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Oct. 30, 2023 - Bannon's War Room

53:36

Episode 3137: Trial Starts In Colorado To Remove Trump From The Ballot

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steve bannon

06:02

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mike johnson

03:00

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Speaker	Time	Text
unidentified		Would you be comfortable then with a short-term funding bill that funds the government, say, until January or perhaps April?
unidentified		Is that something that you're considering?
mike johnson ▲ ● ▼		Well, I've talked to my colleagues about this in the race for the in the speaker's race.
		I mentioned that I would favor as for purposes of discussion to build consensus around if there indeed has to be a stopgap funding measure that we would do that until January 15th.
		And the reason for that is it gets us beyond the end of the year push.
		And oftentimes the Senate tries to jam the House and force a nominee about spending bill.
		We're not doing that here anymore.
		We're having single subject bills in our separate appropriations bills.
		And so Pushing that into January, I think, would assist us in that endeavor.
		There may be some conditions put on that, perhaps.
		That 1% spending cut across the board, instead of becoming effective in April, maybe we make that January 15th to incentivize the Senate to do their work.
		But I don't want to get too deep in the weeds on the details of it because people sort of get lost in all of that.
		But I'll tell you that we're working in earnest to get it done.
		I think all of our colleagues are at the table right now, even the toughest fiscal conservatives like myself, people know that we've got to get this job done and they're ready to do it.
		As soon as I took the gavel, our work began.
		And we passed the resolution, as you noted, in strong support of our strong ally and great friend Israel.
		We had to do that.
		And then I flew last night to Las Vegas and spoke to the Republican Jewish coalition, as you noted, to send a further signal that this isn't a priority for our country and we cannot allow the brutality and the just unspeakable evil that is happening against Israel right now to continue.
		We're going to stand with our friends.
unidentified		Well, there is now ground fighting inside the Gaza Strip, and we've been watching it intensify all weekend.
		This did not unfold the way some had expected, with a blitz of divisions of Israeli troops and tanks going in, many reservists.
		Instead, we've seen elite Israeli troops, combat engineers, bulldozers, tanks, armored personnel, dismounted troops walking into Gaza, going in from multiple directions.
		Much of it focused in the area on the northern Gaza Strip, which you can see behind me.
		There's been fighting ongoing this morning, and there do seem to be clashes.
		We've seen Israeli troops firing.
		We've also seen the Israeli troops coming under fire, apparently from Hamas.
		We are now talking about a phase of street-to-street fighting.
		We have also just heard from witnesses that Israeli tanks, according to witnesses that have spoken to our crew, are on the main road, the Salahuddin Road, which runs from the north to the south of the Gaza Strip.
		That would make it impossible or at least very difficult for Palestinians to follow Israeli orders to go from the north, to go from the south.
		Israel has repeated those orders with greater urgency this weekend, dropping leaflets telling people to to immediately leave Gaza City, leave all the areas in the north, to come out with their hands up, to carry white flags if possible, and to head south.
		But now with these reports of Israeli troops cutting that road, it makes that mission far more complicated, far more dangerous.
steve bannon ▲ ● ▼		This is The War Room, Monday, 30 October, Year of Her Lord, 2023.
		We're going to go back.
		We have a very, how do I say this, tight, cold open that talks about the geopolitical situation, the political situation in Washington, D.C.
		I want to get that and make sure everybody can get the fullness of it.
		But we've got breaking news.
		Extremely important.
		out of Denver, Colorado. A lot of folks have not paid attention to this 14th Amendment fiasco.
		But it's going to trial today with a radical Judge Wallace in a state court in Denver.
		Both Jason Miller, one of the president's senior adviser, and of course Mike Davis are on the scene. Mike Davis joins us by phone.
		Mike, you've warned us about this from the beginning, from the very first time that the Federalist Society of Constitutional Scholars raises up the flagpole, and you said this is completely unconstitutional, total madness, but it's going to get some traction somewhere, and it looks like it's gotten it in your second home, your beloved Colorado, sir.
unidentified		Yeah, I'm in the Denver District Court right now, and the trial is starting in front of this Democrats-appointed Denver District Court Judge Sarah Wallace.
		She just donated last year, before she became a federal judge, to an organization that is trying to go after elected officials who supported Trump on January 6th.
		This organization's trying to get them thrown out of office, and this Democrat judge in Denver, Sarah Wallace, donated to that organization.
		She should clearly recuse.
		President Trump has filed a motion for her to recuse.
		She will decide that this morning, presumably, and I presume she'll deny that motion, which is reversible error, but I don't think the Democrats care.
		Remember, these are the Democrats who impeached President Trump for nonsense.
		They indicted him four times for non-crimes.
		They even brought a civil fraud lawsuit to bankrupt his family business for the non-fraud of a businessman paying back sophisticated Wall Street banks in full on time as agreed with interest.
		How the hell is that fraud, right?
		And so they saw President Trump's poll numbers go up.
		They see that he's going to beat President Biden like a drum on November 5, 2024.
		So now this is their legal Hail Mary.
		They want to use a post-Civil War constitutional amendment, Section 3 of the 14th Amendment, that is intended to disqualify Confederate sympathizers who engaged in insurrection during the Civil War From federal office, these Democrats around the country are trying to disqualify President Trump, take him off the ballot in key states.
		They're starting here in Colorado, a blue state, and they're going to use that precedent in swing states like Michigan to just take Trump off the ballot.
		This is obvious lawfare.
		It's obvious election interference.
		It's unconstitutional.
		This is madness.
		There is a court case from 1869 that addressed this point directly.
		Chief Justice Samuel Chase heard this back in 1869 when they were trying to disqualify people from running for office, Confederate sympathizers and insurrectionists from running for office.
		And Chief Justice Samuel Chase clearly held that if you want to disqualify under Section 3 of the 14th Amendment for engaging in insurrection or rebellion, Congress has to pass a federal criminal statute under section 5 of the 14th amendment.
		Congress did that in 1870.
		Congress passed an insurrection or rebellion statute that disqualifies.
		So if you want to disqualify Trump or any other candidate, You have to bring federal criminal charges in a federal criminal court and get a federal criminal jury to unanimously find that defendant was guilty under that specific insurrection or rebellion criminal statute.
		It has to be, the district court judge has to convict and it has to be upheld on appeal.
		That is the only way you can remove For insurrection or rebellion, to disqualify for insurrection or rebellion under the 14th Amendment.
		Qualifications to be president are laid out in the Constitution and if you want to disqualify, you have to go through that federal criminal statute.
steve bannon ▲ ● ▼		Does the J6, in saying Jack Smith, this J6 charge he's bringing to the president, would that qualify?
unidentified		Nope.
		It's not.
		He's not.
		Remember, the Democrats have spent tens of millions of dollars between the January 6th nonsense with Nancy Pelosi and Liz Cheney and Kinzinger.
		They spent tens of millions of dollars.
		You've had Jack Smith and the federal government spending tens of millions of dollars.
		You have private organizations spending a lot of money.
		They have been searching for evidence for insurrection or rebellion on Trump since January 6th.
		And they can't fight it because it does not exist.
		How many insurrectionists get to the senate floor of a nation's capital and walk through velvet ropes and follow police direction and don't burn down the damn place?
		January 6th was a lawful protest permitted by the National Park Service that got out of control and turned into a riot.
		It was not an insurrection and that's why even Jack Smith, even deranged Jack Smith has not charged insurrection because the evidence does not exist.
steve bannon ▲ ● ▼		I want to go back to this charge.
		You said the very beginning, I think, just like in Mar-a-Lago, we had you on the first day, and you said how that was going to metastasize extra-legally.
		Here, this is about the politics and the optics and pounding the Denver media market with this, right?
		This has no chance.
		As far as law, it's a joke.
		This is purely using the courts.
		This is the manifestation of lawfare, that they're using it for political, and what they hope to do is just bombard the airwaves in Denver That Trump's an insurrectionist, Trump's an insurrectionist, Trump's an insurrectionist.
		Am I too far off base on that?
unidentified		Well, I mean, I think that's part of what they do, what's going to happen.
		But I actually think that this Denver District Court Judge Sheryl Wallace is going to disqualify Trump from the ballot in Colorado.
		It's going to go to the Colorado Court of Appeals.
		I think the Colorado Court of Appeals will affirm because you've had Democrats control Colorado for a long time, and you have all these whack job judges they've appointed.
		And then the Colorado Supreme Court will probably affirm as well.
		So this will have to get resolved.
		Mike, can you hang on one second?
		Let's go to the judge.
		We've got the live stream.
		Let's hear the judge's opening remarks.
		You can hang with us, Mike.
		Let's go ahead and hear it.
steve bannon ▲ ● ▼		Hey Mike, Mike, Mike, can you hang on one second? Let's go to the judge. We've got the live stream. Let's hear the judge's opening remarks. You can hang with us Mike. Let's go ahead and hear it.
unidentified		The court has reviewed the motion to recuse that was filed yesterday as well as the exhibits. I do not dispute that in October 22 prior to taking the bench, I apparently made a $100 contribution to the Colorado Turnout Project.
		That being said, prior to yesterday, I was not cognizant of this organization or its mission.
		It has always been my practice Whether I was entirely successful or not, to make contributions to individuals, not PACs.
		While I have no specific memory of this contribution, it was my practice and my intention to contribute to an individual candidate, not a PAC.
		I can assure all of the litigants in this litigation that prior to the start of this litigation, and to this day, I have formed no opinion.
		Whether the events of January 6th constituted an insurrection, or whether Intervener Trump engaged in an indirect insurrection, or for that matter, any of the issues that need to be cited in this hearing, if I did, I would recuse myself.
		But because I don't, I deny the motion for recusal.
		I want to start with some ground rules.
		And Secretary Griswold have a combined 18 hours of testimony, evidence, and arguments.
		And the intervenors have a combined 18 hours.
		You may use them as you wish, so long as they are productive and respected before coming to court.
		That's it.
		If something is relevant, then I will likely allow the subject to be explored.
		I will not, however, allow this proceeding to turn into a circus.
		I also think that it is worth repeating that to the extent we have discussions on the record regarding evidence and whether it should be allowed in, I will count that time against the party who is objecting to the evidence.
		Because I am the judge, I may ask questions.
		Do not infer anything by my questions.
		Petitioners, are you planning on making an opening statement or do you intend to go straight to the evidence?
		Your Honor, we will make an opening statement and then we have a few preliminary issues as well.
		Okay.
		Mr. Pastor, are you planning on making an opening statement?
		Your Honor, we have a few preliminary issues and then we'll make our opening statement.
		I just want to make sure we all understand the schedule.
		Okay.
		Whatever the preliminary issues are.
		Thank you, Your Honor.
		First, the parties have reached some stipulations.
		We will be filing those with the court.
		There are 17.
		Pretty benign, but it should help speed things up and make things more efficient.
		I can hand up a copy if you'd like.
		Are these factual stipulations?
		They are factual stipulations, Your Honor.
		The next issue is the rule on witnesses.
		We would like to invoke the rule on witnesses, meaning that fact witnesses should not be present for testimony in the courtroom.
steve bannon ▲ ● ▼		Let me come back in for a second to Mike Davis.
		We have Mike on the phone outside the courthouse.
		Mike, tell us what's going on right now.
		Folks have to understand, they are going to try anything This is like Stalin's Russia in the 1930s.
		They will try anything to destroy Donald Trump and to take him off the ballot because they know he's going to win.
		Mike, what are we seeing right now in this courtroom?
		If we can just livestream the court while Mike talks.
unidentified		Yeah, so I would say this.
		Judge Sarah Wallace has already made a reversible legal error.
		President Trump filed a motion to recuse her because she donated to an organization whose sole mission is to chase from elected office people who supported Trump on January 6th.
		That is clearly, objectively, an appearance of bias at a minimum, if not subjectively biased.
		This judge admitted to making that donation, but then she said that it doesn't matter that she made that donation.
		She didn't remember making that donation.
		That she could be fair to Trump regardless.
		Well, that's not the legal standard.
		Whether she can subjectively be fair to President Trump or she claims she can subjectively be fair to President Trump is not the legal standard.
		There is an objective legal standard, which is, does it look like she could be fair to President Trump?
		Anyone with a brain can say that she can't objectively be fair to President Trump when she made a donation last year to a political pact to chase out of office people who supported Trump on January 6th, which is the very nature of this disqualification trial against President Trump.
steve bannon ▲ ● ▼		I mean, I think, I hope this shows the American people how crazed these radical Democrats are.
		But you came on the first day with Professor Dershowitz, who's no Trump fan and has never voted for him.
		In fact, it poses him right now on his return to the White House and said, this is totally, this is a joke.
		This is not even close to being, this is so unconstitutional and so outside what the law was set up to do.
		Your thoughts?
unidentified		Let me give you an example.
		I'm in Denver, Colorado right now.
		Denver is where the 10th Circuit Court of Appeals, the Federal Court of Appeals for the 10th Circuit is based.
		And former Judge Michael McConnell, certainly no Trump fan, is a current Stanford Law professor.
		And he wrote an opinion piece on this several months ago, making the same argument that President Trump is making today, which is, if you want to disqualify a candidate under the 14th Amendment, you have to charge him under the federal criminal statute that deals with insurrection or rebellion.
		A unanimous jury, a judge has to convict, it has to be upheld on appeal.
		That is not happening here.
		Even with deranged Jack Smith and obnoxiously partisan Tanya Shuckin, if they had this evidence, they would have charged Trump.
		No question. They don't have this evidence.
		It doesn't exist because there was no insurrection.
		Again, how many insurrectionists get to the Senate floor of a nation's capital, walk through velvet ropes, follow police direction, and don't burn down the damn place?
		It was a protest, a legal protest, that turned into a riot.
steve bannon ▲ ● ▼		Mike, how long do you think this trial will last?
unidentified		Well, it's supposedly going to last maybe through this Friday.
		It could be done as early as Wednesday.
		It looks like it could go till Friday and then this biased, objectively biased, Denver District Court Judge Sarah Wallace will have to decide whether she's going to disqualify a leading presidential candidate from the ballot, take away that choice from Colorado voters.
		Nothing screams democracy like indicting your political opponent, trying to put him in prison, trying to bankrupt him, and if that doesn't work, just taking him off the ballot so the American people don't have a choice.
steve bannon ▲ ● ▼		I want to make sure that people are learning the lesson here about losing these states.
		Talk to me, go back again about the Court of Appeals and the Supreme Court in Colorado.
		Even with her radical judgment, illegal, extra-legal judgment, what do you think just in process is going to happen at the appeals and at the Supreme Court of Colorado?
unidentified		I think that this is a hopeless cause here in Colorado.
		When you don't win elections, this used to be a red state up until about 2006.
		Then it became a swing state when the current governor, Jared Polis, a billionaire, pumped a bunch of left-wing money into the state.
		They did all-mail ballots.
		And then when they did all-mail ballots, the state Gradually became blue.
		And I lived here during this time, for 10 years during this time.
		They legalized marijuana.
		All these dirtbags from New York and California, who ruined New York and California, moved to Colorado, like COVID, cultural COVID.
		They came here and then they ruined Colorado, like Locusts.
		And you see that this is an all-blue state now.
		Every statewide office, every court in Denver, the Court of Appeals, the Colorado Supreme Court, it is Democrat-controlled.
		And Mike, we've said a lot to you.
		Not our parents' or grandparents' Democratic Party.
		Not liberals who love America and just disagree with us on the best way to get there.
steve bannon ▲ ● ▼		Mike, we're going to jump in.
steve bannon ▲ ● ▼		Let's pick up the opening arguments right now.
unidentified		With respect to the witness withdrawals, we feel the petitioner's pain.
		And with respect to the exhibits, we will maintain our objections, and I understand the posture of the court.
		Particularly the objections with respect to Mr. Giuliani's and Mr. Eastman's speech.
		They're not the ones on trial here today.
		We're talking about whether President Trump engaged in activities, not whether they and they were not President Trump when they made those speeches.
		So we would maintain those objections.
		With respect to 73 and 126, we'll have to take a look at that a little bit closer, Your Honor.
		I confess that I don't have all hundred and whatever exhibits fully committed to memory at this point.
		With respect to some of our points, just to point out, and I know the Court has been very diligent in producing orders on issues.
		I think we still have the specific intent motion outstanding, as far as that, as well as the First Amendment motion to dismiss.
		I'm assuming the Court will take those issues under advisement, but I wanted to at least point that out.
		We have one witness Who has concerns about some of the legal threats that have been levied.
steve bannon ▲ ● ▼		They're going to use my technology.
		We're going to come back when they're doing the opening arguments.
		Mike Davis, what should we look for in the opening arguments today?
		We've been following it, but all of a sudden it metastasized to the trials on Monday.
		How is the Trump team not able?
unidentified		Well, I mean, when you have a partisan, clearly objectively biased Denver District Court Farrell Wallace, He has rejected all of their legal arguments before the trial and it sounds like she's gonna reject all of their legal arguments during the trial.
		I think she's preordained to rule against Trump.
		At least that's what objectively the evidence looks like when she donated last year to an organization with its sole mission, a pact with its sole mission of chasing out of office people who supported Trump on January 6th.
		So you ask anyone objectively who's not a complete Mike, we'd ask you to hang around.
steve bannon ▲ ● ▼		Here's what we're going to do.
		We're going to pick this up live stream on my Getter account and the War Room Getter account so people can watch it simultaneously along with the show.
		Mike Davis.
		Mike, are you going to go in the court today?
		Are you going to be available for us to get you by phone?
unidentified		Well, of course, I am your man on the ground, Steve, as always.
unidentified		So anytime you need to get me, I'll step out of the courtroom and I'll come talk to you.
steve bannon ▲ ● ▼		Fine, we'll let you go inside the courtroom, hear opening arguments.
		We're going to live stream as soon as our opening arguments start.
		My crack team in Denver is going to give me a heads up and we're going to we're going to go back to that.
		It'll be live streaming.
		You hear all the technical arguments.
		In advance, this is quite a big deal, because you're going to see this happen throughout the rest of the country.
		Radical state judges with, by the way, a radical Secretary of State, who is one of the instigators of this, with complete radicals on appeals courts and Supreme Courts.
		This is what happens when you let the apparatus, this is what they're trying to do in Texas.
		This is what they're trying to do in Michigan.
		They're trying to take these states and have total control over them.
		And, of course, this shows you the battle between the Freedom Party and the good guys, which would be us, versus these essential Nazi communist judges, just like Hitler's Germany, just like the show trials in Moscow in 1935.
		No difference whatsoever.
		That they cannot defeat, here's the lesson, the polling over the weekend.
		Axios, Jim Vanderhay and Mike Allen yesterday did a brutal takedown of Joe Biden's chances to win reelection.
		Just brutal.
		They understand they can't beat Trump at the ballot box.
		They're either going to try to cheat through the Mark Elias method.
		They're going to try to get Trump off the ballot in key battleground states.
		Or they're going to try to bankrupt him and put him in debtor's prison, or the 700 years in criminal cases.
		So you don't think this is real?
		This is quite real.
		And this moved very rapidly last week as all these logical arguments that the Trump team had, the judge is Sarah Wallace, just completely radical.
		By the way, Laura Loomer He's got some fantastic tweets up.
		I know Mo and Grace are going to put them up on Worm right now so everybody can see them.
		Let's go back.
		We're going to reset.
		We're going to jump back into this court case as soon as the opening arguments go.
		Let's go back.
		Let's hit rewind.
		We're going to start with the cold open of the show today because there's a lot going on.
		Let's go ahead and let it rip.
unidentified		So would you be comfortable then with a short-term funding bill that funds the government, say, until January or perhaps April?
unidentified		Is that something that you're considering?
mike johnson ▲ ● ▼		Well, I've talked to my colleagues about this in the speaker's race.
		I mentioned that I would favor, for purposes of discussion, to build consensus around, if there indeed has to be a stopgap funding measure, that we would do that until January 15th.
		And the reason for that is it gets us beyond the The end-of-the-year push, and oftentimes the Senate tries to jam the House and force a nominee-less spending bill.
		We're not doing that here anymore.
		We're having single-subject bills in our separate appropriations bills.
		And so pushing that into January, I think, would assist us in that endeavor.
		There may be some conditions put on that, perhaps.
		That 1% spending cut across the board, instead of becoming effective in April, maybe we make that January 15th to incentivize the Senate to do their work.
		I don't want to get too deep in the weeds on the details of it because people sort of get lost in all of that.
		But I'll tell you that we're working in earnest to get it done.
		I think all of our colleagues are at the table right now, even the toughest fiscal conservatives like myself.
		People know that we've got to get this job done and they're ready to do it.
		As soon as I took the gavel, our work began.
		And we passed the resolution, as you noted, in strong support of our strong ally and great friend Israel.
		We had to do that.
		And then I flew last night to Las Vegas and spoke to the Republican-Jewish coalition, as you noted, to send a further signal that this is a priority for our country and we cannot allow the brutality and the just unspeakable evil that is happening against Israel right now to continue.
		We're going to stand with our friends.
unidentified		Well, there is now ground fighting inside the Gaza Strip, and we've been watching it intensify all weekend.
		This did not unfold the way some had expected, with a blitz of divisions of Israeli troops and tanks going in, many reservists.
		Instead, we've seen elite Israeli troops, combat engineers, bulldozers, tanks, armored personnel, dismounted troops walking into Gaza, going in from multiple directions.
		Much of it focused in the area on the northern Gaza Strip, which you can see behind me.
		There's been fighting ongoing this morning, and there do seem to be clashes.
		We've seen Israeli troops firing.
		We've also seen the Israeli troops coming under fire, apparently from Hamas.
steve bannon ▲ ● ▼		We tried two times.
		We didn't get it.
		They're going to opening arguments.
		I think it's very important for this audience to hear this.
		Let's go live to Denver, Colorado, the state courthouse.
		judge Wallace.
unidentified		Thank you, Your Honor.
		Good morning.
		Six Colorado voters, four Republicans and two Independents brought this case to ensure Colorado has a fair election among eligible candidates.
		Trump incited a violent mob to attack our Capitol to stop the peaceful transfer of power under our Constitution.
		That mob got within 40 feet of Vice President Pence after they chased him from the Senate floor.
		That mob tried to hurt and kill our elected leaders.
		And we are here because Trump claims, after all that, he has the right to be president again.
		But our Constitution, our shared charter of our nation, says he cannot do so.
		And Colorado law says this court must ensure that only eligible candidates appear on our ballots.
		Now, this case has four basic components.
		Trump took an oath as an officer of the United States.
		January 6 was an insurrection against the Constitution.
		Trump engaged in that insurrection.
		And the Secretary of State enforces constitutional qualifications, and this Court can order her to keep ineligible candidates off the ballot.
		Now turning to the first element, there's no dispute Trump took an oath as President.
		That's stipulated.
		I'll address their novel claim that his oath somehow falls outside of the 14th Amendment later.
		And what happened on January 6th was an insurrection against the Constitution.
		That's not in serious dispute.
		Trump's own impeachment lawyer admitted as much.
		Many others have found it.
		We'll hear today and tomorrow from three people who were there that day.
		First are two officers, Officer Danny Hodges and Officer Winston Pangean.
		They fought the mob.
		Hand-to-hand combat, you'll see.
		We'll also hear from Representative Eric Swalwell, who will explain how that mob disrupted the core constitutional process of the peaceful transfer of power.
		We'll also hear from Professor Gerard Magliocca.
		He is one of the nation's leading experts on Section 3 of the 14th Amendment.
		He's written several peer-reviewed articles on Section 3 and many articles and books on the history of the 14th Amendment.
		He will explain that when the 14th Amendment was ratified, insurrection against the Constitution referred to any public use or threat of violence by a group to prevent or hinder the execution of the Constitution.
		January 6 easily meets that standard.
		Trump assembled a violent mob.
		that tried to prevent the constitutional transfer of power and did in fact stop that transfer of power for some time.
		Now turning to President Trump's role in all of this, he engaged in this insurrection on January 6th.
		He began by undermining the process for selecting our president and sowing doubts about elections.
		This early pattern of behavior shows Trump's use of common extremist tactics, using language that played into existing conspiracy theories.
		He was a leading proponent of the birther myth about President Obama.
		He questioned the validity of elections, even the one he won in 2016, claiming he actually got millions more popular votes than he really did.
		And leading up to the 2020 election, he developed a plan to cast doubt on the results.
		And after the election, he quickly focused on the January 6th transfer of power to disrupt the peaceful transfer of power.
		In December, he started laying the groundwork for disrupting the constitutional process on January 6th.
		On December 19th, he posted that there will be a big protest in D.C.
		on January 6th.
		Be there.
		We'll be wild.
		A week later, he talked about never giving up.
		See everyone in D.C.
		on January 6th.
		See you in Washington, D.C.
		on January 6th.
		Don't miss it!
		Again, see you in D.C.
		These tweets continued.
		Big protest rally.
		Stock the steel.
		We'll hear about the importance of that language later on.
		Again, talking about the 6th.
		Over and over again.
		Here he retweeted a claim that, quote, the Calvary was coming.
		We'll hear about Trump's invocation of military terms to support and rile up his supporters.
		More admonitions come to DC on January 6th.
		over and over and over again.
		And then on January 6th, he reposted his speech.
		Thank you.
	Now, in addition to this drumbeat of pleas to his supporters to have him come to Washington to disrupt the transfer of power on January 6th, he made repeated deliberate statements to bring a mob primed for violence to D.C.
	on January 6th.
	He refused to criticize the Proud Boys, an important part of the insurrection on January 6, in a presidential debate, and instead told them to stand back and stand by.
	Leading up to January 6, he praised the Trump Train, which was a group of trucks that intimidated and forced Biden campaign workers on a bus off a highway in Texas.
	He tweeted, I love Texas with this video.
	He
	deliberately praised his supporters that used violent techniques to intimidate political opponents.
	Again, leading up to January 6th, he used violent, inflammatory rhetoric.
	He claimed that if this happened to someone else, they would consider it an act of war and fight to the death.
	Right before January 5th, he started threatening lawmakers with a crowd he assembled.
	On the afternoon of January 5th, he said, Washington, who is being inundated with people, our country's had enough.
	They won't take it anymore.
	And he got even more bold a few minutes later.
	When he said, I hope the Democrats, and even more importantly, the weak and effective rhino section of the Republican Party, are looking at the thousands of people pouring into D.C.
	They won't stand for a landslide election victory to be stolen.
	And then he identified three Republican leaders by name.
	He threatened leaders of his own party with the mob he assembled.
	Now you will hear from an expert in political extremism who will discuss Trump's relationship with violence and political extremism.
	Professor Peter Seamey has studied extremists for his whole career.
	He's written books, provided testimony at the January 6th committee's invitation, and he will explain how communications like we just saw and additional ones by President Trump fit into a long-standing call-and-response pattern that he developed with supporters, where he instigated violence and praised those who committed violence against political opponents on his behalf.
	Now, turning back to what happened on January 6, once Trump brought the crowd there, he told them to march to the Capitol and fight.
	Let's look at two portions of his speech on the ellipse on January 6th.
	Republicans are constantly fighting like a boxer with his hands tied behind his back.
	It's like a boxer.
	And we want to be so nice.
	We want to be so respectful of everybody, including bad people.
	And we're going to have to fight much harder.
	And Mike Pence is going to have to come through for us.
	And if he doesn't, that will be a sad day for our country.
	Because you swore to uphold our Constitution.
	Now it is up to Congress to confront this egregious assault on our democracy.
	And after this, we're going to walk down, and I'll be there with you, we're going to walk down We're going to walk down, any one you want, but I think right here we're going to walk down to the Capitol.
	And we're going to cheer on our brave senators and congressmen and women.
	And we're probably not going to be cheering so much for some of them.
	Because you'll never take back our country with weakness.
	You have to show strength and you have to be strong.
	But I said, something's wrong here.
	Something's really wrong.
	It can't have happened.
	And we fight.
	We fight like hell.
	And if we don't fight like hell, we're not going to have a country anymore.
	Our exciting adventures and boldest endeavors have not yet begun, my fellow Americans, for our children and for our beloved country.
	And I say this, despite all that's happened, the best Is yet to come.
	So we're going to... We're going to walk down Pennsylvania Avenue.
	I love Pennsylvania Avenue.
	And we're going to the Capitol.
	And we're going to try and give... The Democrats are hopeless.
	They're never voting for anything.
	Not even one vote.
	But we're going to try and give our Republicans The weak ones because the strong ones don't need any of our help.
	We're going to try and give them the kind of pride and boldness that they need to take back our country.
	So let's walk down Pennsylvania Avenue.
	I want to thank you all.
	God bless you and God bless America.
	Two important features of that speech we just saw.
	First is his focus of the crowd on the actions of Mike Pence that were shortly to happen in the Senate chamber.
	And second, his repeated reference to fight and urging his supporters to fight.
	Now, I'm sure that Trump will claim that because he used the words, quote, peacefully and patriotically later in that speech, that he did not therefore engage in insurrection.
	That claim is wrong at every level.
	He used fight 20 times in that speech, peaceful only once.
	Professor Simi explains how leaders use language like that, like the peacefully comment, to create plausible deniability that is just filter.
	Trump well knew how his reporters would respond.
	He saw what happened when he told the Proud Boys to stand back and stand by, and how they treated that as an endorsement.
	In fact, his use of peaceful in the rally, and again, use in this proceeding, highlights that he knew the power of his other words.
	If you don't think people are going to engage in violence after what you told them, or that your words will provoke violence, you don't need to say, be peaceful.
	They already will be.
	But that speech that we just saw got the crowd worked up and headed to the Capitol.
	I'll show you a video taken from the top of the Capitol.
	At 2.23, you can see the time stamp in the upper left.
	So after the speech, the crowd followed Trump's orders and marched down to the Capitol.
	But as you can see from the video, much of the rally, they weren't doing much.
	They were just standing there.
	So what did Trump do right after, the minute after this video?
	He posted a tweet that incited the mob to violence.
	Again, channeling on the focus on Mike Pence he used earlier in the day, he described Mike Pence as weak and said he didn't have the courage to do what should have been done to protect our country and our Constitution.
	USA demands the truth.
	And look what happened instantaneously with this tweet.
	We see people Reddit in the crowd from Bullhorns.
	they immediately started chanting, hang Mike Pence, and the violence began in earnest.
	Mike Pence didn't have the courage to do what should have been done to protect our country and our most important, giving states a chance to certify a card that said effects, not the cold, unaccurate one, but state were asked to previously certify.
	You have to be in the court.
	I'm.
	I.
	Get him back here!
	Get him!
	now I'm
	the
	We need an area 40, house neighbors, they're all walking over there.
	Please tell me.
	We're trying to hold the upper middle.
	We're trying to hold the upper middle down.
	We need the help of all of the county.
	I need to have support.
	We need support.
	We need support.
	There was no possible innocent explanation for that tweet that set the crowd on fire.
	We'll hear later today from Officer Hodges.
	This is his body cam at the exact same time.
	You can see in the upper right hand corner It's 2.28.
	So within five minutes of Trump's issuing that tweet, this is what he faced.
	So we're going to take a look at what he said. So we're going to take a look at what he said.
	So we're going to take a look at what he said.
	So within 30 minutes of the tweet, we see the picture from the same vantage point we saw before.
	The crowd had overrun the barriers.
	But this was the back of the crowd.
	This was a crowd that was not the front line of the attack, of the assault on our constitutional process.
	We have video which shows Officer Hodges Within 30 minutes of the tweet, he had retreated to the tunnel and was trying to defend the tunnel against this mob.
	That is a video of a man who was trying to defend the tunnel against this mob.
	That is Officer Hodges, who you'll hear from shortly.
	Thanks for watching!
	This was an interruption that Trump led.
	As we've seen, he summoned and organized the mob.
	He gave the mob a common purpose, disrupt Mike Pence's certification of the election.
	He did that by inciting the mob at the ellipse.
	He knew that mob was armed and dangerous.
	He told the mob to go to the Capitol with him.
	Once they were there and not sufficiently violent, he incited the mob with that 2.24 p.m.
	tweet and others that followed.
	And importantly, he helped the mob by refusing to mobilize resources to stop the attack.
	He spent three hours watching it unfold on TV without doing a single thing, even though he was the most powerful person in the world.
	Now, what does Trump say in response to this overwhelming evidence?
	He says a few things.
	He says, hey, I said peacefully in the speech, so I didn't engage in the insurrection.
	We already talked about that.
	That peacefully proves his intent.
	He then says, I wasn't there.
	I did not engage in insurrection.
	But he did.
	He kept quiet.
	He tweeted inflammatory statements that incited the mob and watched the mayhem unfold for three hours with doing nothing.
	He continued to try to pressure Congress to do the mob's bidding and overturn the election.
	And lastly, Trump says, others failed to protect the Capitol.
	So it's not my fault.
	There is an insurrection.
	He blames others.
	But it was Trump's dereliction of duty in violation of his oath to preserve, protect and defend the Constitution that caused the constitutional process to stop.
	You'll hear from national security expert Bill Banks, who's dedicated his career to the safety of our nation, studying how it works.
	He wrote a book recently called Soldiers on the Homefront, The Domestic Role of the American Military.
	He explains that Trump did not use the available federal resources.
	In fact, Trump didn't use the resources he used in response to other threats, like the Black Lives Matter protest at Lafayette Square, where they used tear gas and federal agents to clear the square very violently.
	Now, Trump is going to call witnesses, we understand, to say that he tried to put people in place to defend the Capitol before January 6th.
	That is not true.
	No record exists of him doing that.
	No indication that he used his vast power as commander-in-chief to do that at all.
	That is just an invented excuse, after the fact, with no evidentiary support.
	But even that doesn't matter.
	Trump cannot avoid culpability for engaging in insurrection by blaming the victim.
	Whether or not an insurrection occurred does not turn on how well defended the Capitol was.
	He ignited the mob, told them to go to the Capitol, and then flamed them with his tweet.
	Now finally, Trump says the law, even if all that's true, the law doesn't apply to him.
	First, because he says he just was using speech.
	But again, Professor Magliacca explains the history of Section 3 of the 14th Amendment, and using robust historical sources, shows that at the time of passage, 1868, engaging in insurrection included words of incitement or specific words of encouragement.
	That's what Trump did here.
	And in any event, it's not just Trump's speech that's at issue.
	His conduct contributed to the mob's violence.
	His failure to act when his oath required him to do so led to the insurrection.
	Now, Trump brings an expert, Professor De La Hunty, but he's no expert at all on the 14th Amendment.
	Never written a book or peer-reviewed article on this issue.
	On the 14th Amendment, more generally, not performed any original history.
	There's no record of him studying this before he wrote a short opinion piece two months ago?
	Now Trump next argues that the 14th Amendment doesn't cover the President, that there's an exception because it's a different kind of officer.
	Again, Professor Magliacca will explain why history contradicts this claim.
	It's nonsensical to create an exception for the most powerful person in government.
	And at the time, in 1868, there's widespread understanding that officer included the president.
	Finally, Trump claims state courts like this one can't hear these disputes.
	Now, as we've talked about, he's wrong under Colorado law.
	Hanlon B. Gessler makes clear that the election code requires issues regarding a candidate's eligibility to be determined by the courts, which is what we're doing here.
	In addition to this bedrock law, we'll also hear from Hillary Rudy, who's the Deputy Director in the Secretary of State's Elections Division.
	And she will explain the history of Secretary of State enforcement of qualifications and qualification challenges in court.
	And I think Your Honor will easily conclude that this action falls well within a long line of cases where courts decide valid eligibility requirements.
	Now, our Constitution prevents people who betrayed their solemn oath, as Trump did here, from serving in office again.
	Colorado law gives these voters the rights to make sure their votes will count by coming to this court and ensuring that only eligible candidates appear on our ballots.
	Trump engaged in insurrection and therefore cannot appear on the ballot.
	No person, not even the former president, is above the law.

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