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The former president’s legal team closed his case without even a quarter of the 16 hours assigned to him.
By Peter Baker and Nicholas Fandos
Former President Donald J. Trump’s legal team set a Friday of combative defense more at attacking Democrats for “hypocrisy” and “hate” than in justifying Trump’s efforts. . .
After days of harsh video images featuring a crowd of Trump supporters beating up cops, chasing lawmakers and threatening to kill the vice president and the president of the House, Trump’s lawyers denied prompting what they called a “small group” they have instead, they tried to change things by calling Democrats in their own language , who are as incendiary as the Trump Democrats.
In doing so, the former president’s lawyers attacked not only House Democrats who served as administrators or prosecutors in the Senate’s dismissal trial, but also jurors who were sitting in front of them in the house. Clips played through the Trump team showed almost every single Democratic senator, as well as President Biden and Vice President Kamala Harris, the word “fight” or the word “fight like hell,” just as Trump did at a rally of supporters in January. 6 just before the seat of the Capitol.
“Suddenly, the word “fight” is forbidden?” said Michael T. van der Veen, one of the lawyers hired in recent days to protect Trump. “Save us hypocrisy and false indignation. It’s a term used over and over again through politicians on both sides of the aisle. And, of course, the leaders of the House of Democrats know that the word “struggle” has been used figuratively in political discourse from the beginning. “
To emphasize this point, Trump’s team broadcast some of the same clips four or five times in less than 3 hours while some of the Democratic senators denied with their heads and at least one of their Republican colleagues laughed with appreciation. Lawyers argued that the trial was “shameful” and “a planned attempt through the Democratic Party to defame, censor and overturn” an opponent, and then ended his case without even a quarter of the 16 hours assigned to the former president’s defense.
During the process, they tried to mitigate the prosecution’s case of “incitement to insurrection” well as whether it was just his client’s use of that bachelor sentence in that relentless crusade speech Trump has been crossing since last summer to discredit. an election that would eventually lose and galvanize his supporters to help him cling to power.
“They didn’t deal at all with the facts of the case,” said Rep. Jamie Raskin, a Maryland Democrat and ed leader. “There were some propaganda reels about Democratic politicians who would be excluded from any court in the country. speaking of the regulations of the evidence, it was surely irrelevant to the case before us.
After the Trump team’s abbreviated and factual defense, senators asked their own questions, regularly using their requests to add political points. The questions, a total of 28 sent in writing and read through a secretary, warned that the maximum number of Republicans was likely to be maximum to vote Absolver trump when the Senate reconsedes the final arguments at 10 a. m. on Saturday, blocking the two-thirds majority required by the Constitution for the conviction.
Some of the few Republicans deemed open to a sentence, adding Utah Sen. Mitt Romney, Susan Collins of Maine and Lisa Murkowski of Alaska, questioned lawyers about what Trump knew and when he learned of the attack. not only the president’s words and movements before the attack that had betrayed his oath, but his inability to act more assertively to prevent his supporters after it was triggered.
In response to senators, the defense’s suggestion pointed to written messages and a video Trump posted on Twitter after construction was assaulted, asking his followers not to use violence while supporting their cause and telling them he enjoyed them. Trump had never made a particular company and appeal to troublemakers to prevent the attack, nor did he send help.
Romney and Senator Bill Cassidy, Louisiana Republican, led against Trump expressed fear for their own vice president, Mike Pence, who was targeted to death by supporters of the former president because he refused to leave to block the end of the election. Even after Mr. Pence was evacuated from the Senate chamber that day, Trump attacked him on Twitter, saying that “Mike Pence didn’t have the courage to do what has been done. “
Van der Veen told senators that “at no point did the president report that the vice president was in danger. “But in fact, Senator Tommy Tuberville, an Alabama Republican, told reporters this week that he had spoken on the phone with Mr. Trump at the time of the attack and had told him that Trump. Pence had been expelled from the room. Authorities said Trump had never called Pence to verify his safety and had not spoken to him for days.
Another new story arose while the trial of the day was being written, which could help senators understand Trump just before a verdict. Rep. Jaime Herrera Beutler, a Washington Republican, who voted for the political trial last month, showed a CNN report that when Rep. Kevin McCarthy, the Republican leader, called Trump during the attack and begged him to cancel the mutiny, the president told him. “Well, Kevin, I guess those other people are more disappointed than you are with the election. “A spokesman for McCarthy did not respond to a request for comment, however, Herrera Beutler stated that he had directly told him the main points of the verbal exchange and she issued a petition to the White House witnesses, adding that mr. Pence, step forward and say what you knew.
The defense team fought to avoid directly attacking what managers called Mr. Trump’s “big lie. “Trump said the election was stolen, which led his supporters to invade the Capitol to prevent Congress from counting electoral college votes. Senator Bernie Sanders of Vermont, an independent who is Caucasian with Democrats, challenged Sanders’ lawyers. Trump to say if they think he had won the election.
“My judgment?” Mr van der Veen replied mockingly and then, “Who for this?”
“I did, ” said Mr. Sanders from his seat.
“My judgment is in this process,” Van der Veen said, causing a rash of Democratic senators. He reiterated that “it has nothing to do with” the question of whether Trump had incited the riots.
Senate Democrats have rejected defense efforts to assimilate Trump to Democratic speeches. “They are seeking to establish dangerous and distorted equivalence,” Connecticut Democratic Senator Richard Blumenthal told reporters in an interruption of the trial. “I think it’s obviously a distraction from Donald Trump to invite the crowd to Washington. “
But for Republicans looking for reasons to acquit Trump, advocacy is more than enough. “The president’s lawyers have ruined the house administrators’ case,” said Senator Ron Johnson, Republican of Wisconsin.
Even Murkowski, who asked Trump to resign after the siege of the Capitol, said the defense team was “more interested in his game” than on the opening day of the trial this week, at the end of the day, he told a reporter. who was dying for the decision.
“It’s been five weeks, less than five weeks, since an occasion that shook the very foundations of our democracy,” he said, “and I’ve had a lot to face ever since. “
During the question period, senators heavily monitored the position of their colleagues. While top lawmakers have yet to guess that only a handful of Republicans would vote to convict, some other Republican organization added that Senator Mitch McConnell of Kentucky, the minority leader, told his colleagues, to the fullest, nothing about the progress of the trial personally or at lunches before the meeting, which raised the hypothesis that they might be preparing to break with the party.
Leaders want 17 Republicans to sign up for the 50 Democrats to succeed in the two-thirds sought for the conviction. Once again.
The former president struggled to hire a legal team to protect him, the lawyers who represented him last year in his first impe trial did not return for him and the set of lawyers he hired in the first place for the case subsidized and did not agree with the strategy.
Bruce L. Castor Jr. , the third-set leader, widely criticized for his initial performance Tuesday, added through Trump and his colleague David I. Schoen briefly resigned Thursday night in a dispute over how to use the video tape in his presentation.
Beaver and Schoen were largely supplanted Friday through Van der Veen, who does not have a long history with the president and, in fact, would have once called Trump’s “scammer” with a swear word, one last year, van der Veen represented a consumer who sued Trump for measures that may limit mail voting and accused the president of making claims without “any evidence. “
But van der Veen on Friday introduced the kind of competitive functionality Trump prefers to his reps by accusing the other aspect of “curing evidence” with a “manipulated video,” all to publicize “an absurd and monstrous lie” he says. the former pre-inspector encouraged violence.
A non-public injury attorney whose Philadelphia law firm requests clients who are elusive on the radio and whose boasts of winning lawsuits resulting from car injuries and a case “involving a dog bite,” Mr. van der Veen gave a lecture to Mr. RaskinArray, who taught constitutional law at American University for more than 25 years, on the Constitution. The managers’ arguments, Van der Veen said, were “less than I would expect from a freshman. “
He and his colleagues argued that Trump exercised his right to freedom of expression in his fierce speech at a rally before supporters entered the Capitol. The lawyer relied heavily on Trump’s exclusive use of the word “peacefully. “Trump when he suggested donors march toward the Capitol while minimizing the 20 times he used the word “fight. “
“No considerate user can simply seriously see that the President’s speech on January 6 at the Ellipse was something like incitement to violence or insurrection,” Van der Veen said. “The suggestion is evidently absurd at first glance. Nothing in the text can ever be construed as encouraging, tolerant or inciting any illegal activity of any kind. “
Sensitive to trump’s accusation that Trump endangered police officers, who were beaten and in a case killed in the assault, lawyers released video clips in which he called himself “president of law and order” as photographs of anti-racist protests. that became violent last summer.
They also showed video clips of Democrats opposing Electoral College votes in recent years when Republicans won, adding Raskin in 2017 when Trump’s victory was sealed, comparing them to Trump’s criticism of the 2020 election at the same time. , those videos also showed Mr. Trump Biden, then vice president, downplaying the disarray protests.
Stacey Plaskett, a Democratic delegate from the Virgin Islands and one of the directors, objected that many of the faces shown in videos of Democratic politicians and street protesters were black. “I didn’t miss that many of them were other people of color and women, black women, ” he said. “Black women like me, who are tired of being in poor health and tired of our children. “
Defense attorneys argued that Democrats were suing Trump for partisan and non-public animosity, using the word “hate” 15 times more than in his official filing, and presented the trial as an effort to suppress a political opponent and his supporters.
“It’s about canceling 75 million Trump electorates and criminalizing political opinions,” Trump said. “That is the purpose of this trial. That is the existential challenge before us. He called for the culture of constitutional annulment to take over the United States. “Senate of states, are we going to allow annulment, prohibition and silence to be sanctioned in this body?»
Emily Cochrane and Maggie Haberman contributed to the report.
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