grounds.
“I find it very unlikely, right?” Sen. Pat Toomey, of Pennsylvania, said on Sunday on CNN’s “State of the Union”. “I mean, you had 45 Republican senators voting to suggest that they didn’t think it was appropriate to conduct a trial. So you can infer the likelihood that these people will vote to convict. I disagreed with their assessment. I think it’s constitutional.”
Toomey is one of the Republican senators that Democrats hope to convince to vote to condemn Trump at the conclusion of the trial, after 10 House Republicans voted in favor of impeachment last month.

The other major Republican senators voted with Toomey and the Democrats that the trial was constitutional: Susan Collins of Maine, Lisa Murkowski of Alaska, Mitt Romney of Utah and Ben Sasse of Nebraska.

The Democrats’ case will depend on the video of the protesters themselves on January 6, as well as their comments, exposed in subsequent accusations, of how they were inspired by Trump to attack the Capitol and try to prevent the peaceful transfer of power.

Their case will also focus on Trump’s comments, both in the months leading up to the riots in which he spread baseless conspiracy theories about electoral fraud, and on January 6, when he spoke before his followers marched to the Capitol.

‘This is all about political theater’

In his court case last week, the Trump team argued that his speech was protected by the First Amendment, and he did not incite the protesters who attacked the Capitol. But perhaps the biggest argument his lawyers plan to make – and the one that Senate Republicans are likely to point to in an absolution vote – is that a former employee’s trial is not constitutional.

“This is all about political theater,” former Trump White House chief of staff, Mark Meadows, told Fox News’ Maria Bartiromo on Sunday. “It’s really about Democrats trying once again to make a political point. Listen, this whole impeachment is planned to remove someone from office. President Trump is a private citizen at this point.”

Unlike Trump’s first impeachment, which was a complicated story about an effort by Ukraine to investigate Biden and the suspension of US security aid, impeachment managers are telling a story that senators know very well after they were forced to fleeing the Senate after the protesters invaded the Capitol Police and approached the chamber.
That is why managers cannot call any external witness at the trial, unlike the first trial, when pressure for testimony was the central focus. House administrators sought Trump’s direct testimony last week, but his lawyers quickly rejected the proposal, and Democrats are unlikely to seek a subpoena.

“We have the unusual circumstance that on the first day of the trial, when these managers step on the Senate floor, there will already be more than 100 witnesses present, and these will be members of the House and the Senate,” said President of the Intelligence Chamber Adam Schiff, the chief impeachment manager during Trump’s first impeachment, said on NBC’s “Meet the Press” program. “If you need additional witnesses, it will be a strategic decision for the House’s administrators.”

The debate over witnesses is approaching the start of the trial

The witness’s question has not yet been decided. But the desire for witnesses who can corroborate Trump’s thinking and actions as the riots unfold is in line with the wishes of many Senate Democrats for a speedy trial so they can move on to approve Biden’s Covid-19 relief package. .

Still, some Senate Democrats say they don’t want to hurt administrators for speed. Because Democrats control the Senate, they have votes to allow witnesses without the support of the Republican Party, unlike the 2020 trial.

“I think we should be consistent,” Senator Chris Murphy, a Connecticut Democrat, said on Fox News Sunday about Democratic pressure in the Senate at the first trial for summonsing witnesses.

“This time, we saw what happened in real time,” added Murphy. “President Trump sent that angry crowd to Capitol on live TV, so it’s not that important that you have witnesses, but if House administrators want witnesses, we should allow them to be able to place them.”

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