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Unless the Senate convicts him of impeachment and bars him from future office, direct damage from Donald Trump’s false and violent incentives will vex American democracy long into the future, House prosecutors insisted on Thursday as they concluded two days of emotional arguments in his historic trial.
They presented stacks of new videos of the deadly Capitol attack last month, making their case, with invaders proudly declaring that they were merely obeying “the president’s orders” to fight to overturn the election results as Congress certified Democrat Joe Biden’s defeat. Trump is accused of inciting the invasion, which prosecutors said was a predictable culmination of the many public and explicit instructions he provided to supporters long before the Jan. 6 attack was unleashed by his White House rally.
If we pretend that it hasn’t happened, or worse if we let it go unanswered, who can say that it’s not going to happen again? “Claimed Attorney General Rep. Joe Neguse, D-Colo. Democrats warned that even out of office, Trump could whip up a crowd of followers for similar damage.
On Friday, Trump’s defence will take the floor of the Senate, arguing that as awful as the attack was, it was clearly not the president’s doing it. The proceedings could end with a vote by the senators sitting as impeachment jurors this weekend.
The Democrats are also making their most graphic case to the American public, with little hope of conviction by two-thirds of the evenly divided Senate, while Trump’s lawyers and the Republicans are focused on legal rather than emotional or historical issues, hoping to get it all back as quickly as possible. In the Capitol chaos and its aftermath, five people died, a domestic attack unparalleled in the history of the U.S.
The second impeachment trial of Trump, on charges of incitement to insurrection, has echoes of the impeachment and acquittal of Ukraine last year, as prosecutors warn senators that Trump has shown no limits and will pose an ongoing risk to civil order unless he is convicted. The former president has influence even outside the White House over large swaths of voters.
In order to pin responsibility on Trump, prosecutors used the rioters’ own videos from that day. ‘We have been invited here,’ said one. “Trump sent us,” another said. “He will be pleased. We struggle for Trump.
“They truly believed that the whole intrusion was on the orders of the president,” said Colorado Rep. Diana DeGette. “The Chairman told them to be there.”
President Biden said at the White House that he believed “some minds could be changed” after senators saw a chilling security video on Wednesday of the deadly Capitol insurgency, including rioters threateningly searching for House Speaker Nancy Pelosi and Vice President Mike Pence.
Biden said he didn’t watch any of the proceedings live the previous day, but saw news coverage later.
Although most Senate jurors seem to have made up their minds, making the acquittal of Trump likely, Wednesday’s never-before-seen audio and video became a key exhibit.
Since the day of the riot, videos of the siege have circulated, but the graphic compilation offered a moment-by-moment retelling of one of the most alarming days in the nation. And it underlined how dangerously close the rioters came to the leaders of the nation, shifting the focus of the trial from a constitutional academic debate to a raw retelling of the assault.
David Schoen, Trump’s attorney, took issue, saying the presentation was “offensive” and that the Democrats “have not tied it to Trump in any way.”
Thursday at the Capitol, he told reporters that he believed Democrats were making the public relive the tragedy in a way that “tears the American people” and hinders the nation’s unity efforts.
The objective of the House prosecutors’ two-day presentation, which impeached the outgoing president last month a week after the siege, was to cast Trump not as an innocent bystander, but rather as the “chief inciter,” who spent months spreading falsehoods and reviving supporters to challenge the election.
Trump’s lawyers probably blame the violence on the rioters themselves.
After leaving office, the first president to face an impeachment trial, Trump is also the first to be impeached twice.
His lawyers claim that he can’t be convicted because he’s gone from the White House already. Although the Senate rejected that argument in Tuesday’s vote to proceed to trial, without being seen as condoning his conduct, the issue could resonate with Senate Republicans eager to acquit Trump.
While six Republicans joined Democrats in voting to continue Tuesday’s trial, the 56-44 vote was well below the two-thirds threshold of 67 votes required for conviction.