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      Impeachment trial: defense lawyers argue Trump is victim of 'cancel culture'

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      Donald Trump’s lawyers launched their attempt to defend the former president on Friday, saying the second impeachment trial was a “politically motivated witch-hunt”.Michael van der Veen, one of Trump’s attorneys, used that phrase on Friday to describe Democrats’ motivation for impeaching Trump a second time. He argued Trump’s heated rhetoric on 6 January was no different than the language politicians frequently use in American politics today. Trump exhorted his supporters to “fight like hell” during a rally just before they marched down Pennsylvania Avenue in Washington and attacked the US Capitol.“No thinking person could seriously believe that the president’s January 6 speech on the Ellipse was in any way an incitement to violence or insurrection,” Van der Veen said.He also veered away from the events on 6 January, instead focusing on several instances over the last year in which he accused Democrats of using similar heated language and not doing enough to condemn violent protesters.“This unprecedented effort is not about Democrats opposing political violence. It is about Democrats trying to disqualify their political opposition. It is constitutional cancel culture,” he said. “History will record this shameful effort as a deliberate attempt by the Democrat party to smear, censor and cancel not just President Trump, but the 75 million Americans who voted for him.”At one point, Trump’s lawyers played an extensive supercut of Democratic politicians using the word “fight” in an attempt to argue that Democrats were being hypocritical for impeaching Trump. But Democrats have said Trump wasn’t impeached merely for saying the word “fight” – he invited supporters to Washington on the day Congress was counting the electoral college, and after years of encouraging violence, told his supporters to “fight” and descend on the capitol.Democrats spent much of the week pre-butting some of those arguments. They played numerous videos in which the insurrectionists shouted at police that they had been invited there by Trump, and pointed to several court documents in which rioters charged with criminal offenses have said they were acting at Trump’s behest.“President Trump was not impeached because he used words that the House decided are forbidden or unpopular. He was impeached for inciting armed violence against the government of the United States of America,” David Cicilline, a House impeachment manager, said earlier this week.Jamie Raskin, the lead House Democratic prosecutor, addressed the claim that Trump’s statements were protected by the first amendment earlier in the week, saying it was “absurd”. While a private citizen can urge overthrow of the government, Raskin said, the president of the United States, who swears an oath to defend the nation against all enemies, cannot do the same.“If you’re president of the United States, you’ve chosen a side with your oath of office,” Raskin, a longtime constitutional law professor, said earlier this week. “And if you break it, we can impeach, convict, remove and disqualify you permanently from holding any office of honor, trust or profit under the United States.”Trump’s lawyers signaled they intend to present a brief defense today.The attorneys are likely to try to redirect the responsibility from the former president to solely the people who laid siege to the Capitol. They also plan to argue that his speech at that day’s rally was protected by the first amendment. Trump’s lawyers are likely to frame the impeachment trial as a rushed effort without due process that is driven by Democrats’ personal animus, according to the Associated Press.Though Trump’s team has 16 hours to make their case, they intend to only use three or four hours to do so, Schoen told reporters on Thursday. Republicans want to conclude the trial quickly, according to Axios, after Democrats mounted a strong prosecution filled with harrowing videos.Trump’s lawyers will go into their arguments knowing that 17 Republicans would need to vote to find Trump guilty in order to convict him. It is unlikely so many Republicans would vote against the former president, increasing his chances of being acquitted.Trump’s team may also revisit the argument that Trump cannot be impeached because he is no longer in office. A majority of senators – including six Republicans – rejected that argument after hearing hours of debate on the issue on Tuesday.Friday will be the first time Trump’s lawyers will present arguments in the trial since a rocky opening on Tuesday. Bruce Castor, a Pennsylvania prosecutor serving as one of Trump’s attorneys, gave meandering opening remarks that were difficult to follow, a performance that reportedly infuriated Trump.Depending on when arguments conclude, there could be a vote in the trial as soon as Saturday. More

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      Acquitting Trump would spell grave danger for US democracy | Jonathan Freedland

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      Rare is the trial that takes place at the scene of the crime. Rarer still is the trial where the jurors are also witnesses to, if not victims of, that crime. Which means that the case of Donald Trump should be open and shut, a slam-dunk. Because those sitting in judgment saw the consequences of what Trump did on 6 January. They heard it. And, as security footage played during this week’s proceedings showed, they ran for their lives because of it.
      And yet, most watching the second trial of Trump – only the fourth impeachment in US history – presume that it will end in his acquittal. They expect that fewer than 17 Republican senators will find the former president guilty of inciting an insurrection and so, lacking the required two-thirds majority, the verdict will be not guilty. Barring a late spasm of conscience by the senate Republican leader, Mitch McConnell, Trump will pronounce himself vindicated, the case against him a hoax and he will be free to run again in 2024 – and to loom over his party as its dominant presence at least until then.
      That fact alone should quash the temptation to regard the current proceedings, which could conclude this weekend, as a footnote to the Trump era, one to be safely tucked away in the history books. The reverse is true. The likely acquittal suggests the danger of Trump has far from passed: the threat he embodied remains live and active – and is now embedded deep inside the US body politic.
      The Democratic members of the House of Representatives acting as prosecutors have laid out an unanswerable case. Vividly and with extensive use of video, they have reminded senators – and the watching public – of the vehemence and violence of the mob that stormed the Capitol last month, how Trump supporters attacked police officers, even using poles carrying the American flag to bludgeon those in uniform. They’ve shown how close the rioters came to finding elected officials, how they hunted them down marbled corridors and stone staircases, looking for “fucking traitors”. They had a gallows and noose ready.
      Naturally, Republicans have bitten their lip and said how awful it all was – but have insisted none of it can be blamed on Trump. So the prosecution reminded them of Trump’s words on the day, telling the crowd within striking distance of Congress to head over there, “to show strength” and to “fight like hell”. Oh, but only “idiots” could take such language literally, say Trump’s defenders. Except those who sacked the Capitol took it very literally, filmed as they told the besieged police that they had been “invited” there by the president, that they were “fighting for Trump” at his urging. They believed they were following his explicit instructions.
      The incitement was not confined to that speech, but began long before – and continued after – the rioting started. Trump whipped up the Washington crowd that bitter January day, but he’d been whipping up his supporters for nearly a year, telling them the 2020 election would be stolen, that the only way he could possibly lose would be if the contest was rigged. The big lie that drove the crowd to break down the doors and run riot was that Trump had won and Joe Biden had lost the election – that a contest that was, in fact, free and fair was instead fraudulent, despite 59 out of 60 claims of voter fraud being thrown out of courts across the US through lack of evidence. Their aim was to stop the formal certification ceremony, to “stop the steal” – as Trump had demanded they must for several months.
      So much for incitement before the riot. Among the most shocking facts laid bare this week was that Trump’s incitement persisted even after the violence was under way. One of the former president’s most ardent supporters, Alabama senator Tommy Tuberville, let slip that he had told Trump by phone that vice-president Mike Pence had had to be removed from the chamber for his own safety. And yet, minutes after that call, Trump tweeted an attack on Pence for failing to have “the courage” to thwart Biden’s victory, all but painting a target on the VP’s back.
      Couple that with Trump’s failure to do anything to stop the violence once it had begun – the two-hour delay before sending backup for the police – and the picture is complete: a president who urged a murderous mob to overturn a democratic election by force, who watched them attempt it, who did nothing to stop it and even directed their anger towards specific, named targets. Put it this way, what more would a president have to do to be found guilty of inciting an insurrection?
      Republicans have sought refuge in the first amendment, saying Trump’s words were protected by his right to free speech, or else that it’s improper to convict a president once he’s left office. Most legal scholars wave aside those arguments, but let’s not pretend Republicans’ objections are on legal grounds. They are not acting as sincere jurors, weighing the evidence in good faith. If they were, then three of them would not have met Trump’s legal team to discuss strategy on Thursday, in what is surely a rather novel reading of jury service.
      No, the law is not driving these people to say Trump should be given a free pass for his crime. It is fear. They felt fear on 6 January, when some of them went on camera to beg Trump to call off his mob, but they feel a greater fear now. They fear the threat Trump made in his speech that day, when he told the crowd “we have to primary the hell out of the ones that don’t fight”. Republican senators fear internal party challenges from Trumpists in their states, and they fear a base that is now the obedient creature of Donald Trump. Their only way out, they think, is to acquit a man they surely know – must know – is guilty as charged.
      The consequences are perilous. Most directly, Trump will be able to run again, and will be free to try the same trick anew – unleashing his shock troops to ensure his will is done. If Trump loses, say, the New Hampshire primary in 2024, what’s to prevent him urging his devotees to “stop the steal” once more? Even after Trump is gone, a grim precedent will exist. House Democrat Jamie Raskin was right to warn Republicans that acquittal would “set a new terrible standard for presidential misconduct”. When a future president doesn’t get their way, they can simply incite violence against the system they are pledged to defend.
      Still, the greatest danger is not in the future. It is clear and present. It is that one of the US’s two governing parties is poised to approve the notion that democracy can be overturned by force. By acquitting Trump, the Republicans will declare themselves no longer bound by the constitution or the rule of law or even reality, refusing to break from the lie that their party won an election that it lost. This poison is not confined to the extremities of the US body politic. It is now in its blood and in its heart.
      Jonathan Freedland is a Guardian columnist More

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      Josh Hawley's schooldays: ‘He made popcorn to watch the Iraq invasion’

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      Before Josh Hawley became known as a leader of the attempt to overturn the 2020 election in the US Congress, he was remembered by former students and staff at St Paul’s, the elite British school for boys where he spent a year teaching, as an aloof, rightwing political obsessive who had made himself popcorn to watch the US invasion of Iraq.The Republican senator from Missouri has been the target of ire of millions of Americans after he became the first senator to say he would object to election results. Ultimately, 146 congressional Republicans joined the rightwing lawmaker in seeking to block votes from Pennsylvania and Arizona from being counted, an extraordinary move that was seen as stoking the flames of a pro-Trump mob who attacked the US Capitol.Before the assault, Hawley was photographed walking past the crowd and raising his fist in salute to them.While Hawley has painted himself as a man of the “American heartland”, and has expressed contempt for what he says is the US’s liberal “elite”, the graduate of Stanford and Yale Law School, who once clerked for the supreme court chief justice, John Roberts, spent a year in suburban London in 2002, at the top all-boys private school St Paul’s that dates back to 1509.An examination of Hawley’s time there by the London-based magazine the Fence, found Hawley was not the first choice to serve as a “Colet fellow” at the prestigious private school, a role reserved for Ivy League graduates.But Hawley persuaded the interview board with what some called his intellectual rigor and drive.Hawley taught A-Level politics jointly with Rob Jones, a leftwing former policeman who was described fondly when he left in the school magazine as “able to create a fearsome reputation, but is also worshipped by his students. There cannot be many who have their own Facebook appreciation society.”The teaching style of the pair, former pupils said, was combative, with it apparent that Jones was on the left and Hawley on the right. “Rob had him take some lessons, he would sit with the boys and throw grenades every so often,” said one.Jack, a former student who is himself now a teacher, explained further: “Jones and Hawley would sit on opposite sides of the classroom. We’d get these photocopies of, you know, excerpts from Nietzsche or Marx or John Locke, for ideologies, given them in advance and told to highlight them. Then it was a debate, a discussion, about what conservatives think about society, is nationalism inherently aggressive, and so on and so on.“Fairly quickly it was known … you know, Hawley, he’s the conservative one, he’s the rightwing guy. But then, as I say, he didn’t hide it in discussions. He was forthright about defending his views even at that stage.”The ex-pupil added that Hawley was clearly highly intelligent. “I’m sad to see some of the things he’s saying now, the people he’s aligning with, and the simplistic, glib phrases he’s coming out with, but he’s a serious thinker and he was seriously impressive even back then. And everyone could see it. I think that’s why Jones was happy for him to take such a big load of the teaching, as it was very apparent that this was a very impressive young person,” he said.Hawley, who left comments on pupil’s essays in green ink, “could be quite tough at some points”, according to Jack.“It was a great incentive to work hard and try and do better and see, gosh, would I be capable of writing an essay that wouldn’t be scrawled all over or, you know, would at least get some positive feedback. So, yeah, that was really the first time at St Paul’s where I really loved the education. And I did very well in A-Level politics because I was so, what’s the word – these lessons were exhilarating. And that inspired me to keep going with politics, and he had a lot to do with that,” Jack said.But not all of Hawley’s former pupils were as kind. “He ran my Oxbridge preparation classes. He’s useless, I didn’t get in,” remarked one graduate of Durham University.The reading material set by the young American teacher spoke to his Christian faith, with the devout Hawley setting Paul’s letter to the Romans as Oxbridge reading. In politics, Hawley also went beyond the syllabus to teach John Rawls, Michael Sandel, John Locke, Thomas Paine and other classic works of studying American democracy.More than anything, the prevailing impression left by Hawley on one pupil seems to be that of a politics wonk. “He was really, really into American political logistics. It was around the time of the 2004 election, or run-up to it, and he had his postal voting pack with him and was so proud and protective of it,” he said.Such was his tidiness – or “creepily American” appearance – that the best nickname his pupils could devise was “The All-American Hero”.“He looked like somebody who’s going to be president. If you imagined what a 22-year-old would look like before they became president, he was the figure. Can’t typecast better than that,” added one former charge.But what did his colleagues make of him? In a now-deleted tweet, Mike Sacks, a former Colet fellow who arrived two years after Hawley, said that a teacher asked him: “You’re not a fascist like that Joshua Hawley, are you?”Another described him as “too rightwing and Christian for my sensibilities”, but it seems Hawley did little to help himself in becoming friendly with the staff.“He made a point to keep himself aloof. My take on that is that he had an attitude that he was better, and that the sort of mingling and socializing was just below him, and not something he’d engage in. There were lots of opportunities to spend time together, either in the staff room or at drinks down at the pub – and he doesn’t drink, or he didn’t drink, let me put it that way. He’d never once go to the pub. Not once,” the ex-colleague said.Another former teacher, who says Hawley took an instant dislike to him, recalls an unfriendly Sunday morning encounter with Hawley at a bus stop, where he stayed wordless for 20 minutes as Hawley clutched a huge Bible full of colored ribbons to mark bits of scripture, off to an evangelical gathering.With few social appearances, staff actually remember little of Hawley, though one remembered incident seems striking.“The only anecdote I remember about him in the staff room is he made himself popcorn to watch the news coverage of the Iraq invasion. You know, shock and awe. […] Holding forth about how this is a good military move, and it’s a show of American strength. He was very hawkish,” a teacher recalled.“The common room is, I think, a bit more liberal – he really felt they weren’t quite as aligned with some of his morals. This kind of came across as him making his mark – maybe he was hamming it up a bit to make his point. But it’s not like popcorn was usual in the staff room. We are, after all, in London – we have tea and coffee, not exactly popcorn. He was quite excited about that kind of military endeavor. That was a funny, bizarre kind of moment,” the teacher added.Hawley’s connections to St Paul’s persisted after he left, attending a dinner celebrating the school’s 500th anniversary on 4 April 2009 at the Library of Congress in Washington DC and posing for a photograph with other former Colet fellows and the then High master, Dr Martin Stephen.But the events of attack on the Capitol on 6 January have changed St Paul’s attitude to their former employee.A spokesperson for the school said: “Like people the world over St Paul’s has been shocked by the scenes taking place in America and those resisting the delivery of the legitimate election process. Our records show Josh Hawley came over from the United States for 10 months as a postgraduate intern 18 years ago. We are relieved that democratic process is now prevailing in the US Capitol.” More

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      'Accomplice' senators who amplified Trump's lies now get a say in his fate

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      Sign up for the Guardian’s First Thing newsletterA desk in the US Senate was notably empty for chunks of Donald Trump’s second impeachment trial on Wednesday.Josh Hawley, a Republican from Missouri, was instead lounging in the upstairs public gallery with a pile of documents. He explained to CNN: “I’m sitting up there A, because it’s a little less claustrophobic than on the floor, but B, I’ve also got a straight shot,” – a reference to his seating location that also conjured an unfortunate image.But some critics would suggest that Hawley’s rightful place is in the dock, along with his colleague Ted Cruz of Texas and others who unabashedly endorsed Trump’s assault on democracy.This week’s trial necessarily has a narrow focus on the ex-president but that means little scrutiny of Hawley, who was photographed saluting Trump supporters with a raised fist hours before the insurrection at the US Capitol on 6 January.The Kansas City Star newspaper in his home state wrote in an editorial: “No one other than President Donald Trump himself is more responsible for Wednesday’s coup attempt at the US Capitol than one Joshua David Hawley, the 41-year-old junior senator from Missouri, who put out a fundraising appeal while the siege was under way.”Undeterred by the deadly violence, Hawley and Cruz were prominent among eight senators and 139 representatives who objected to certifying Joe Biden’s electoral college win. Both faced calls to resign. Yet now they get a say in whether Trump should be held accountable for his actions.Hillary Clinton, a former secretary of state and first lady, tweeted on Thursday: “If Senate Republicans fail to convict Donald Trump, it won’t be because the facts were with him or his lawyers mounted a competent defense. It will be because the jury includes his co-conspirators.”In detailing how Trump’s tweets and rally speeches fuelled false claims of election fraud and spurred supporters to “fight like hell”, the House impeachment managers have been careful not to dwell on how Hawley, Cruz, Lindsey Graham, Ron Johnson and Rand Paul were among the senators who enabled and amplified those same incendiary lies.It is a pragmatic choice by prosecutors who need some 17 Republican senators to join all 50 Democrats to secure the two-thirds majority required for Trump’s conviction – still something of a mission impossible.Joe Walsh, a former Republican congressman from Illinois, said: “It’s one of the great ironies of this trial, and one of the reasons why the Senate Republicans will not convict Trump, that most of these Senate Republicans have been Trump’s accomplices. If they convicted Trump, they would have to convict themselves.”To an outside spectator, the stripped-of-context prosecution case might imply that Trump was imbued with superpowers that enabled him to singlehandedly summon, assemble and incite the mob when, in reality, he was lifted by an ecosystem of Republican politicians, conservative media personalities, social media platforms and far-right extremists.Walsh added: “Donald Trump is on trial. He’s the one who originated the big lie, the stolen election lie, but why the hell isn’t [Fox News host] Sean Hannity on trial? Why isn’t Ted Cruz on trial? Why isn’t [congressman] Kevin McCarthy, [congressman] Jim Jordan, [radio host] Rush Limbaugh? I mean, anybody over the last eight months in any position of power or influence who spread the big lie is every bit as culpable as Donald Trump.”For their part, Hawley and Cruz will not necessarily escape scot-free. Both men are facing an investigation from the Senate ethics committee over their conduct before the siege and leadership of the Senate challenge to the electoral college vote. Bob Casey, a Democratic senator from Pennsylvania, told CNN that the pair should face censure as a “bare minimum”.Other Republicans could still face a backlash from donors and voters for their complicity. Last November Graham, a Trump loyalist, called the Georgia secretary of state, Brad Raffensperger, who alleges that the senator seemed to suggest he find a way to throw out ballots that had been lawfully cast; Graham denies this was his intention.The senator from South Carolina tweeted about the trial on Wednesday night: “The ‘Not Guilty’ vote is growing after today. I think most Republicans found the presentation by the House Managers offensive and absurd.”Mitch McConnell, the Senate minority leader, refused to acknowledge Biden’s victory until it was certified by the electoral college in mid-December. He has twice voted that the impeachment trial is unconstitutional because Trump is now a private citizen but, according to media reports, continues to keep an open mind as to his final verdict. More

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      Impeachment trial: mob 'believed they were acting on Trump's orders'

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      Sign up for the Guardian’s First Thing newsletterThe insurrectionists who attacked the US Capitol on 6 January believed they were acting on instructions from Donald Trump, House Democrats said on Thursday as they launched the final stretch of their arguments to convict Trump during his impeachment trial.Diana DeGette, a Democratic congresswoman from Colorado, played several video clips and pointed to legal documents in which the attackers said they were following Trump’s wishes. In one clip, protesters screamed at police that they had been invited to the Capitol by Trump“They didn’t shy away from their crimes, because they thought they were following orders from the commander-in-chief. And so they would not be punished,” she said. “They came because he told them to.”Congressman Jamie Raskin, the lead impeachment manager, walked senators through several instances in which Trump had encouraged and sanctioned violence by his supporters.Those examples included Trump’s repeated attacks on the Michigan governor, Gretchen Whitmer, a Democrat, last year.After Trump’s repeated attacks, his supporters, some heavily armed, invaded the Michigan state capitol in Lansing last April, which Raskin said was a “dress rehearsal” for what was to come on 6 January in Washington.Trump did not condemn the attack, Raskin noted, leading supporters to again storm the state capitol two weeks later. The dangerous consequences of Trump’s rhetoric would become clearest in October, the congressman alleged, when 13 men were charged in connection with a plot to kidnap Whitmer.“These tactics were road-tested,” Raskin said. “January 6 was a culmination of the president’s actions, not an aberration from them.”The argument rebuts the point, advanced by Trump’s lawyers in their impeachment briefs, that Trump’s speech during a rally near the White House on 6 January is protected by the first amendment to the US constitution, governing free speech, and that he does not bear responsibility for what the rioters chose to do afterwards.House Democrats were expected to focus on Donald Trump’s “lack of remorse” and the lasting damage of the 6 January attack on the US Capitol as they conclude their case for convicting Trump in the ongoing impeachment trial.The impeachment managers – House Democrats essentially serving as prosecutors – will continue to focus on Trump’s role in the attack as well as the deep toll and harm from it, according to senior aides.Their presentation on Thursday follows a day when Democrats repeatedly showed harrowing video of the 6 January attack, some of it never publicly seen before.The disturbing security camera footage and other video clips came as they laid out a meticulous case for how Trump deliberately fomented the violence on 6 January and then, once it began, abdicated his constitutional duty to protect the United States.The footage shown in the session in the Senate on Wednesday included a revelation that the Utah Republican senator Mitt Romney was extremely close to the mob overrunning the Capitol until he was tapped on the shoulder by the Capitol police officer Eugene Goodman and told to turn around.Other footage showed Daniel Hodges, another officer, yelling as he was crushed in a doorway – an image that visibly upset some of the senators watching the proceeding.Tommy Tuberville, a Republican senator from Alabama, also revealed on Wednesday that he had told Trump that his vice-president, Mike Pence, had been evacuated from the Senate chamber as the attack was ongoing.The disclosure was significant because it suggested Trump was aware Pence was in danger as he attacked him on Twitter on 6 January for not overturning the electoral college vote.The disclosure also supports the narrative from House impeachment managers that Trump violated his presidential oath by not doing anything to stop an attack on the US government.The Democrats remain unlikely to succeed in getting the Senate to convict Trump and bar him from holding future office. They need to get 17 Republican senators to vote for conviction, a high bar.Still, impeachment aides projected confidence it was one they could clear.Aides who worked on Trump’s first impeachment trial said there was a notable difference on Tuesday in how the senators responded.“It’s really hard to think of a moment from the first trial where all 100 senators sat at attention and were as rapt and challenged by the evidence as we saw yesterday,” an aide said.To support their argument that they can convince Republicans to vote for conviction, aides have pointed to the Louisiana senator Bill Cassidy, a Republican who voted on Tuesday to proceed with the trial after voting not to do so last month.Other Republicans show no signs of budging. The South Carolina senator Lindsey Graham, a close ally of Trump, called the Wednesday presentation “offensive and absurd”. Senator Marco Rubio of Florida said earlier this week there was nothing the impeachment managers could say to convince him the trial was constitutional.Once the impeachment managers wrap up their case, Trump’s lawyers will have a chance to begin their defense of the former president in full.That defense, likely to begin on Friday, did not get off to the strongest start on Tuesday when Bruce Castor, one of Trump’s attorneys, gave a meandering opening argument. Trump was reportedly furious with the presentation, although Castor has said the president was pleased.Trump’s team will have 16 hours to make their case, over two days, though they are not expected to use all of that time.It remains unclear whether witnesses will be called. If that is not the case the trial could end as soon as Sunday. More

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      Trump impeachment: police bodycam footage shows Capitol attack – video

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      Police bodycam footage showing officers under attack at the US Capitol attack has been released during the second impeachment trial for Donald Trump. Democrat congressman Eric Swalell played footage captured from the officer’s perspective showing the crowd attacking police with whatever items were at hand, including crutches and a Trump flag. Swalell also revealed vision showing the evacuation of representatives including Senate majority leader Chuck Schumer being ushered away by security
      Trump trial shown disturbing footage of lawmakers ‘hunted’ by Capitol mob More

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      Impeachment video shows Mike Pence and Mitt Romney fleeing Capitol attack – video

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      New video shown during the second impeachment trial for Donald Trump has revealed Capitol police officer Eugene Goodman leading Senator Mitt Romney away from the rioters as well as the evacuation of former vice-president Mike Pence. Representative Stacey Plaskett presented the previously unreleased security footage from the 6 January Capitol breach documenting Romney’s close call as well as Pence and his family’s escape as rioters chanted ‘hang Mike Pence’
      Trump trial shown disturbing footage of lawmakers ‘hunted’ by Capitol mob
      New footage of Capitol riot shows Eugene Goodman rushing to save Mitt Romney – Trump impeachment live More

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      Damned by his own words: Democrats follow Trump's wide-open multimedia trail | David Smith's sketch

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      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