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      Impeachment Defense Team: Twisted Facts and Other Staples of the Trump Playbook

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      #masthead-section-label, #masthead-bar-one { display: none }The Trump ImpeachmentFriday’s HighlightsDay 4: Key TakeawaysWhat Is Incitement?Trump’s LawyersAdvertisementContinue reading the main storySupported byContinue reading the main storyFor the Defense: Twisted Facts and Other Staples of the Trump PlaybookThe lawyers representing the former president in his impeachment trial are the latest in a rotating cast that has always had trouble satisfying a mercurial and headstrong client.Two of Donald J. Trump’s lawyers, Bruce L. Castor Jr., left, and Michael van der Veen, arrived at the Capitol on Friday. For many reasons, serving as one of Mr. Trump’s lawyers is a true high-wire act.Credit…Jason Andrew for The New York TimesMichael S. Schmidt and Feb. 12, 2021Updated 9:39 p.m. ETEver since Donald J. Trump began his run for president, he has been surrounded by an ever-shifting cast of lawyers with varying abilities to control, channel and satisfy their mercurial and headstrong client.During the final weeks of the 2016 campaign, Michael D. Cohen arranged for hush money payments to be made to a former pornographic film actress. In the second year of Mr. Trump’s presidency, John M. Dowd, the head of the team defending the president in the Russia investigation, quit after he concluded that Mr. Trump was refusing to listen to his counsel.By Mr. Trump’s third year in office, he had found a new lawyer to do his bidding as Rudolph W. Giuliani first undertook a campaign to undermine Joseph R. Biden Jr. and then helped lead the fruitless effort to overturn the results of the 2020 election, with stops in Ukraine and at Four Seasons Total Landscaping along the way.On Friday, the latest members of Mr. Trump’s legal cast took center stage in his impeachment trial and for the most part delivered exactly what he always seems to want from his lawyers: not precise, learned legal arguments but public combat, in this case including twisted facts, rewritten history and attacks on opponents.Despite an often unorthodox and undisciplined approach from his legal teams, Mr. Trump has survived more legal challenges as president than any of his recent predecessors. Although federal investigators uncovered the hush money payments and significant evidence he may have obstructed the Russia investigation, he was never charged. He was acquitted by the Senate in his first impeachment trial related to the Ukraine pressure campaign, and he appeared poised on Friday to see a similar outcome in this impeachment.Legal experts, white-collar defense lawyers and even some of Mr. Trump’s former lawyers acknowledge that his survival has largely been a function of the fact that he was the president of the United States, a position that gave him great powers to evade legal consequence.“At the outset of the administration I would have said it would be remarkable for someone to run this gauntlet and survive,” said Chuck Rosenberg, a former longtime senior Justice Department official.After initially stumbling in its first round of arguments on Tuesday, the latest team — either the seventh or eighth to defend Mr. Trump since he became president, depending on your math — followed the playbook Mr. Trump has long wanted his lawyers to adhere to.They channeled his grievances and aggressively spun, making what-about arguments that tried to cast his own behavior as not so bad when compared with the other side. Democrats found their performance infuriatingly misleading, but it potentially provided the vast majority of Republicans in the Senate opposed to convicting Mr. Trump with talking points they can use to justify their votes.“Hypocrisy,” one of Mr. Trump’s lawyers, Michael T. van der Veen, said after they played a several-minutes-long clip of prominent Democrats and media commentators using language like “fight” in an effort to show that Mr. Trump’s own words before the riot could have had no role in inciting the violence.David I. Schoen and the rest of Mr. Trump’s impeachment defense team followed the playbook that the former president has long wanted his lawyers to adhere to.Credit…Anna Moneymaker for The New York Times“The reality is, Mr. Trump was not in any way, shape or form instructing these people to fight or to use physical violence,” Mr. van der Veen said. “What he was instructing them to do was to challenge their opponents in primary elections to push for sweeping election reforms, to hold big tech responsible.”Serving as one of Mr. Trump’s lawyers is a true high-wire act for a range of reasons, from his indifference to the law and norms to his long-held belief that he is his own best defender and spokesman. In the 1970s, under the tutelage of the lawyer Roy M. Cohn — whose aggressiveness was matched by his lack of adherence to ethical standards — Mr. Trump began conflating legal and public relations problems.These factors have often led Mr. Trump to ignore legal advice and dictate to the lawyers what he wants them to do. Some lawyers have survived for years with Mr. Trump through various investigations, such as Jay Sekulow and the Florida-based couple Marty and Jane Raskin. They were involved in defending Mr. Trump in his first impeachment battle. And they had successes defending Mr. Trump in the highest-profile investigation he faced as president, the special counsel inquiry into possible conspiracy between the Trump campaign in 2016 and Russian officials.But those lawyers are not part of his current team.Neither is Pat A. Cipollone, the former White House counsel who spent weeks at the end of the Trump term batting away various efforts to overturn the election results. As he did with a previous White House counsel, Donald F. McGahn II, Mr. Trump repeatedly wanted the White House counsels to act as his personal lawyers.And Mr. Trump’s willingness to listen to lawyers who tell him what he does not want to hear dwindled significantly after the Nov. 3 election. Instead, he relied on Mr. Giuliani, whom other Trump aides blame for ensnaring Mr. Trump in his two impeachment battles, to guide him in his effort to overturn the results of the election.Mr. Giuliani repeatedly told associates that he would be involved in the impeachment defense, despite his status as a potential witness, since he addressed the Trump rally crowd on Jan. 6. Mr. Trump ultimately told Mr. Giuliani that he would not be involved.But Mr. Trump’s advisers struggled to find a legal team that would defend him.Finally, with help from an ally, Senator Lindsey Graham of South Carolina, Mr. Trump’s advisers announced that he had hired Butch Bowers, a well-known lawyer with experience representing South Carolina politicians facing crises.But just over a week before the trial was to begin, Mr. Bowers and the four lawyers connected to him abruptly left, though another lawyer, David I. Schoen, who was expected from the beginning to be part of the team, remained on board.In another reminder of his ad hoc approach, Mr. Trump asked associates on Thursday night whether it was too late to add or remove lawyers from the team, as Mr. Schoen briefly told the team he was quitting over a debate about how to use the video clips the defense showed on Friday. Mr. Trump called Mr. Schoen and he agreed to rejoin the team, two people briefed on the events said.Just a few hours before Mr. Trump’s team was to appear in the well of the Senate, the group was still hashing out the order of appearance of his two chief lawyers, Mr. Schoen and Bruce L. Castor Jr. In the end, they decided that a third lawyer, Mr. van der Veen, would deliver the opening act.The uncertainty apparently stemmed from Mr. Castor’s widely panned appearance on Tuesday, when he delivered a rambling, unfocused opening statement that enraged his client. Mr. Trump has told advisers and friends he did not want to hear from Mr. Castor anymore, people familiar with the Trump team’s discussions said.People familiar with the makeup of the legal team said that Eric Herschmann, a lawyer and ally of the president’s son-in-law, Jared Kushner, who worked in the West Wing in the final year of the administration, was a key figure in putting it together.When Mr. Trump asked Mr. Herschmann who had hired Mr. Castor after his disastrous outing on Tuesday, Mr. Herschmann, according to two people with knowledge of the exchange, sought to lay the blame on Mark Meadows, the former White House chief of staff. Mr. Herschmann did not respond to an email seeking comment.By the end of the day Friday, Mr. van der Veen, a personal injury lawyer from Philadelphia, had emerged as Mr. Trump’s primary defender, handling questions from senators, making a series of false and outlandish claims, calling the impeachment a version of “constitutional cancel culture” and declaring that Friday’s proceedings had been his “most miserable” experience in Washington.Representative Jamie Raskin, Democrat of Maryland and the lead House impeachment manager, responded, “I guess we’re sorry, but man, you should have been here on Jan. 6.”Chris Cameron More

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      Trump’s Taste for Blood

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      AdvertisementContinue reading the main storyOpinionSupported byContinue reading the main storyTrump’s Taste for BloodIf Republicans won’t convict, bring on the handcuffs.Opinion ColumnistFeb. 12, 2021Credit…Stephanie Keith/ReutersWASHINGTON — Every scene in “Lawrence of Arabia” is perfect, but there’s one I find especially haunting.Peter O’Toole’s Lawrence returns to Cairo after successfully leading the Arabs in battle against the Ottoman Empire and tells a military superior that he does not want to go back. Slumping in his Bedouin robes, looking pained, he recalls that he executed an Arab with his pistol.There was something about it he didn’t like, he says.The irritated general tries to brush it off, assuming the erudite Lawrence is upset at killing a man.“No, something else,” Lawrence explains. “I enjoyed it.”The first time I realized that Donald Trump took pleasure in violence was back in March 2016. In an interview, I asked him about the brutish rhetoric and violence at his rallies and the way he goaded supporters to hate on journalists and rough up protesters. Even then Mitch McConnell was urging Trump to ratchet down the ferocity.I told Trump that I had not seen this side of him before and that he was going down a very dark path. With his denigrating mockery of rivals and critics, he had already taken politics to a vulgar place, and now it was getting more dangerous.Shouldn’t parents be able to bring children to rallies without worrying about obscenities, sucker punches, brawls and bullying, I wondered?He brushed off the questions and blithely assessed the savage mood at his rallies: “Frankly, it adds a little excitement.”A couple weeks later, I pressed him again on his belligerence and divisiveness, and, with utter candor, he explained why he was turning up the heat.“I guess because of the fact that I immediately went to No. 1 and I said, why don’t I just keep the same thing going?” he said. “I’ve come this far in life. I’ve had great success. I’ve done it my way.” He added, “You know, there are a lot of people who say, ‘Don’t change.’”Dear reader, he didn’t change.And everything bloodcurdling that happened at the Capitol on Jan. 6 flowed from his bloodthirsty behavior. He had always been cruel and selfish, blowing things up and reveling in the chaos, gloating in the wreckage. But it was only during his campaign that he realized he had a nasty mob at his disposal. He had moved into a world that allowed him to exercise his malice in an extraordinary way, and he loved it.He became his own Lee Atwater, doing the dirty stuff right out in the open. He embraced the worst part of his party, the most racist, violent cohort.The faux-macho, Gotti-esque air of menace he cultivated as a real estate dealer, the Clint Eastwood squint, just seemed like performance art; mostly he was around New York, acting genial at parties and courting the press. He would say stuff sometimes; after Sacha Baron Cohen pulled a prank on Ryan Seacrest at the Oscars, Trump said that Seacrest’s security guard should have “pummeled” and “punched” Baron Cohen “in the face so many times” that he’d end up in the hospital.But once Trump got into politics, he realized, with growing intoxication, that the more incendiary he was, the more his fans would cheer. He found that he could really play with the emotions of the crowd, and that turned him on. Now he had the chance to command a mob, so his words could be linked to their actions.Trump never cared about law and order or the cops. He was thrilled that he could unleash his mob on the Capitol and its guardians, with rioters smearing blood and feces and yelling Trump’s words and going after his targets — Nancy Pelosi and Mike Pence.It was Manson family-chilling to watch the House impeachment managers’ video with a rioter hunting for the House speaker, calling out: “Where are you, Nancy? We’re looking for you, Na-a-ncy. Oh, Na-a-ncy.”It was like watching his vicious Twitter feed come alive. Others were chanting “Hang Mike Pence!” even as a gallows, complete with noose, was erected on the lawn. Watching those shivery videos, it hit home how Pelosi and Pence could have been killed and the melee could have turned into a far worse blood bath.Trump not caring about the fate of his vice president was the inevitable sick end of the pairing of the Sociopath and the Sycophant.As The Washington Post’s Josh Dawsey wrote in a tweet Friday, recapping his reporting with Ashley Parker: “Pence’s team does not agree with the Trump lawyer’s assessment that Trump was concerned about Pence’s safety. Trump didn’t call him that day — or for five days after that. No one else on Trump’s team called as Pence was evacuated to one room & another, with screaming mob nearby.”Trump’s whole defense in the impeachment trial was like a low-budget movie trailer, cornier than the new Louise Linton flick. It was just another Trump flimflam reality TV show, meant to prove how he was wronged, not how he wronged the country.Trump’s lawyers showed a video of myriad Democrats using the word “fight,” as though that was the equivalent of what Trump did.If he’d had better lawyers and a real strategy in the effort to purloin the election, or if a few brave Republicans like Brad Raffensperger, the Georgia secretary of state, had not stood up to him, he might have succeeded.Certainly, opportunism has always run rampant in Congress. But most Republicans, who continue to tremble before Trump even though he devoured and destroyed their party, turning its traditional values upside down, are plumbing new cowardly depths. They are mini-Trumps, making decisions solely on self-interest.CNN reported Friday night that Kevin McCarthy called Trump during the riot, telling him the mob was breaking his windows to get in. The then-president told him: “Well, Kevin, I guess these people are more upset about the election than you are.” The conversation ended in a shouting match. Yet McCarthy still voted against impeaching the president.These dreadful Republicans are all Falstaffs, trampling the concept of honor, blowing it off as a mere airy-fairy word, not worth sacrificing anything for, not worth defending your country for. “Honor is a mere scutcheon,” Falstaff scoffed.McConnell and the other craven Republicans realize now that they should not have played along with Trump as long as they did, while he undermined the election. But they still refuse to hold him accountable because he controls their voters.The Democrats put on an excellent case, and they were right to impeach Trump. But if the Republicans won’t convict him, then bring on the criminal charges. Republicans say that’s how it should be done when someone is out of office, so let’s hope someone follows through on their suggestion.A few days ago, prosecutors in Georgia opened an investigation into Trump’s efforts to overturn the election there. Manhattan District Attorney Cy Vance could drag Trump into court on tax and fraud charges. Karl Racine, the attorney general for D.C., has said that Trump could be charged for his role in inciting the riot.Maybe a man who gloated as his crowds screamed “Lock her up!” will find that jurors reach a similar conclusion about him.The Times is committed to publishing a diversity of letters to the editor. We’d like to hear what you think about this or any of our articles. Here are some tips. And here’s our email: letters@nytimes.com.Follow The New York Times Opinion section on Facebook, Twitter (@NYTopinion) and Instagram.AdvertisementContinue reading the main story More

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      Trump’s Lawyers Deny He Incited Capitol Mob, Saying It’s Democrats Who Spur Violence

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      #masthead-section-label, #masthead-bar-one { display: none }The Trump ImpeachmentFriday’s HighlightsDay 4: Key TakeawaysWhat Is Incitement?Trump’s LawyersAdvertisementContinue reading the main storySupported byContinue reading the main storyTrump’s Lawyers Deny He Incited Capitol Mob, Saying It’s Democrats Who Spur ViolenceThe former president’s legal team rested its case without using even a quarter of the 16 hours allotted to it.Michael T. van der Veen, one of former President Donald J. Trump’s lawyers, on Friday before presenting the defense’s case.Credit…Erin Schaff/The New York TimesPeter Baker and Feb. 12, 2021Updated 8:04 p.m. ETFormer President Donald J. Trump’s legal team mounted a combative defense on Friday focused more on assailing Democrats for “hypocrisy” and “hatred” than justifying Mr. Trump’s own monthslong effort to overturn a democratic election that culminated in last month’s deadly assault on the Capitol.After days of powerful video footage showing a mob of Trump supporters beating police officers, chasing lawmakers and threatening to kill the vice president and House speaker, Mr. Trump’s lawyers denied that he had incited what they called a “small group” that turned violent. Instead, they tried to turn the tables by calling out Democrats for their own language, which they deemed just as incendiary as Mr. Trump’s.In so doing, the former president’s lawyers went after not just the House Democrats serving as managers, or prosecutors, in the Senate impeachment trial, but half of the jurors sitting in front of them in the chamber. A rat-a-tat-tat montage of video clips played by the Trump team showed nearly every Democratic senator as well as President Biden and Vice President Kamala Harris using the word “fight” or the phrase “fight like hell” just as Mr. Trump did at a rally of supporters on Jan. 6 just before the siege of the Capitol.“Suddenly, the word ‘fight’ is off limits?” said Michael T. van der Veen, one of the lawyers hurriedly hired in recent days to defend Mr. Trump. “Spare us the hypocrisy and false indignation. It’s a term that’s used over and over and over again by politicians on both sides of the aisle. And, of course, the Democrat House managers know that the word ‘fight’ has been used figuratively in political speech forever.”To emphasize the point, the Trump team played some of the same clips four or five times in less than three hours as some of the Democratic senators shook their heads and at least one of their Republican colleagues laughed appreciatively. The lawyers argued that the trial was “shameful” and “a deliberate attempt by the Democrat Party to smear, censor and cancel” an opponent and then rested their case without using even a quarter of the 16 hours allotted to the former president’s defense.Representative Jamie Raskin, center, the lead House impeachment manager, on Friday at the Capitol with aides and other managers during a break in the trial.Credit…Erin Schaff/The New York TimesIn the process, they tried to effectively narrow the prosecution’s “incitement of insurrection” case as if it centered only on their client’s use of that one phrase in that one speech instead of the relentless campaign that Mr. Trump waged since last summer to discredit an election he would eventually lose and galvanize his supporters to help him cling to power.“They really didn’t address the facts of the case at all,” said Representative Jamie Raskin, Democrat of Maryland and the lead impeachment manager. “There were a couple propaganda reels about Democratic politicians that would be excluded in any court in the land. They talk about the rules of evidence — all of that was totally irrelevant to the case before us.”After the Trump team’s abbreviated defense, the senators posed their own questions, generally using their queries to score political points. The questions, a total of 28 submitted in writing and read by a clerk, suggested that most Republicans remained likely to vote to acquit Mr. Trump when the Senate reconvenes for final arguments at 10 a.m. Saturday, blocking the two-thirds supermajority required by the Constitution for conviction.Some of the few Republicans thought to be open to conviction, including Senators Mitt Romney of Utah, Susan Collins of Maine and Lisa Murkowski of Alaska, grilled the lawyers about what Mr. Trump knew and when he knew it during the attack. The managers have argued that it was not just the president’s words and actions in advance of the attack that betrayed his oath, but his failure to act more assertively to stop his supporters after it started.Responding to the senators, the defense lawyers pointed to mildly worded messages and a video that Mr. Trump posted on Twitter after the building was stormed calling on his supporters not to use violence while still endorsing their cause and telling them that he loved them. The managers repeated that Mr. Trump never made a strong, explicit call on the rioters to halt the attack, nor did he send help.Mr. Romney and Senator Bill Cassidy, Republican of Louisiana, zeroed in on Mr. Trump’s failure to exhibit concern for his own vice president, Mike Pence, who was targeted for death by the former president’s supporters because he refused to try to block finalization of the election. Even after Mr. Pence was evacuated from the Senate chamber that day, Mr. Trump attacked him on Twitter, saying that “Mike Pence didn’t have the courage to do what should have been done.”Senator Mitt Romney returning to the Senate chamber after a break in the trial on Friday.Credit…Brandon Bell for The New York TimesMr. van der Veen told the senators that “at no point was the president informed that the vice president was in any danger.” But in fact, Senator Tommy Tuberville, Republican of Alabama, told reporters this week that he spoke by telephone with Mr. Trump during the attack and told him that Mr. Pence had been rushed out of the chamber. Officials have said that Mr. Trump never called Mr. Pence to check on his safety and did not speak with him for days.The defense team struggled to avoid directly addressing what managers called Mr. Trump’s “big lie” that the election was stolen, which led his supporters to invade the Capitol to try to stop Congress from counting the Electoral College votes ratifying the result. Senator Bernie Sanders of Vermont, an independent who caucuses with the Democrats, challenged Mr. Trump’s lawyers to say whether they believe he actually won the election.“My judgment?” Mr. van der Veen replied derisively and then demanded: “Who asked that?”“I did,” Mr. Sanders called out from his seat.“My judgment’s irrelevant in this proceeding,” Mr. van der Veen said, prompting an eruption from Democratic senators. He repeated that “it’s irrelevant” to the question of whether Mr. Trump incited the riot.Senate Democrats dismissed the defense’s efforts to equate Mr. Trump’s actions with Democratic speeches. “They’re trying to draw a dangerous and distorted equivalence,” Senator Richard Blumenthal, Democrat of Connecticut, told reporters during a break in the trial. “I think it is plainly a distraction from Donald Trump inviting the mob to Washington.”But for Republicans looking for reasons to acquit Mr. Trump, the defense was more than enough. “The president’s lawyers blew the House managers’ case out of the water,” said Senator Ron Johnson, Republican of Wisconsin.Even Ms. Murkowski, who called on Mr. Trump to resign after the Capitol siege, said the defense team was “more on their game” than during the trial’s opening day this week, although by day’s end, she indicated to a reporter she was agonizing over the decision.“It’s been five weeks — less than five weeks — since an event that shook the very core the very foundation of our democracy,” she said. “And we’ve had a lot to process since then.”During the question period, senators closely watched for clues about where their colleagues stood. Although most lawmakers still guessed that only a handful of Republicans would vote to convict, an additional group of Republicans, including Senator Mitch McConnell of Kentucky, the minority leader, have said almost nothing to colleagues about the unfolding trial in private or during daily luncheons before it convenes, prompting speculation that they could be preparing to break from the party.Senator Mitch McConnell of Kentucky, the Republican leader, on the Senate subway before the trial on Friday.Credit…Alyssa Schukar for The New York TimesThe managers need 17 Republicans to join all 50 Democrats to reach the two-thirds required for conviction. While Mr. Trump can no longer be removed from office because his term has ended, he could be barred from ever seeking public office again.The former president had trouble recruiting a legal team to defend him. The lawyers who represented him last year during his first impeachment trial did not come back for this one, and the set of lawyers he initially hired for this proceeding backed out in disagreement over strategy. Bruce L. Castor Jr., the leader of this third set, was widely criticized for his preliminary presentation on Tuesday, including reportedly by Mr. Trump.Mr. Castor and David I. Schoen were largely supplanted on Friday by Mr. van der Veen, who has no long history with the president and in fact was reported to have once called Mr. Trump a “crook” with an expletive, a statement he has denied. Just last year, Mr. van der Veen represented a client suing Mr. Trump over moves that might limit mail-in voting and accused the president of making claims with “no evidence.”But Mr. van der Veen on Friday offered the sort of aggressive performance that Mr. Trump prefers from his representatives as he accused the other side of “doctoring the evidence” with “manipulated video,” all to promote “a preposterous and monstrous lie” that the former president encouraged violence.A personal injury lawyer whose Philadelphia law firm solicits slip-and-fall clients on the radio and whose website boasts of winning judgments stemming from auto accidents and one case “involving a dog bite,” Mr. van der Veen proceeded to lecture Mr. Raskin, who taught constitutional law at American University for more than 25 years, about the Constitution. The managers’ arguments, Mr. van der Veen said, were “less than I would expect from a first-year law student.”He and his colleagues argued that Mr. Trump was exercising his free-speech rights in his fiery address to a rally before supporters broke into the Capitol. The lawyers leaned heavily on Mr. Trump’s single use of the word “peacefully” as he urged backers to march to the Capitol while minimizing the 20 times he used the word “fight.”“No thinking person could seriously believe that the president’s Jan. 6 speech on the Ellipse was in any way an incitement to violence or insurrection,” Mr. van der Veen said. “The suggestion is patently absurd on its face. Nothing in the text could ever be construed as encouraging, condoning or inciting unlawful activity of any kind.”Bruce L. Castor Jr. and Mr. van der Veen arriving at the Capitol on Friday.Credit…Jason Andrew for The New York TimesSensitive to the charge that Mr. Trump endangered police officers, who were beaten and in one case killed during the assault, the lawyers played video clips in which he called himself a “law and order president” along with images of antiracism protests that turned violent last summer.They likewise showed video clips of Democrats objecting to Electoral College votes in past years when Republicans won, including Mr. Raskin in 2017 when Mr. Trump’s victory was sealed, comparing them with Mr. Trump’s criticism of the 2020 election. At the same time, those videos also showed Mr. Biden, then vice president, gaveling those protests out of order.Stacey Plaskett, a Democratic delegate from the Virgin Islands and one of the managers, objected that many of the faces shown in the videos of Democratic politicians and street protesters were Black. “It was not lost on me so many of them were people of color and women, Black women,” she said. “Black women like myself who are sick and tired of being sick and tired for our children.”The defense lawyers contended that Democrats were pursuing Mr. Trump out of personal and partisan animosity, using the word “hatred” 15 times during their formal presentation, and they cast the trial as an effort to suppress a political opponent and his supporters.“It is about canceling 75 million Trump voters and criminalizing political viewpoints,” Mr. Castor said. “That’s what this trial is really about. It is the only existential issue before us. It asks for constitutional cancel culture to take over in the United States Senate. Are we going to allow canceling and banning and silencing to be sanctioned in this body?”Emily Cochrane More

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      Fact-Checking Trump's Lawyers on Day 4 of Impeachment Trial

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      #masthead-section-label, #masthead-bar-one { display: none }The Trump ImpeachmentFriday’s HighlightsDay 4: Key TakeawaysWhat Is Incitement?Trump’s LawyersAdvertisementContinue reading the main storySupported byContinue reading the main storyFact CheckTrump’s Lawyers Repeated Inaccurate Claims in Impeachment TrialThe three members of the former president’s legal team made a number of misleading or false claims about the events of Jan. 6, antifa, the impeachment process and voter fraud.Former President Donald J. Trump’s defense lawyers Bruce L. Castor Jr. and Michael van der Veen arriving at the Capitol on Friday.Credit…Jason Andrew for The New York TimesFeb. 12, 2021Updated 7:52 p.m. ETAs they mounted their defense of the former president on Friday, Donald J. Trump’s lawyers made a number of inaccurate or misleading claims about the Jan. 6 riot at the Capitol, Mr. Trump’s remarks, the impeachment process and 2020 election. Many claims were echoes of right-wing talking points popularized on social media or ones that were spread by Mr. Trump himself.Here’s a fact check.Mr. Trump’s lawyers were misleading about what happened on Jan. 6.What Was Said“Instead of expressing a desire that the joint session be prevented from conducting its business, the entire premise of his remarks was that the democratic process would and should play out according to the letter of the law.” — Michael van der Veen, lawyer for Mr. TrumpFalse. In his speech on Jan. 6 and before, Mr. Trump repeatedly urged former Vice President Mike Pence to reject the certification of the Electoral College votes, saying Mr. Pence should “send it back to the States to recertify.” Mr. Trump continued his speech on Jan. 6 saying he was “challenging the certification of the election.”What Was Said“Far from promoting insurrection of the United States, the president’s remarks explicitly encouraged those in attendance to exercise their rights peacefully and patriotically.” — Mr. van der VeenThis is exaggerated. Mr. Trump used the phrase “peacefully and patriotically” once in his speech, compared with 20 uses of the word “fight.”What Was Said“As everyone knows, the president had spoken at hundreds of large rallies across the country over the past five years. There had never been any moblike or riotous behaviors.” — Mr. van der VeenThis is misleading. While no other Trump rally has led to a siege of the Capitol, there have been episodes of violence, sometimes encouraged by the president. Less than two months before the riot on Jan. 6, Mr. Trump waved to supporters who had gathered in Washington to protest his election loss and who later violently clashed with counterprotesters. Previously, other supporters had attacked counterprotesters, and in one case a BBC cameraman, at several Trump rallies. Mr. Trump called one victim “disgusting” and offered to pay the legal fees of a supporter who had punched a protester.What Was Said“Given the timeline of events, the criminals at the Capitol weren’t there at the Ellipse to even hear the president’s words. They were more than a mile away engaged in their preplanned assault on this very building.” — Bruce L. Castor Jr., another lawyer for Mr. TrumpThis is misleading. It is true that the Capitol was first breached before Mr. Trump had concluded his remarks, but this does not rule out the possibility that some rioters were inspired by his speech. In fact, several have said that they were.For example, Robert L. Bauer, who had attended Mr. Trump’s rally on Jan. 6 and entered the Capitol, told law enforcement that when Mr. Trump told the crowd to march to the Capitol (about 16 minutes into his speech), many heeded those words. Mr. Bauer “reiterated that he marched to the U.S. Capitol because President Trump said to do so,” according to a criminal complaint.Mr. Castor’s reasoning that Mr. Trump could not have incited the crowd to riot because the siege was preplanned also ignores an argument that House managers had made this week: Mr. Trump had spent months trying to invalidate the results of the election and encouraging his supporters to act.What Was Said“At no point was the president informed the vice president was in any danger.” — Mr. van der VeenThis is disputed. Comments by Senator Tommy Tuberville, Republican of Alabama, suggest otherwise. This week, Mr. Tuberville recounted that he and Mr. Trump had spoken just as the Capitol was breached before the phone call was cut short.“I said ‘Mr. President, they just took the vice president out, I’ve got to go,’” Mr. Tuberville said.They made inaccurate references to antifa, left-wing protests and the 2016 election.What Was Said“One of the first people arrested was the leader of antifa.” — Mr. van der VeenThis is misleading. Mr. van der Veen was most likely referring to John E. Sullivan, a Utah man who was charged on Jan. 14 with violent entry and disorderly conduct. Mr. Sullivan, an activist, said he was there to film the siege. He had previously referred to antifa — a loosely affiliated group of antifascist activists that has no leader — on social media, but he has repeatedly denied being a member of the movement.The F.B.I. has said there is no evidence that supporters of the antifa movement had participated in the Capitol siege.What Was Said“As many will recall, last summer the White House was faced with violent rioters night after night. They repeatedly attacked Secret Service officers, and at one point pierced a security wall, culminating in the clearing of Lafayette Square.” — Mr. van der VeenFalse. This timeline is wrong. Law enforcement officials began clearing Lafayette Square after 6 p.m. on June 1 to allow Mr. Trump to pose with a Bible in front of a church, not because of a breach. Additional security barriers were installed after those events, according to local news reports and the National Park Service.What Was Said“The entire Democratic Party and national news media spent the last four years repeating without any evidence that the 2016 election had been hacked.” — Mr. van der VeenFalse. United States intelligence agencies concluded years ago that Russia had tried to interfere in the 2016 election. The Republican-led Senate agreed last year that Russia had disrupted that election to help Mr. Trump.They mischaracterized the impeachment process.What Was Said“The House waited to deliver the articles to the Senate for almost two weeks, only after Democrats had secured control over the Senate. In fact, contrary to their claim that the only reason they held it was because Senator McConnell wouldn’t accept the article, Representative Clyburn made clear they had considered holding the articles for over 100 days to provide President Biden with a clear pathway to implement his agenda.” — David I. Schoen, another lawyer for Mr. TrumpThis is misleading. Democrats had considered delivering the article of impeachment earlier, but Senator Mitch McConnell of Kentucky, then the majority leader, precluded the possibility. In a letter on Jan. 8, he informed Republican lawmakers that the Senate was in recess and “may conduct no business until Jan. 19.”Representative James E. Clyburn, Democrat of South Carolina, suggested withholding the articles longer after Mr. McConnell made his timeline known. In an interview with CNN, Mr. Clyburn suggested Mr. McConnell was “doing what he thinks he needs to do to be disruptive of President Biden,” but Democrats might respond to that tactical delay with one of their own to “give President-elect Biden the 100 days he needs to get his agenda off and running.”What Was Said“Our Constitution and any basic sense of fairness require that every legal process with significant consequences for a person’s life, including impeachment, requires due process under the law, which includes fact-finding and the establishment of a legitimate, evidentiary record. Even last year, it required investigation by the House. Here, President Trump and his counsel were given no opportunity to review evidence or question its propriety.” — Mr. SchoenThis is misleading. The point about lack of “due process” is one that Mr. Trump’s lawyers and supporters had argued during his first impeachment and one that law scholars have dismissed.There are no “enforceable rights” to due process in a House inquiry, and while those rights exist in the Senate trial, they are limited, said Frank O. Bowman III, a law professor at the University of Missouri and an expert on impeachment.“One justice suggested something like that if it were found that the Senate was deciding cases on a coin flip, that might violate due process,” Mr. Bowman said. “Anything short of that, basically court’s not going to get involved.”Moreover, a senior aide on the House impeachment team said that the Trump legal team was given the trial material, including all video and audio footage, before the start of the proceedings.They repeated Mr. Trump’s false claims about voter fraud.What Was Said“Based on an analysis of publicly available voter data that the ballot rejection rate in Georgia in 2016 was approximately 6.42 percent, and even though a tremendous amount of new, first-time mail-in ballots were included in the 2020 count, the Georgia rejection rate in 2020 was a mere 0.4 of 1 percent, a drop-off from 6.42 percent to 0.4 percent.” — Mr. CastorThis is misleading. Georgia elections officials have repeatedly debunked this claim, which conflates the overall rejection rate for mail-in ballots in 2016 to the rejection rate specifically for signature mismatch in 2020. (Ballots can also be rejected for arriving late or not having a signature, among other reasons.)In 2016, Georgia rejected about 6.4 percent of all returned mail-in ballots and 0.24 percent of those ballots because of signature-matching issues. It is unclear what the 0.4 percent refers to, but in both 2018 and 2020, Georgia rejected 0.15 percent of mail-in ballots because of signature-matching issues.What Was Said“President Trump wanted the signature verification to be done in public. How can a request for signature verifications to be done in public be a basis for a charge for inciting a riot?” — Mr. CastorThis is misleading. Contrary to Mr. Trump’s belief and Mr. Castor’s repetition of it, Georgia does verify signatures. Georgia’s Republican secretary of state noted that the state trained officials on signature matching and created a portal that checked and confirmed voters’ driver’s licenses. In a news conference last month debunking Mr. Trump’s claims, Gabriel Sterling, a top election official in Georgia, explained that the secretary of state’s office also brought in signature experts to check over 15,000 ballots. They discovered issues with two, and after further examination, concluded that they were legitimate.“Shockingly, the disinformation continues,” Mr. Sterling tweeted during the trial.Nicholas Fandos More

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      Nikki Haley Slams Trump’s Election Claims

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      #masthead-section-label, #masthead-bar-one { display: none }Capitol Riot FalloutTracking the ArrestsVisual TimelineInside the SiegeMurder Charges?The Oath KeepersAdvertisementContinue reading the main storySupported byContinue reading the main storyNikki Haley Slams Trump’s Election Claims: ‘We Shouldn’t Have Followed Him’Although the former United Nations ambassador calibrated her comments, her sharp criticism represented a departure from other Republicans who are believed to be considering running for president in 2024.Nikki R. Haley, a former governor of South Carolina, resigned as Donald J. Trump’s ambassador to the United Nations at the end of 2018.Credit…Samuel Corum for The New York TimesFeb. 12, 2021Updated 4:36 p.m. ETNikki R. Haley, a former United Nations ambassador under President Donald J. Trump who left the administration without the drama or ill will that marred most of its high-level departures, sharply criticized her former boss in an interview published on Friday, saying that she was “disgusted” by his conduct on Jan. 6, the day of the Capitol riot.Ms. Haley, 49, who is widely believed to be considering a run for president in 2024, told Politico she did not believe that the former president would remain a dominant force within the Republican Party or that he would seek office again, arguing that he had “lost any sort of political viability.”“I don’t think he’s going to be in the picture,” Ms. Haley said. “I don’t think he can. He’s fallen so far.”Ms. Haley’s comments predictably prompted a backlash from Mr. Trump’s loyal base of support, a constituency that most Republican office holders continue to try to appease — and one that she had assiduously tried to avoid offending since leaving his administration at the end of 2018.Before her latest comments became public, Ms. Haley seemed to realize that they would go too far for many Republicans. And it was not long before she bowed to the reality of Mr. Trump’s enduring power within the party. In an interview with Laura Ingraham of Fox News that was broadcast late last month — after Ms. Haley had spoken to Politico but before the article was published — Ms. Haley muted her criticism of the former president considerably.“At some point, I mean, give the man a break,” she said, condemning Democrats for pursuing a second impeachment against him for instigating the Jan. 6 assault on the Capitol. “I mean, move on.” She added: “Does he deserve to be impeached? Absolutely not.”But the storming of the Capitol last month, and Mr. Trump’s role in inciting it with repeated, false claims of ballot-rigging in the November election, caused Ms. Haley to reassess her relationship with the former president. Her tone changed markedly between interviews with Politico in December and January. At first, she refused to acknowledge that Mr. Trump was doing anything reckless by refusing to concede. She said that he genuinely believed he had not lost, and she would not acknowledge that his actions since the November election were irresponsible.And she wrongly predicted that Mr. Trump would “go on his way” once he had exhausted his legal options.But after Jan. 6, Ms. Haley told the publication that she had previously urged Mr. Trump to be more “careful” with his words, to no avail.“He went down a path he shouldn’t have,” she said, referring to his deception about the election. “And we shouldn’t have followed him, and we shouldn’t have listened to him. And we can’t let that ever happen again.”In that moment, Ms. Haley’s remarks showed that she was willing to entertain a political proposition that most other Republicans with eyes on the White House had not dared to utter publicly: that Mr. Trump’s hold over the G.O.P. base will loosen, and that he will not be the kingmaker many have predicted.However calibrated or qualified, Ms. Haley’s approach is a departure from that of other conservatives who are believed to harbor ambitions for higher office. Senator Josh Hawley of Missouri, who lent credibility to Mr. Trump’s voter fraud claims, has refused to acknowledge that his own actions played any role in inciting violence on Jan. 6. And former Vice President Mike Pence has said nothing publicly since being forced to flee the Senate chamber under armed guard as rioters stormed the Capitol, encouraged in part by Mr. Trump’s attacks against the vice president on Twitter for not interfering with the certification of the election.Ms. Haley was especially pointed about Mr. Trump’s treatment of Mr. Pence, sounding almost dismissive of the former president as she expressed her dismay. “Mike has been nothing but loyal to that man,” she said.Some Republicans said that Ms. Haley’s comments were simply acknowledging reality. As a politician who is more comfortable with the establishment wing of the G.O.P., she has not always had the trust of Mr. Trump’s base. And in a crowded 2024 presidential primary, she would face stiff competition for those votes..css-1xzcza9{list-style-type:disc;padding-inline-start:1em;}.css-c7gg1r{font-family:nyt-franklin,helvetica,arial,sans-serif;font-weight:700;font-size:0.875rem;line-height:0.875rem;margin-bottom:15px;color:#121212 !important;}@media (min-width:740px){.css-c7gg1r{font-size:0.9375rem;line-height:0.9375rem;}}.css-rqynmc{font-family:nyt-franklin,helvetica,arial,sans-serif;font-size:0.9375rem;line-height:1.25rem;color:#333;margin-bottom:0.78125rem;}@media (min-width:740px){.css-rqynmc{font-size:1.0625rem;line-height:1.5rem;margin-bottom:0.9375rem;}}.css-rqynmc strong{font-weight:600;}.css-rqynmc em{font-style:italic;}.css-yoay6m{margin:0 auto 5px;font-family:nyt-franklin,helvetica,arial,sans-serif;font-weight:700;font-size:1.125rem;line-height:1.3125rem;color:#121212;}@media (min-width:740px){.css-yoay6m{font-size:1.25rem;line-height:1.4375rem;}}.css-1dg6kl4{margin-top:5px;margin-bottom:15px;}.css-16ed7iq{width:100%;display:-webkit-box;display:-webkit-flex;display:-ms-flexbox;display:flex;-webkit-align-items:center;-webkit-box-align:center;-ms-flex-align:center;align-items:center;-webkit-box-pack:center;-webkit-justify-content:center;-ms-flex-pack:center;justify-content:center;padding:10px 0;background-color:white;}.css-pmm6ed{display:-webkit-box;display:-webkit-flex;display:-ms-flexbox;display:flex;-webkit-align-items:center;-webkit-box-align:center;-ms-flex-align:center;align-items:center;}.css-pmm6ed > :not(:first-child){margin-left:5px;}.css-5gimkt{font-family:nyt-franklin,helvetica,arial,sans-serif;font-size:0.8125rem;font-weight:700;-webkit-letter-spacing:0.03em;-moz-letter-spacing:0.03em;-ms-letter-spacing:0.03em;letter-spacing:0.03em;text-transform:uppercase;color:#333;}.css-5gimkt:after{content:’Collapse’;}.css-rdoyk0{-webkit-transition:all 0.5s ease;transition:all 0.5s ease;-webkit-transform:rotate(180deg);-ms-transform:rotate(180deg);transform:rotate(180deg);}.css-eb027h{max-height:5000px;-webkit-transition:max-height 0.5s ease;transition:max-height 0.5s ease;}.css-6mllg9{-webkit-transition:all 0.5s ease;transition:all 0.5s ease;position:relative;opacity:0;}.css-6mllg9:before{content:”;background-image:linear-gradient(180deg,transparent,#ffffff);background-image:-webkit-linear-gradient(270deg,rgba(255,255,255,0),#ffffff);height:80px;width:100%;position:absolute;bottom:0px;pointer-events:none;}#masthead-bar-one{display:none;}#masthead-bar-one{display:none;}.css-1amoy78{background-color:white;border:1px solid #e2e2e2;width:calc(100% – 40px);max-width:600px;margin:1.5rem auto 1.9rem;padding:15px;box-sizing:border-box;}@media (min-width:740px){.css-1amoy78{padding:20px;width:100%;}}.css-1amoy78:focus{outline:1px solid #e2e2e2;}.css-1amoy78[data-truncated] .css-rdoyk0{-webkit-transform:rotate(0deg);-ms-transform:rotate(0deg);transform:rotate(0deg);}.css-1amoy78[data-truncated] .css-eb027h{max-height:300px;overflow:hidden;-webkit-transition:none;transition:none;}.css-1amoy78[data-truncated] .css-5gimkt:after{content:’See more’;}.css-1amoy78[data-truncated] .css-6mllg9{opacity:1;}.css-k9atqk{margin:0 auto;overflow:hidden;}.css-k9atqk strong{font-weight:700;}.css-k9atqk em{font-style:italic;}.css-k9atqk a{color:#326891;-webkit-text-decoration:none;text-decoration:none;border-bottom:1px solid #ccd9e3;}.css-k9atqk a:visited{color:#333;-webkit-text-decoration:none;text-decoration:none;border-bottom:1px solid #ddd;}.css-k9atqk a:hover{border-bottom:none;}Capitol Riot FalloutFrom Riot to ImpeachmentThe riot inside the U.S. Capitol on Wednesday, Jan. 6, followed a rally at which President Trump made an inflammatory speech to his supporters, questioning the results of the election. Here’s a look at what happened and the ongoing fallout:As this video shows, poor planning and a restive crowd encouraged by President Trump set the stage for the riot.A two hour period was crucial to turning the rally into the riot.Several Trump administration officials, including cabinet members Betsy DeVos and Elaine Chao, announced that they were stepping down as a result of the riot.Federal prosecutors have charged more than 70 people, including some who appeared in viral photos and videos of the riot. Officials expect to eventually charge hundreds of others.The House voted to impeach the president on charges of “inciting an insurrection” that led to the rampage by his supporters.“You didn’t have to be clairvoyant to see which way Nikki Haley would go once Donald Trump lost,” said Sam Nunberg, a consultant who worked for Mr. Trump. “She was never going to be able to take the Trump mantle.”To other Republicans, her words of regret were too little, too late given her earlier deference toward Mr. Trump. Representative Adam Kinzinger of Illinois, who has become one of the most outspoken critics of his party since the Capitol attack, accused Ms. Haley of playing “both sides.” On Twitter, he urged her to “Pick Country First or Trump First.”This is not Ms. Haley’s first reversal on Mr. Trump. Like many leaders of her party, she initially opposed him when he ran for the Republican nomination in 2016. At the time, she was the governor of South Carolina, and she endorsed Senator Marco Rubio of Florida ahead of her state’s pivotal primary. Mr. Trump still won, finishing ahead of Mr. Rubio by 10 percentage points.But she redeemed herself in the eyes of many Republican voters by signing on to work in the Trump administration, showing how quickly old slights can be forgiven by the former president and his supporters.Voters may indeed forgive and forget altogether — which is something that critics of Mr. Trump warned would allow Republicans to go unpunished for encouraging him as he undermined faith in American democracy.“When I got into politics, I was told you could get away with a lot because voters have short-term memories,” said Denver Riggleman, a former Republican congressman from Virginia who has been highly critical of his party’s silence as Mr. Trump spread disinformation about the election.“What the Nikki Haleys, Ted Cruzes, Josh Hawleys of the world are relying on,” he added, “is the short-term memory of voters.”AdvertisementContinue reading the main story More

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      Stacey Abrams and Lauren Groh-Wargo: How to Turn Your Red State Blue

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      Credit…June ParkSkip to contentSkip to site indexOpinionStacey Abrams and Lauren Groh-Wargo: How to Turn Your Red State BlueIt may take 10 years. Do it anyway.Credit…June ParkSupported byContinue reading the main storyStacey Abrams and Ms. Abrams was the Democratic nominee for governor of Georgia in 2018. Ms. Groh-Wargo was her campaign manager. They opened Fair Fight Action in late 2018.Feb. 11, 2021We met and became political partners a decade ago, uniting in a bid to stave off Democratic obsolescence and rebuild a party that would increase the clout of regular, struggling Georgians. Our mission was clear: organize people, help realize gains in their lives, win local races to build statewide competitiveness and hold power accountable.But the challenge was how to do that in a state where many allies had retreated into glum predictions of defeat, where our opponents reveled in shellacking Democrats at the polls and in the Statehouse.That’s not all we had to contend with. There was also a 2010 census undercount of people of color, a looming Republican gerrymander of legislative maps and a new Democratic president midway into his first term confronting a holdover crisis from the previous Republican administration. Though little in modern American history compares with the malice and ineptitude of the botched pandemic response or the attempted insurrection at the Capitol, the dynamic of a potentially inaccurate census and imminent partisan redistricting is the same story facing Democrats in 2021 as it was in 2011. State leaders and activists we know across the country who face total or partial Republican control are wondering which path they should take in their own states now — and deep into the next decade.Georgians deserved better, so we devised and began executing a 10-year plan to transform Georgia into a battleground state. As the world knows, President Biden won Georgia’s 16 electoral votes in November, and the January runoff elections for two Senate seats secured full congressional control for the Democratic Party. Yet the result wasn’t a miracle or truly a surprise, at least not to us. Years of planning, testing, innovating, sustained investment and organizing yielded the record-breaking results we knew they could and should. The lessons we learned can help other states looking to chart a more competitive future for Democrats and progressives, particularly those in the Sun Belt, where demographic change will precede electoral opportunity.We realize that many people are thinking about Stacey’s political future, but right now we intend to talk about the unglamorous, tedious, sometimes technical, often contentious work that creates a battleground state. When fully embraced, this work delivers wins — whether or not Donald Trump is on the ballot — as the growth Georgia Democrats have seen in cycle after cycle shows. Even in tough election years, we have witnessed the power of civic engagement on policy issues and increases in Democratic performance. This combination of improvements has also resulted in steady gains in local races and state legislative races, along with the continued narrowing of the statewide loss margin in election after election that finally flipped the state in 2020 and 2021.The task is hard, the progress can feel slow, and winning sometimes means losing better. In 2012, for example, we prevented the Republicans from gaining a supermajority in the Georgia House of Representatives, which would have allowed them to pass virtually any bill they wanted. We won four seats they had drawn for themselves, and in 2014 we maintained those gains — just holding our ground was a victory.The steps toward victory are straightforward: understand your weaknesses, organize with your allies, shore up your political infrastructure and focus on the long game. Georgia’s transformation is worth celebrating, and how it came to be is a long and complicated story, which required more than simply energizing a new coterie of voters. What Georgia Democrats and progressives accomplished here — and what is happening in Arizona and North Carolina — can be exported to the rest of the Sun Belt and the Midwest, but only if we understand how we got here.Understand why you’re losing.To know how to win, we first had to understand why a century of Democratic Party dominance in Georgia had been erased. For most of the 20th century, Georgia Democrats had existed in a strained alliance of rural conservatives, urban liberals and suburbanites, all unconvinced that voting Republican would serve their ends. After serving as the incubator of the Gingrich revolution in the early 1990s, Georgia turned sharply to the right. When Democrats lost U.S. Senate seats in 2002 and 2004, as well as the governorship in 2002, it showed that former conservative Democrats had fully turned Republican. The Democratic Party lost its grip on power. By 2010, Democrats were losing every statewide race, and in 2012 the State Senate fell to a Republican supermajority. Clearly, Democrats had to change tactics. More

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      House Managers Rest Their Case Against Trump, but Most Republicans Are Not Swayed

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      #masthead-section-label, #masthead-bar-one { display: none }The Trump ImpeachmentTrial HighlightsReporter AnalysisDay 3: Key TakeawaysNew Footage of AttackWhat Is Incitement?Trump’s LawyersAdvertisementContinue reading the main storySupported byContinue reading the main storyHouse Managers Rest Their Case Against Trump, but Most Republicans Are Not SwayedTheir warning that the ex-president remains a danger to democracy and could foment still more violence if not barred from running for office again does not convince his fellow Republicans.Representative Jamie Raskin, the lead House impeachment manager, on Thursday before the start of the third day of former President Donald J. Trump’s Senate trial.Credit…Erin Schaff/The New York TimesPeter Baker and Feb. 11, 2021Updated 9:09 p.m. ETHouse impeachment managers wrapped up their emotionally charged incitement case against former President Donald J. Trump on Thursday by warning that he remains a clear and present danger to American democracy and could foment still more violence if not barred from running for office again.With the sounds of a rampaging mob still ringing in the Senate chamber, the managers sought to channel the shock and indignation rekindled by videos they showed of last month’s attack on the Capitol into a bipartisan repudiation of the former president who inflamed his supporters with false claims of a stolen election.“My dear colleagues, is there any political leader in this room who believes that if he’s ever allowed by the Senate to get back into the Oval Office, Donald Trump would stop inciting violence to get his way?” Representative Jamie Raskin, Democrat of Maryland and the lead impeachment manager, asked the senators. “Would you bet the lives of more police officers on that? Would you bet the safety of your family on that? Would you bet the future of your democracy on that?”The argument was meant to rebut Republicans who have said that holding an impeachment trial for a former president was pointless and even unconstitutional because he has already left office and can no longer be removed. But if Mr. Trump were convicted, the Senate could bar him from holding public office in the future, and the managers emphasized that the trial was aimed not at punishment but prevention.“I’m not afraid of Donald Trump running again in four years,” said Representative Ted Lieu, Democrat of California, another of the managers. “I’m afraid he’s going to run again and lose, because he can do this again.”In the final day of their main arguments, the managers also sought to pre-empt the defense that Mr. Trump’s legal team will offer on Friday by rejecting his claim that he was simply exercising his free-speech rights when he sent a frenzied crowd to the Capitol as lawmakers were counting Electoral College votes and told it to “fight like hell.” The First Amendment, managers said, does not protect a president setting a political powder keg and then lighting a match.“President Trump wasn’t just some guy with political opinions who showed up at a rally on Jan. 6 and delivered controversial remarks,” said Representative Joe Neguse, Democrat of Colorado and another manager. “He was the president of the United States. And he had spent months using the unique power of that office, of his bully pulpit, to spread that big lie that the election had been stolen to convince his followers to ‘stop the steal.’”Representative Joe Neguse, Democrat of Colorado and one of the impeachment managers, on Thursday at the Capitol.Credit…Erin Schaff/The New York TimesBut for all of the drama of the prosecution’s case, most Republican senators appeared unswayed and Mr. Trump seemed to retain enough support to block the two-thirds vote required under the Constitution for conviction on the single “incitement of insurrection” count. While a handful of Republican senators may break from the former president, others seemed to go out of their way on Thursday to express impatience with the trial, the second that Mr. Trump has faced.With Republican positions hardening and President Biden’s agenda slowed by the proceedings, Democratic senators began signaling that they had seen enough, too, and members of both parties were coalescing around a plan to bring a quick end to the trial with a vote on guilt or innocence as early as Saturday.Confident of acquittal, Mr. Trump was spotted on a golf course in Florida while his defense team prepared a truncated presentation to offer on Friday rather than take the full two days for arguments permitted by trial rules.After a much-panned preliminary appearance earlier this week, Mr. Trump’s lawyers planned to argue that he was being prosecuted out of partisan enmity, never overtly called for violence and was not responsible for the actions of his supporters.Republican senators exhibited little eagerness to defend Mr. Trump’s actions, instead explaining their likely acquittal votes by maintaining that it is unconstitutional and unwise to put a former president on trial and accusing Democrats who sometimes use fiery speech themselves of holding a political foe to a double standard. The Senate rejected the constitutionality argument on Tuesday on a 56-to-44 vote, allowing the trial to proceed, but Republicans said they were not obliged to accept that judgment.“My view is unchanged as to whether or not we have the authority to do this, and I’m certainly not bound by the fact that 56 people think we do,” said Senator Roy Blunt, Republican of Missouri. “I get to cast my vote, and my view is that you can’t impeach a former president. And if the former president did things that were illegal, there is a process to go through for that.”Senator Marco Rubio, Republican of Florida, offered similar reasoning. “What happened on Jan. 6 — I said it the moment it started — was unpatriotic, un-American, treasonous, a crime, unacceptable,” he said. “The fundamental question for me, and I don’t know about for everybody else, is whether an impeachment trial is appropriate for someone who is no longer in office. I don’t believe that it is.”A video of Mr. Trump that was to be played during the trial on Thursday.Credit…Erin Schaff/The New York TimesTo convict, at least 17 Republican senators would have to vote against the former president, a scenario that seemed implausible. But both sides were watching to see how many ultimately back prosecutors, which could still infuse the case with bipartisan credibility depending on the number.All eyes were on the six Republicans who voted with Democrats this week to reject Mr. Trump’s constitutional objection — Senators Bill Cassidy of Louisiana, Susan Collins of Maine, Lisa Murkowski of Alaska, Mitt Romney of Utah, Ben Sasse of Nebraska and Patrick J. Toomey of Pennsylvania.No other Republican has signaled readiness to vote for conviction. In fact, after sitting silent through the managers’ harrowing video presentation a day earlier, several of them on Thursday began to flaunt their fatigue with the trial as the managers made their latest arguments.Senator Rick Scott of Florida could be seen filling out a blank map of Asia. Senator Thom Tillis of North Carolina retreated to his party’s cloakroom to read on his phone. At points, a dozen or more Republican senators were away from their mahogany desks.“To me, they’re losing credibility the longer they talk,” Senator James M. Inhofe, Republican of Oklahoma, said of the managers.But the managers argued that the president’s actions posed a threat to democratic institutions, the culmination of months of incendiary lies about election fraud meant to generate support for his effort to hang onto power despite the will of the voters. In their presentations, the managers played clips showing Mr. Trump repeatedly telling backers that they had to stop the election from being finalized.They likewise made the case that Mr. Trump had shown a propensity for mob violence over the years, regularly encouraging supporters at rallies to “knock the crap” out of hecklers and praising a congressman who body-slammed a reporter as “my kind of guy.” The managers reminded the senators of Mr. Trump’s infamous comment that there were “very fine people on both sides” after a white supremacist march in 2017 in Charlottesville, Va., turned deadly and noted that he did nothing to discourage armed extremists who stormed Michigan’s statehouse last year.The Capitol has been surrounded by fencing since soon after the attack on Jan. 6.Credit…Jason Andrew for The New York TimesThey made the point that Mr. Trump not only incited the crowd on Jan. 6 but disregarded pleas from fellow Republicans to more explicitly call on the rioters to stop the attack, endangering his own vice president, Mike Pence, whom he blamed for not trying to overturn the election. Even as 16 members of his own administration quit in protest, Mr. Trump offered no remorse and defended his actions as “totally appropriate.”“President Trump perverted his office by attacking the very Constitution he was sworn to uphold,” Mr. Raskin said.Representative David Cicilline, Democrat of Rhode Island, quoted a police officer shaken by the Capitol siege and asking if this was still America.“Is this America?” Mr. Cicilline repeated, turning the query toward the senators. “What is your answer to that question? Is this OK? If not, what are we going to do about it?”In their days of presentations, the nine-member team of managers tried to apply lessons from last year’s impeachment trial of Mr. Trump. The team is generally younger with less experience in Congress — Mr. Neguse is just 36 — but collectively more polished. And they made a point of trying to avoid the endless repetition of last year’s presentations that turned off senators in both parties, keeping to a more rigorous division of labor to weave a tight narrative.Where last year’s trial allowed each side up to 24 hours over three days for arguments, this year’s managers used only about 10 of the 16 hours they were allotted. They were also less confrontational as they addressed Republican senators, who in response praised their performance even if it did not change their minds about the case. And unlike their predecessors, they had the advantage of video footage documenting the events at issue, which many of them lived through.Aware that senators want to wrap up the trial, Mr. Raskin’s team appeared unlikely to ask for witnesses, another departure from last year when a request for live testimony generated fierce debate and was eventually rebuffed by the Republican majority at the time.David I. Schoen, one of the former president’s lawyers, on Thursday at the Russell Senate Office Building.Credit…Anna Moneymaker for The New York TimesMr. Trump’s current legal team also seemed intent on trying not to tax the senators’ patience. David I. Schoen, one of the former president’s lawyers, said they would use just three to four of their 16 hours, allowing the senators to proceed to their own question-and-answer period later Friday and most likely a final vote by Saturday.Given that the senators lived through the Capitol siege, both sides indicated they were familiar enough with the issues to make a decision by the weekend.“It’s a pretty clear picture at this point,” said Senator Martin Heinrich, Democrat of New Mexico. “If you can live through that and see the totality of it in one place, and not think that these things are directly connected — that’s hard to imagine.”Emily Cochrane More

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      Can We Put Fox News on Trial With Trump?

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      AdvertisementContinue reading the main storyOpinionSupported byContinue reading the main storyCan We Put Fox News on Trial With Trump?Even if we can’t impeach media companies, we can do more to hold them accountable for sowing sedition.Opinion ColumnistFeb. 10, 2021Credit…Ryan Jenq for The New York Times More