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House impeachment managers concluded their case against Donald Trump on Thursday by saying that the deadly Capitol assault he stands accused of inciting was the culmination of a presidency beset by lies and violent rhetoric. They also said he would remain a threat to US democracy if not convicted and barred from holding future office
Democrats rest case with warning that Trump remains a threat More
One side holds up a mirror to America in 2021. The other, not so much.The nine Democratic prosecutors at Donald Trump’s second impeachment trial are made up of men and women young and old with multiple racial and religious identities.But each day in the Senate chamber they are trying to persuade a caucus of 50 Republicans still dominated by ageing white men.The contrast is not obvious on television but striking to reporters in the press gallery who gaze down at the sea of faces – clad in masks because of the coronavirus pandemic – visible above wooden desks on a tiered semicircular platform.The impeachment managers – all of whom are lawyers – from the House of Representatives are led by Jamie Raskin, who is of Jewish heritage, and include Joaquín Castro, who is Latino, Ted Lieu, who is Asian American, and Joe Neguse and Stacey Plaskett, who are African American.Neguse, whose parents came to the US as refugees from Eritrea four decades ago, is the first African American member of Congress in Colorado’s history and, at 36, the youngest ever impeachment manager.Plaskett is also making history as the first non-voting delegate to the House to be an impeachment manager. She represents the US Virgin Islands, a territory that does not have a vote in Congress, meaning that she was not permitted to vote for Trump’s impeachment on the House floor.“Virgin Islanders are always looking for space to be part of this America and try to make it better, even without a vote,” Plaskett told the Associated Press. “I’m going to make sure that their voice and the voice of people from territories representing 4 million Americans – Puerto Rico and other places – are actually heard.”The multiracial lineup of prosecutors is all the more resonant because they are detailing the actions of a mob that included white nationalist groups and flaunted regalia such as the flag of the Confederacy, which fought a civil war to preserve slavery.And the rioters’ objective was to overturn an election that Trump lost specifically by nullifying votes cast by people of colour, most of which went to his opponent, Joe Biden.Kurt Bardella, a senior adviser at the Lincoln Project, a group that campaigned for Trump’s defeat, said: “I don’t think it should be lost on anyone that the prosecution of Donald Trump and his white nationalist allies is being conducted by a very diverse group of Democrats encompassing gender, ethnicity and even religion.”On Wednesday it fell to Plaskett to remind senators that when Trump was asked to condemn the Proud Boys and white supremacists, he said: “Stand back and stand by.” The group adopted that phrase as their official slogan and even created merchandise with it that they wore at his campaign rallies.She also recounted how, on September 11, 2001, she was a member of staff at the Capitol and she might have been dead if the fourth hijacked jet that day had plunged into the Capitol, as it was believed to have been planned, instead of being taken down by heroic passengers and crashing into a field in Pennsylvania. She drew a line from that day to 6 January 2021.“When I think of that and I think of these insurgents, these images, incited by our own president of the United States, attacking this Capitol to stop the certification of a presidential election,” she said, enunciating each syllable, then pausing before adding, “our democracy, our republic.”In those days Plaskett was a Republican and later worked in the Department of Justice in the administration of George W Bush, converting to become a Democrat in 2008, and winning a place in Congress in 2014.She had studied in Washington DC, at Georgetown University as an undergraduate, then attended law school at American University, where Raskin was her law professor, which he noted in the Senate chamber on Wednesday was “a special point of pride” for him.At the trial, the juxtaposition of Plaskett – the only Black woman in the chamber now that Senator Kamala Harris has departed for the vice-presidency – delivering this evidence was inescapably potent.Bardella reflected: “When you’re talking about the Proud Boys being told to ‘stand back and stand by’, I think the articulation of that prosecution is made even more impactful and powerful when it’s being made by people of colour, by people who really represent symbolically the very thing that these people were protesting and trying to insurrect on January 6.“It’s the very notion of people of colour in roles of power and prominence that white nationalists rebelled against. At the heart of all of this is the systematic effort by the Republican party to disenfranchise voters of colour and to disqualify legal votes cast by people of colour in this country. That is at the epicentre of this entire conflict.”The impeachment managers have made a blistering start as they seek to demonstrate that Trump was “inciter-in-chief” of the deadly violence at the US Capitol. They have used the former president’s own rally speeches and tweets to show that he spent months pushing “the big lie” of a stolen election and urging his supporters to “fight like hell”.But it remains extremely unlikely that they will get the 17 Republican senators they need for a conviction. The trial is likely to be another case study in how far apart the two major parties have grown. Despite some notable gains among voters of colour last year, Republicans have only one Black senator: Tim Scott of South Carolina.LaTosha Brown, co-founder of Black Voters Matter, said: “The diversity on the Democratic side is reflective of America: more inclusive, more diversity of thought. My grandmother used to say, the GOP [Grand Old Party] has built their castle on sinking sand. Their entire existence has been centred around white male privilege and lack of accountability for white men of means.“So the visual on their side shows it is not reflective of America, only a particularly elite class in America. The second distinction is the argument. Trump’s defence team haven’t even met the standard of mediocrity, in my opinion. They have been absolutely awful. I do think that’s indicative that white men have literally never had to fully defend themselves.” More
Progressive Democrats in Congress are calling for an overhaul of US sanctions on other nations which they argue have “catastrophic humanitarian consequences” on the global effort to contain the coronavirus pandemic.
In a letter to Joe Biden to be delivered on Thursday, 23 Democratic representatives and two senators, welcome a review of sanctions and their impact on the pandemic that the president launched soon after taking office.
But the signatories also urge the new administration to take a broader look at sanctions as a foreign policy tool, which they say America had imposed as “a knee jerk reaction” for too long. The letter signals the issue is likely to be at the heart of the foreign policy debate within the party in the Biden era.
The new administration has inherited a “maximum pressure” regime imposed by Donald Trump on Iran, as well as blanket sanctions on Venezuela and Cuba. It has already suspended a terrorist designation issued in the last days of Trump administration on the Houthis in Yemen, because of its impact on humanitarian aid deliveries.
Thursday’s letter, authored by congresswoman Ilhan Omar, congressman Jesús García, and senator Elizabeth Warren, points to the unintended consequences of secondary sanctions imposed on third country governments and companies for dealing with targeted governments. Often, risk-averse financial institutions are deterred from facilitating any transactions, even in humanitarian goods formally allowed by the sanctions.
“Existing protocols and licenses have proved woefully insufficient to meet the enormity of the challenges shared by people around the world in the face of the pandemic,” the Democrats say in the letter. “Even when licenses and humanitarian exemptions are available, moreover, there is a persistent problem of overcompliance, particularly from the financial sector. This has led to catastrophic humanitarian consequences in various parts of the world.”
Under a national security directive issued by Biden on his first full day in office, the secretaries of state, commerce and the treasury, in consultation with the health and human services secretary and the administrator of the US Agency for International Development, are to review US and multilateral sanctions to assess whether they are obstructing global responses to the pandemic.
Thursday’s letter represents a push for the review to encompass a radical rethink of sanctions, away from their use as a fix-all tool.
“Far too often and for far too long, sanctions have been imposed as a knee-jerk reaction without a measured and considered assessment of their impacts. Sanctions are easy to put in place, but notoriously difficult to lift,” the signatories argue.
“This is why we are asking for this release to be comprehensive, to see if these policies can be adjusted to make sure that they’re not specifically harming the people in these countries who are trying to survive…in a public health pandemic that is bringing about a financial crisis,” Omar told the Guardian.
Chad Brown, a senior fellow at the Peterson Institute for International Economics, said the nature of the pandemic meant that international cooperation, even with rivals and adversaries, was all the more in the national interest.
“If the pandemic is raging anywhere, the emergence of variants means that nowhere is truly safe,” Brown said. “That even includes the countries the United States may find challenging for geopolitical reasons.” More
As US president, Donald Trump seemed be talking and tweeting 24 hours a day. That has thrown his near total absence from public life over the past three weeks into sharp relief. The Silence of the Tweets.It also means that when clips of Trump’s rally speeches filled the Senate chamber on day two of his impeachment trial on Wednesday, his voice was jarring and jangling in the ear, like a blowhard from a cruder, coarser time.His speeches, tweets and phone calls were replayed incessantly as the House impeachment managers put their case against him. Seldom has an accused been so damned by their own words. In his fiery claims of a stolen election, his exhortations to “fight like hell” and his failure to denounce hate groups such as the Proud Boys, Trump proved the star witness in his own prosecution.The spectacular irony was that a man who thrived on grabbing attention on TV and social media had left a trail of digital clues that ought to lead all the way to conviction. It was the 21st-century equivalent of a Victorian diary in which the master criminal brags about how he did it.“Trump’s worst problem?” tweeted David Axelrod, former chief campaign strategist for Barack Obama. “Videotape.”It helped Jamie Raskin and his fellow House impeachment managers build a case that this incitement did not begin on 6 January, the day of the insurrection at the US Capitol, but over months of spinning election lies and cheering on political violence.Wearing grey suit, white shirt, deep blue tie, and wielding a blue pen in his right hand, Raskin told the Senate: “He revelled in it and he did nothing to help us as commander-in-chief. Instead he served as the inciter-in-chief, sending tweets that only further incited the rampaging mob. He made statements lauding and sympathising with the insurrectionists.”Congressman Joe Neguse displayed clips of Trump addressing rallies in October where he said he could only lose the election if it was stolen. “Remember he had that no-lose scenario,” Neguse said. “He told his base that the election was stolen.” Such beliefs fueled the so-called “stop the steal” campaign.Another impeachment manager, Eric Swalwell, pored over Trump’s tweets, a goldmine for the prosecution. Among the many examples: the then president retweeted Kylie Jane Kremer, founder of a “Stop the Steal” Facebook group, who promised that “the cavalry” was coming.Swalwell told the senators, who sit at 100 wooden desks on a tiered semicircular platform, that there is “overwhelming” evidence: “President Trump’s conduct leading up to January 6 was deliberate, planned and premeditated. This was not one speech, not one tweet. It was dozens in rapid succession with the specific details. He was acting as part of the host committee.”Swalwell added: “This was never about one speech. He built this mob over many months with repeated messaging until they believed they had been robbed of their vote and they would do anything to stop the certification. He made them believe that their victory was stolen and incited them so he could use them to steal the election for himself.”The trial heard Trump pressuring Brad Raffensperger, the Georgia secretary of state, to overturn his election defeat in the state. Congresswoman Madeleine Dean said: “We must not become numb to this. Trump did this across state after state so often, so loudly, so publicly. All because Trump wanted to remain in power.”Her colleague Stacey Plaskett of the Virgin Islands noted an incident last October when dozens of trucks covered in Trump campaign regalia “confronted and surrounded” a Biden-Harris campaign bus traveling from San Antonio to Austin in Texas.“What that video that you just saw does not show is that the bus they tried to run off of the road was filled with young campaign staff, volunteers, supporters, surrogates, people,” she said.And as the saying goes, there’s always a tweet. Plaskett highlighted that a day later, Trump tweeted a video of the episode with the caption, “I LOVE TEXAS.”Plaskett also played a clip of Trump at a presidential debate, telling the Proud Boys to “stand back and stand by” when asked to condemn white supremacists. They heard him “loud and clear”, she said, and even used the slogan on their merchandise. Several members of the Proud Boys have been charged in connection with the riots.Later, Plaskett presented chilling audio and video evidence, some of it never made public before, that she said displayed the consequences of Trump’s incendiary words. Capitol police and law enforcement could be heard pleading for backup as the mob closed in. An officer could be seen running past Senator Mitt Romney and warning him to turn around, then Romney was seen breaking into a run to safety.Trump’s political career was always like a child playing with matches. On 6 January, he started a fire. And as Wednesday’s hearing demonstrated, if he ever builds a presidential library and museum, there will be no shortage of multimedia material. More
Key events
Show
4.10pm EST16:10
Trump lawyer appears to warn of more violence if impeachment trial continues
3.36pm EST15:36
Trump’s defense team warns against punishing political speech
3.07pm EST15:07
Trump’s legal team argues impeachment trial is unconstitutional
2.46pm EST14:46
Raskin provides emotional account of January 6 insurrection
1.25pm EST13:25
Impeachment managers play videos from Capitol insurrection
1.03pm EST13:03
Second impeachment trial of Donald Trump begins
12.51pm EST12:51
Community health centers to receive one million vaccine doses, White House says
Live feed
Show
4.44pm EST16:44
Some viewers of the impeachment trial wondered why David Schoen, one of Donald Trump’s defense lawyers, kept resting his hand on his head as he took a sip of water while making his opening argument.
Daniel Goldman, the lead counsel of the House inquiry during Trump’s first impeachment, explained it was because Schoen is an observant Jew and must cover his head and say a blessing when he drinks a sip of water.
Daniel Goldman
(@danielsgoldman)
Mr. Schoen is an observant Jew who must cover his head when he takes a sip of water and quietly says a blessing. Since he is not wearing a kippah, he therefore covers his head with his hand.
February 9, 2021
4.35pm EST16:35
David Schoen, one of Donald Trump’s lawyers, argued that House Democrats inappropriately delayed the impeachment trial by holding back the article of impeachment.
But it was then-Senate majority leader Mitch McConnell who said he would not bring the chamber back early from recess to start the trial, despite Democratic leader Chuck Schumer’s requests for an emergency session to immediately begin the proceedings.
So it is not accurate to blame Democrats for the delayed start date of the impeachment trial.
4.26pm EST16:26
Congresswoman Ilhan Omar pushed back against the arguments presented by Donald Trump’s defense team in the impeachment trial.
Omar sent a tweet about the proceedings shortly after the defense team played a video showing Democrats, including Omar, calling for the impeachment of Trump as early as 2017.
“Let’s be clear, we might have all done and said things we regret, but only Trump and the #seditioncaucus words and actions have let to an insurrection of our nation’s Capital, death and bodily harm,” the Democratic congresswoman said. “Don’t let them confuse you.”
Ilhan Omar
(@IlhanMN)
Let’s be clear, we might have all done and said things we regret, but only Trump and the #seditioncaucus words and actions have let to an insurrection of our nation’s Capital, death and bodily harm. Don’t let them confuse you.
February 9, 2021
4.21pm EST16:21
Lauren Aratani
Bruce Castor’s bizarre opening argument in defense of Donald Trump could be part of the team’s “deliberative strategy,” a Trump ally is telling reporters, including the New York Times’ Maggie Haberman and NBC’s Peter Alexander.
Peter Alexander
(@PeterAlexander)
A Trump source, just now, describes Castor’s argument as a “very clear, deliberative strategy.”Says defense is “lowering the temperature… before dropping the hammer on the unconstitutional nature of this impeachment witch hunt.”
February 9, 2021
It seems that the defense team was trying to tamper emotions after the House’s impeachment managers appeared in front of the Senate. Castor was “lowering the temperature” before the team went on to “dropping the hammer on the unconstitutional nature of this impeachment witch hunt,” according to an anonymous Trump ally who spoke to Alexander.
It is unclear what part of Castor’s statement was part of this strategy given that he acknowledged moments ago on the Senate floor that the team “changed what we were going to do on account that we thought the House managers presentation was well done.” Perhaps the admission was part of the “deliberative strategy”?
4.13pm EST16:13
David Schoen criticized the House impeachment managers for playing “movies” to make their case for Donald Trump’s conviction.
The impeachment managers opened their arguments today by playing a video showing the violence and destruction at the Capitol on January 6.
Shortly after Schoen issued his criticism, he played his own video, showing Democrats calling for the impeachment of Trump as early as 2017.
Schoen’s video opened with a clip of Jamie Raskin, the lead impeachment manager, as menacing music played in the background.
4.10pm EST16:10
Trump lawyer appears to warn of more violence if impeachment trial continues
David Schoen, a member of Donald Trump’s legal team, accused Democrats of abusing the impeachment power to gain a political advantage.
The former president’s lawyer argued Democrats are pursuing impeachment because they are still mad about the results of the 2016 election. (The impeachment managers’ opening argument focused exclusively on the violent insurrection at the Capitol last month, which Trump incited.)
“I promise you that if these proceedings go forward, everyone will look bad,” Schoen said, warning that the trial would “open up new and bigger wounds across the nation”.
Schoen then appeared to suggest that the impeachment trial could spark another civil war, saying, “This trial will tear this country apart, perhaps like we have only seen once before in American history.”
Updated
at 4.10pm EST
4.01pm EST16:01
As he concluded his opening comments, Bruce Castor also bizarrely seemed to suggest Donald Trump should be arrested if the allegations at the heart of the impeachment trial are true.
“A high crime is a felony, and a misdemeanor is a misdemeanor,” Castor said. “After he’s out of office, you go and arrest him. … The department of justice does know what to do with such people. And so far, I haven’t seen any activity in that direction.”
Aaron Rupar
(@atrupar)
Castor winds down his very bizarre speech by daring the DOJ to arrest Trump pic.twitter.com/jmoxdIU6Pm
February 9, 2021
3.55pm EST15:55
Bruce Castor closed his opening comments by acknowledging that Donald Trump’s defense team was caught off guard by the strength of the House impeachment managers’ presentation.
The former president’s lawyer said the defense team reshuffled because they thought the managers’ presentation would focus only on the question of Senate jurisdiction rather than recounting the violence and destruction of the January 6 insurrection.
“We have counter-arguments to literally everything they have raised, and you will hear them later in the case,” Castor said.
And with that, he handed things over to another member of Trump’s defense team, David Schoen.
3.47pm EST15:47
Alan Dershowitz, who served as a member of Donald Trump’s defense team during his first impeachment trial, criticized Bruce Castor’s rambling opening presentation.
“There is no argument. I have no idea what he is doing,” Dershowitz told the conservative outlet Newsmax. “I have no idea why he’s saying what he’s saying.”
Newsmax
(@newsmax)
‘There is no argument – I have no idea what he is doing,’ @AlanDersh on Trump’s defense lawyer Bruce Castor ‘talking nice’ to U.S. Senators – via Newsmax TV’s ‘American Agenda.’ https://t.co/VlT7z8drtO pic.twitter.com/7P7uVk5X19
February 9, 2021
Dershowitz said Castor was too focused on “talking nice” to senators rather than making a “constitutional argument” for why the impeachment trial should be dismissed.
“I have no idea what he’s doing. Maybe he’ll bring it home, but right now it doesn’t appear to be effective advocacy,” Dershowitz said. “Boy, it’s not the kind of argument I would have made. I’ll tell you that.”
3.36pm EST15:36
Trump’s defense team warns against punishing political speech
About 20 minutes into his speech, Bruce Castor addressed the January 6 insurrection, pointing to a First Amendment defense for Donald Trump inciting the violence.
“We can’t possibly be suggesting that we punish people for political speech in this country,” the former president’s lawyer told senators.
The impeachment managers preemptively addressed this argument in their final pre-trial brief, which they filed earlier today.
“The First Amendment does not immunize President Trump from impeachment or limit the Senate’s power to protect the Nation from an unfit leader,” the managers wrote in their brief.
They added, “And even assuming the First Amendment applied, it would certainly not protect President Trump’s speech on January 6, which incited lawless action.”
Updated
at 3.36pm EST
3.28pm EST15:28
Bruce Castor, who is leading Donald Trump’s defense team, opened his presentation by praising senator as “patriots” and mentioning that he still gets lost in the Capitol sometimes.
Castor did not directly address the president’s actions on January 6 or argue against the constitutionality of the impeachment trial.
Reporters compared the former president’s lawyer to a college student who did not do the reading before class, joking that Castor would be fired by tweet if Trump still had access to his Twitter account.
Abby D. Phillip
(@abbydphillip)
I have been in this government class before, where someone hasn’t done the reading, napped through the first half of class, gets called on and just riffs for 15 minutes.
February 9, 2021
James Hohmann
(@jameshohmann)
Bruce Castor’s opening speech feels a little like this. pic.twitter.com/D2j5soQ6s8
February 9, 2021
Seung Min Kim
(@seungminkim)
If Trump still had his Twitter account, he may Tweet-fire this lawyer on the spot.
February 9, 2021
3.17pm EST15:17
The beginning of Bruce Castor’s presentation seemed to be mostly him rambling, which did not escape the attention of those watching the impeachment trial.
Susan Glasser
(@sbg1)
Yes. https://t.co/tOAiYJFRCH
February 9, 2021
Castor, who is leading Donald Trump’s defense team, spent several minutes explaining how senators are different than other Americans. It was very unclear how that issue relates to whether the impeachment trial is constitutional.
The contrast to House impeachment managers’ presentation, which started with a video showing the violence and destruction of the January 6 insurrection, was quite stark.
Dave Weigel
(@daveweigel)
This is a “My Cousin Vinny”-level mismatch of opening statements so far
February 9, 2021
3.07pm EST15:07
Trump’s legal team argues impeachment trial is unconstitutional
The impeachment trial has now resumed, and Donald Trump’s legal team has started delivering its argument that the trial is unconstitutional.
Lawyer Bruce Castor opened his remarks by acknowledging the “outstanding presentation” offered by the impeachment managers.
Castor also emphasized that he and Trump’s other lawyers denounced the violence at the Capitol on January 6, saying they believed all the insurrectionists involved in the attack should be prosecuted. More
Sign up for the Guardian’s First Thing newsletterThe Democratic congressman Jamie Raskin stood at the lectern, faced 100 senators and removed his black face mask to begin the historic second impeachment trial of former president Donald John Trump.Don’t worry, Raskin assured them with a disarming note of humour on Tuesday. He might have been a constitutional law professor for three decades but he would not be lecturing them on the Federalist Papers. “A professor is someone who talks in someone else’s sleep,” he quoted from the poet W H Auden.Instead Raskin promised “cold, hard facts” and he was as good as his word. He let the murderous mob do the talking. The congressman stood aside to a play a brutal, raw, shocking video of the insurrection at the US Capitol on 6 January.For the senators riveted to their seats, forced to relive the nightmarish quality of that day, there was something especially spooky about watching the mob rampaging through the very building where they were sitting, smashing windows, crushing police officers in doors, waving far-right regalia and chanting “Fight for Trump!”For Republicans, it must have been uniquely stomach-churning to see what their champion had unleashed – knowing that most of them will continue to defend them during this trial for fear of angering his “base”. Never can they have been so relieved to have been wearing masks that concealed their expressions from the press gallery.The video ended with a tweet from Trump from that day insisting this is what happens when an election is stolen (it wasn’t stolen). He told his fans: “Go home with love & peace! Remember this day forever!”The montage was an early indication that, whereas Trump’s first impeachment trial a year ago – which turned on a phone call seeking political favours from Ukraine – was like a white-collar criminal case, this time is more akin to a mob trial with Trump cast as the instigator of violent thugs.It was a dramatic, roaring start to the trial that promises to plant a giant exclamation mark at the end of the Trump presidency. Raskin and his eight fellow House impeachment managers want to make sure that 6 January will become the operatic climax of America’s four years of living dangerously.They also want to send a message. They are aware that the world’s faith in America has been badly shaken by the election and presidency of a reality TV star who thrives on petty insults and breaking rules. And they are aware that the 6 January riot may have been breaking point for some.Peggy Noonan, a former speechwriter for Ronald Reagan, told the MSNBC network on Tuesday: “I have spoken to many people in foreign affairs, including ambassadors and others representing other countries, and since the events following the November election and the president’s attempt to overturn it, they have been not been disappointed, they have been anguished by this, by the sense that America is dropping the ball and can no longer function as the thing you are aiming at.”But Joe Biden likes to say that betting against America is always a bad bet. His election and orderly inauguration last month sent a signal to the world that it should not write off the young republic yet.Democrats are aware that the trial outcome is a foregone conclusion – another Trump acquittal, barring sensational new evidence – and that the stakes are lower because he has already left office. But sometimes symbolism is the point. The impeachment trial is a test of accountability, stability and rule of law before a global audience.So in a Capitol building where some windows remain cracked, they observed the solemn rituals and traditions, filing into the Senate chamber beneath the busts of 20 former vice-presidents gazing down from marble plinths in alcoves. This time there were no members of the public in the gallery because of coronavirus precautions.Just before 1pm, Mitch McConnell, the Republican Senate minority leader, walked in a little unsteadily and stood at his desk. He was approached by Susan Collins, who is expected to vote against Trump and spoke to him animatedly. Then came Tom Cotton, who is expected to vote for Trump’s acquittal, for another deep conversation.McConnell remains the pivotal figure at the trial and in the coming years. For a few days after the attack on the Capitol he seemed to be ready to cut Trump loose, and persuade many colleagues to do likewise, yet he then voted to support the notion that this trial is unconstitutional. His future actions will offer clues as to whether the Republican party can shake off Trumpism without having to learn the hard way at the ballot box.Marco Rubio sat at his desk writing with a quill pen. Bernie Sanders had an iPad resting on a folder. Some seats were empty for the opening pledge of allegiance and prayer.The Senate president pro tempore, Patrick Leahy, presiding over the proceedings, led the chamber in reciting the pledge and gaveled in the Senate as a court of impeachment.The prayer, from Chaplain Barry Black, included a pointed quotation from the poet James Russell Lowell: “Once to every man and nation comes the moment to decide, / In the strife of Truth with Falsehood, for the good or evil side.”Then, after a procedural vote, Raskin began his argument that the trial is indeed constitutional – a former president can be tried even after leaving office. To deny this, he said, would create a “brand new January exception”, meaning that an outgoing president could act with impunity during his final weeks in the White House.Once such technical arguments are out of the way, Democrats were expected on Wednesday to prosecute the case like a criminal trial with more compelling videos and graphic descriptions of that day.But they didn’t want to overdo it. Trump is gone and Biden is facing the most daunting presidential inheritance since Franklin Roosevelt in the 1930s. While this trial plays out, the new president is trying to win support for a $1.9tn rescue package and tackle the coronavirus, economic, racial justice and climate crises.As Biden tries spinning these plates, the last thing he needs is a rancorous impeachment trial to bring it all crashing down. But Democrats insist they can get it done. If you had a dollar or pound for every time a member of Congress insists they can “walk and chew gum at the same time”, you would be very wealthy indeed.Like a criminal lawyer, Democrats are seeking to appeal to not only the head but also the heart. They are not only prosecutors but also survivors of the rampage, a point brought home with visceral force by Raskin in a closing argument that had the chamber silent and spellbound on Wednesday.“And then there was a sound I will never forget,” he recalled. “The sound of pounding on the door like a battering ram. The most haunting sound I ever heard and I will never forget it.”Raskin’s 25-year-old son, Tommy, a Harvard law student who struggled with depression, took his own life on New Year’s Eve. A day after Tommy was buried on 5 January, the congressman had brought his daughter and a son-in-law to the Capitol for the ratification of Biden’s victory.He had assured them it would be safe but, after the mob stormed the building, they were hiding under a desk in a barricaded congressional office sending what they thought were final text messages to loved ones. More than an hour later, they were rescued by Capitol police.Raskin, fighting back tears, said of his 24-year-old daughter: “I told her how sorry I was and I promised her that it would not be like this again the next time she came back to the Capitol with me. And you know what she said? She said, ‘Dad, I don’t want to come back to the Capitol.’”At that Raskin broke down for a moment, putting fingers to his eyes before regaining his composure. “Of all the terrible, brutal things I saw and I heard on that day and since then, that one hit me the hardest. That and watching someone use an American flag pole, the flag still on it, to spear and pummel one of our police officers – ruthlessly, mercilessly tortured by a pole with a flag on it that he was defending with his very life.” More
The lethal Capitol invasion by Donald Trump supporters that is at the heart of the former president’s second impeachment trial happened more than a month ago. But Democrats leading the prosecution of Trump are counting on an element of surprise.Surprise, the impeachment prosecutors are calculating, because while most Americans understand the broad outlines of what happened during the 6 January attack on the Capitol, relatively few have come to grips with the shocking audio and video footage from that day – portraying a cauldron of violence, vandalism, bloodlust and fear.And in what is shaping up as history’s first made-for-TV impeachment trial, Democrats are planning to make some of these surreal scenes the centerpiece of their case against the only president ever to be impeached twice.A police officer crushed in a doorway. A woman wearing a Trump flag shot in the neck. Mobs in Trump gear breaking doors and smashing glass, and hunting the halls of legislature for members to tear “into little pieces”. Staffers for the House speaker, Nancy Pelosi, huddled under a conference table, sending texts for help, as rioters pound on the doors. A woman trampled to death as her friend begs for space.And the chants: “The steal is real!”, “Hang Mike Pence!” and “USA! USA! USA!”A Senate split 50-50 will act as jury at the trial, and Trump is expected to retain enough Republican support to avoid conviction and a ban on his holding future office.But the prosecutors’ case as previewed this week is not principally directed at lawmakers. Instead, it is unmistakably pitched to the public.Impeachment managers led by Representative Jamie Raskin of Maryland are expected to draw on hours of previously unseen footage from body cameras worn by police, from the media and from live streams captured by the insurrectionists themselves to produce what is shaping up as a shocking inside account of the Capitol attack.With unique access to evidence gathered by law enforcement officers in nearly 140 cases related to the invasion so far, the prosecutors will try to break through calcifying versions on both sides of the political aisle of what happened, and to provoke a new reckoning with how close the country came to an act of mass violence inside the halls of government.That realization, they think, could jolt a reconsideration of Trump’s guilt for the article of impeachment with which he has been charged: incitement of insurrection.The Huffington Post politics reporter Igor Bobic was inside the Capitol that day – but outside either legislative chamber – and captured some of the most notable footage of the invasion.“One month since the attack and I’m still learning harrowing details about the day,” he tweeted at the weekend. “Staffers I haven’t seen since recalling how they barricaded themselves in offices in terror. Members telling me how they followed my feed on their phone while in the chamber in disbelief. Reporters still trying to make sense of it all. All of us still coping.”Last month Representative Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, who was forced into hiding during the invasion, described hearing threats from insurrectionists and told thousands of followers on Instagram Live: “I thought I was going to die.”Trump’s defense team seemed to sense the danger to their case that the video scenes represented, and in a brief submitted on Monday they floated multiple pre-emptive responses.Heatedly condemning the attack on the Capitol and denying Trump’s complicity, the defense accused Democrats of “a brazen attempt to further glorify violence” by presenting the facts of the case. In a footnote, the lawyers went so far as to suggest that the crowd was a mix of pro-Trump and anti-Trump elements.Trump’s quotes were expected to be juxtaposed with scenes of violence at the CapitolBut the footage may make plain what no legal argument might deny. The crowd proceeded from a rally at which Trump spoke and arrived at the Capitol wearing red hats and Trump 2020 flags, mixed in with militia patches, white supremacy group insignia, Confederate flags and illegal firearms and knives.In an initial brief submitted last week, the impeachment managers described Trump’s “singular responsibility for the assault”, mustering dozens of quotations in which the former president spread the falsehood of a stolen election, demanded intervention, then “summoned a mob to Washington, exhorted them into a frenzy, and aimed them like a loaded cannon down Pennsylvania Avenue”.Trump’s quotes were expected to be juxtaposed with scenes of violence at the Capitol, as prosecutors hope to make a case that will drive home their charges against the former president.“We cannot, for a moment, treat the attack of 1/6 as something normal that happened,” tweeted Andy Kim, a Democratic representative from New Jersey. “It was a truly dark day in our nation’s history and it deserves a response of that magnitude.”It may be history’s first made-for-TV impeachment. But as for President Joe Biden, his press secretary, Jen Psaki, said his attention would be elsewhere: “He will not spend too much time watching the proceedings.” More
House impeachment managers will open their prosecution of Donald Trump for “incitement of insurrection” by recounting the deadly assault on the US Capitol in harrowing and cinematic detail, rekindling for senators the chaos and trauma they experienced on 6 January.The historic second impeachment trial will open on Tuesday, on the Senate floor that was invaded by rioters, with a debate over the constitutionality of the proceedings. In a brief filed on Monday, Trump’s lawyers assailed the case as “political theater” and argued that the Senate “lacks the constitutional jurisdiction” to try a former president after he has left office – an argument Democrats promptly rejected.Exactly one week after the Capitol assault, Trump became the first president to be impeached twice by the House of Representatives. This week, he will become the first former president to stand trial. It would take 17 Republicans joining all Democrats in the Senate to find Trump guilty, making conviction highly unlikely.Nevertheless, when opening arguments begin later this week, House Democrats will try to force senators to see the assault on the Capitol as the culmination of Trump’s long campaign to overturn the result of the election he lost to Joe Biden. Relying on video and audio recordings, impeachment managers, led by the Maryland congressman Jamie Raskin, will try to marshal the anger and outrage many members of Congress expressed in the aftermath of the riot, which sought to prevent them from counting electoral college votes and thereby to disrupt the transition of power.In a 78-page brief submitted to the Senate on Monday, Trump’s lawyers laid out a two-pronged rebuttal, also arguing that his rhetoric was in no way responsible for the Capitol attack.The senators will grapple with the constitutional question on Tuesday, when they are expected to debate and vote on the matter. Though scholars and a majority of senators say they believe the trial is constitutional, many Republicans have seized on the technical argument that a former president cannot be tried for “high crimes and misdemeanors” as a way to justify support for acquitting Trump without appearing to condone his behavior.In their own pre-trial filing on Monday, the House managers dismissed the arguments laid out by Trump’s lawyers and vowed to hold Trump accountable for the “most grievous constitutional crime ever committed by a president”.“Presidents swear a sacred oath that binds them from their first day in office through their very last,” they wrote. “There is no ‘January Exception’ to the constitution that allows presidents to abuse power in their final days without accountability.”In a vote last month, all but five Republican senators voted to dismiss the trial as unconstitutional. Yet Charles Cooper, a leading conservative lawyer, rejected that view in a Wall Street Journal op-ed published on Sunday.Because the constitution also allows the Senate to disqualify former federal officials from ever again holding public office, Cooper wrote, “it defies logic to suggest that the Senate is prohibited from trying and convicting former officeholders”.The trial begins just more than a year after Trump was first impeached, for pressuring Ukraine to investigate Joe Biden’s family. He was acquitted by the Senate.Americans are now more supportive of convicting Trump, according to an ABC News/Ipsos poll released on Sunday. It found that 56% of Americans believe the Senate should convict Trump and bar him from future office.Though the exact framework of the trial remains uncertain, subject to negotiations between the Senate majority leader, Chuck Schumer, and the chamber’s Republican leader, Mitch McConnell, it is expected to move much faster than Trump’s first trial.Under a draft agreement between the leaders, obtained by the New York Times, opening arguments would begin on Wednesday, with up to 16 hours for each side. At the request of Trump’s attorneys, the proceedings will break on Friday evening for the Jewish Sabbath and resume on Sunday.The House managers are expected to forgo calling witnesses, a major point of contention during Trump’s first trial. The former president declined their request to testify, a decision Raskin said “speaks volumes and plainly establishes an adverse inference supporting his guilt”.The managers have indicated that they intend to lay out a comprehensive case, tracing Trump’s extraordinary efforts to reverse his defeat, including a call in which he pressured the Georgia secretary of state to “find” enough votes to overturn Biden’s victory there. When it became clear that all other paths were closed, they will argue, Trump turned his attention to the certification vote on Capitol Hill, encouraging supporters to attend a rally held to protest against the result.At that event, Trump implored them to “fight like hell” and march to the Capitol to register their discontent – words his defense team will argue are protected under the first amendment.The House managers contend that “it is impossible to imagine the events of 6 January occurring without President Trump creating a powder keg, striking a match, and then seeking personal advantage from the ensuing havoc”. More
