Former President’s Attorneys Donald Trump
Donald TrumpDominion spokesman: MyPillow CEO Mike Lindell ‘is begging to be prosecuted’ DC officials who defended Capitol, Sicknick’s family honored in the U.S. Super Bowl will return to the UN Human Rights Council on Monday, it argued in a new document that the Senate should quickly reject the impeachment article filed against him when his trial begins this week.
The 78-page document represents a more detailed version of the arguments presented in a document last week by David Schoen and Bruce Castor, who are representing the former president in the Senate.
The two argue that Trump’s post-presidential trial is unconstitutional and that, even if senators disagree, Trump’s speech before the January 6 riots on Capitol Hill was protected by the First Amendment and did not reach the limit of an offense liable to impeachment.
Trump’s lawyers accused Democrats in their petition of trying to “silence a political opponent and a minority party” through a “blatant political act”, arguing that the second impeachment case against the former president did not give him due process.
“The impeachment article submitted by the Chamber is unconstitutional for a variety of reasons, any of which in itself would be grounds for immediate dismissal,” wrote the lawyers. “Together, they demonstrate conclusively that giving in to the Democrats in the Chamber for this political theater is a danger to the democracy of our Republic and to the rights that we consider to be expensive.”
The contours of the Trump trial are expected to be established on Monday, including details on the time allocations for each side to present arguments and whether there will be witnesses. Senators from both parties have indicated that they expect the trial to end relatively quickly, given that Trump’s absolution appears to be a foregone conclusion.
All but five Republican senators indicated last month that they felt that Trump’s trial was unconstitutional, something that even many Republican lawyers have contested. But the vote made it clear that there probably would not be the 17 Republican Party votes needed to condemn Trump.
The House last month accused the former president of inciting violence against the government because of his role in the January 6 riot on Capitol Hill, which also claimed the life of a police officer.
Trump spent weeks falsely claiming that the 2020 presidential election was stolen from him, even when the courts rejected his team’s allegations of electoral fraud. The president on January 6 urged his supporters to march to the Capitol to prevent certification of votes by stating Joe Biden
Joe BidenHow Biden’s student loan policies are manipulated in favor of the government and nonprofit workers Biden returns to America towards a more civilized government Ready for takeoff: three simple guidelines for flying after vaccination MORE as the next president. A crowd oppressed law enforcement and invaded the Capitol shortly thereafter.
Trump’s lawyers argued in their initial legal report presented last week that Trump is constitutionally ineligible to face an impeachment trial because he is no longer in office. They added that even if senators considered the constitutional process, their comments would be protected by the First Amendment. At the briefing, lawyers indicated that Trump still believes the election was stolen.
Democratic impeachment managers are expected to defend that Trump was “uniquely responsible” for the attack on the Capitol with his rhetoric before and on January 6. They will argue that as long as Trump is out of office, he should be prevented from taking office in the future as a measure of responsibility for his actions.