All Episodes
Previous Next
Feb. 19, 2021 - Jim Fetzer
06:29:25
Day 4 - Trump Impeachment Trial / Feb 5, 2021
| Copy link to current segment

Time Text
th th
the senate will convene as a court of impeachment the chaplain
doctor very black will lead the senate and prayer
the senate will convene as a court of impeachment the court of impeachment is now adjourned.
Thank you.
Let us pray.
Mighty God, unsurpassed in both power and understanding, We worship you.
Lord, when there is nowhere else to turn, we lift our eyes to you.
As again, this Senate chamber becomes a court and our senators become jurors.
Guide these lawmakers with your wisdom, mercy and grace.
Lord, infuse them with the spirit of nonpartisan patriotism.
Unite them in their efforts to do what is best for America.
As they depend on your providence and power, may they make choices that will be for your greater glory.
We pray in your sovereign name.
Amen.
Please join me in the Pledge of Allegiance.
I pledge allegiance to the flag of the United States of America, and to the republic for which it stands, one
nation under God, indivisible, with liberty and justice for all.
And senators, will you please be seated?
seated.
And if there is no objection, the journal proceedings of the trial are approved today.
It has the sergeant arms to make the proclamation.
Hear ye, hear ye, hear ye.
All persons are commanded to keep silence on pain of imprisonment while the Senate of
the United States is sitting for the trial of the article of impeachment exhibited by
the House of Representatives against Donald John Trump, former President of the United
States.
The Majority Leader is recognized.
For the information of all Senators, we'll plan to take short breaks, approximately every two hours, and a longer dinner break around 5 p.m.
Now, pursuant to the provisions of Senate Resolution 47, the Council for the former President has 16 hours to make the presentation of their case, and the Senate will hear The council now.
And I recognize that the man needs to begin the presentation of the case for the former
Go ahead.
Good afternoon, Senators.
Thank you.
Mr. President.
The article of impeachment now before the Senate is an unjust and blatantly unconstitutional act of political vengeance.
This appalling abuse of the Constitution only further divides our nation when we should be trying to come together around shared priorities.
Like every other politically motivated witch hunt the left has engaged in over the past four years, this impeachment is completely divorced from the facts, the evidence, and the interests of the American people.
The Senate should promptly and decisively vote to reject it.
No thinking person could seriously believe that the President's January 6th speech on the Ellipse was in any way an incitement to violence or insurrection.
The suggestion is patently absurd on its face.
Nothing in the text could ever be construed as encouraging, condoning, or enticing unlawful activity of any kind.
Far from promoting insurrection against the United States, the President's remarks explicitly encouraged those in attendance to exercise their rights peacefully and patriotically.
Peaceful and patriotic protest is the very antithesis of a violent assault on the nation's capital.
The House impeachment article slanderously alleges that the president intended for the crowd at the Ellipse to, quote, interfere with the joint session's solemn constitutional duty to certify the results of the 2020 presidential election.
This is manifestly disproven by the plain text of the remarks.
The President devoted nearly his entire speech to an extended discussion of how legislators should vote on the question at hand.
Instead of expressing a desire that the joint session be prevented from conducting its business, the entire premise of his remarks was that the democratic process would and should Play out according to the letter of the law, including both the Constitution and the Electoral Count Act.
In the conclusion of his remarks, he then laid out a series of legislative steps that should be taken to improve democratic accountability going forward.
Such as passing universal voter ID legislation, banning ballot harvesting, requiring proof of citizenship to vote, and turning out strong in the next primaries.
Not only presidents, these are not the words of someone inciting a violent insurrection.
Not only President Trump's speech on January 6th, but indeed his entire challenge to the election results was squarely focused on how the proper civic process could address any concerns through the established legal and constitutional system.
The President brought his case before state and federal courts.
The U.S.
Supreme Court, the state legislatures, the Electoral College, and ultimately the U.S.
Congress.
In the past, numerous other candidates for president have used many of the same processes to pursue their own election challenges.
As recently as 2016, The Clinton campaign brought multiple post-election court cases, demanded recounts, and ridiculously declared the election stolen by Russia.
Many Democrats even attempted to persuade the Electoral College delegates to overturn the 2016 results.
House Manager Raskin Objected to the certification of President Trump's victory four years ago, along with many of his colleagues.
You'll remember it was Joe Biden who had to gavel them down.
I have an objection because 10 of the 29 electoral votes cast by Florida were cast by electors not lawfully certified.
I object to the votes from the state of Wisconsin which should not be legally certified.
Mr. President, I object to the certificate from the state of Georgia on the grounds that the electoral votes were not... There's no debate.
I object to the certificate from the state of North Carolina.
I object to the 15 votes from the state of North Carolina.
I object.
I object to the certificate from the state of Alabama.
The electors were not lawfully certified.
Is it signed by a senator?
Not as of yet, Mr. President.
In that case, the objection cannot be entertained.
The objection cannot be entertained.
The debate is not in order.
There is no debate in order.
It is signed by a Senate.
There is no debate.
There is no debate in the joint session.
There is no debate.
Please come to order.
Objection cannot be received.
Section 18, Title 3 of the United States Code prohibits debate in the joint session.
I do not wish to debate.
I wish to ask, is there one United States Senator who will join me in this letter of petition?
There is no debate.
There is no debate.
The gentlewoman will suspend.
In 2000, the dispute over the outcome was taken all the way to the Supreme Court.
Which ultimately rendered a decision.
To litigate questions of election integrity within this system is not incitement to resurrection.
It is the democratic system working as the founders and lawmakers have designed.
To claim that the president in any way wished, desired, or encouraged lawless or violent behavior is a preposterous and monstrous lie.
In fact, the first two messages the President sent via Twitter once the incursion of the Capitol began were, stay peaceful and no violence because we are the party of law and order.
The gathering on January 6th was supposed to be a peaceful event.
Make no mistake about that.
And the overwhelming majority of those in attendance remained peaceful.
As everyone knows, the President had spoken at hundreds of large rallies across the country over the past five years.
There had never been any mob-like or riotous behaviors, and in fact, a significant portion of each event was devoted to celebrating the rule of law, protecting our Constitution, and honoring the men and women of law enforcement.
Contrast the president's repeated combinations of violence with the rhetoric from his opponents.
I am your president of law and order and an ally of all peaceful protesters.
The vast majority of the protest has been peaceful.
Republicans stand for law and order, and we stand for justice.
I just don't even know why there aren't uprisings all over the country.
Maybe there will be.
My administration will always stand against violence, mayhem, and disorder.
There needs to be unrest in the streets for as long as there's unrest in our lives.
I stand with the heroes of law enforcement.
And you push back on them!
And you tell them they're not welcome!
We will never defund our police.
Together, we will ensure that America is a nation of law and order.
We're in high school.
I'd take you behind the gym and beat the hell out of him.
I think you need to go back and punch him in the face.
I feel like punching him.
We just want law and order.
Everybody wants that.
I want to tell you, Boris Johnson, I want to tell you, Kavanaugh, you have released the whirlwind, and you will pay the price.
We want law and order.
We have to have law and order.
Show me where it says that protests are supposed to be polite and peaceful.
We believe in safe streets, secure communities, and we believe in law and order.
Tragically, as we know now, the January, on January 6th, A small group who came to engage in violent and menacing behavior hijacked the event for their own purposes.
According to publicly available reporting, it is apparent that extremists of various different stripes and political persuasions pre-planned and premeditated an attack on the Capitol.
One of the first people arrested was the leader of Antifa.
Sadly, he was also among the first to be released.
From the beginning, the President has been clear.
The criminals who infiltrated the Capitol must be punished to the fullest extent of the law.
They should be in prison for as long as the law allows.
The fact that the attacks were apparently premeditated, as alleged by the House managers, Demonstrates the ludicrousness of the incitement allegation against the president.
You can't incite what was already going to happen.
Law enforcement officers at the scene conducted themselves heroically and courageously and our country owes them an eternal debt.
But there must be a discussion of the decision by political leadership regarding forced posture and security in advance of the event.
As many will recall, last summer the White House was faced with violent rioters, night after night.
They repeatedly attacked Secret Service officers and at one point Pierce the Security Wall, culminating in the clearing of Lafayette Square.
Since that time, there has been a sustained negative narrative in the media regarding the necessity of those security measures on that night, even though they certainly prevented many calamities from occurring.
In the wake of the Capitol attack, it must be investigated whether the proper forced posture was not initiated due to the political pressure stemming from the events at Lafayette Square.
Consider this.
On January 5th, the mayor of the District of Columbia explicitly discouraged the National Guard and federal authorities from doing more to protect the Capitol, saying, and I quote, The District of Columbia is not requesting other federal law enforcement personnel and discourages any additional deployment.
This sham impeachment also poses a serious threat to freedom of speech for political leaders of both parties at every level of government.
The Senate should be extremely careful about the President the precedent this case will set.
Consider the language that the House impeachment article alleges to constitute incitement.
If you don't fight like hell, you're not gonna have a country anymore.
This is ordinary political rhetoric that is virtually indistinguishable from the language that has been used by people across the political spectrum for hundreds of years.
Countless politicians have spoken of fighting for our principles.
Joe Biden's campaign slogan was, battle for the soul of America.
No human being seriously believes that the use of such metaphorical terminology is incitement to political violence.
While the President did not engage in any language of incitement, there are numerous officials in Washington who have indeed used profoundly reckless, dangerous, and inflammatory rhetoric in recent years.
The entire Democratic Party and national news media spent the last four years repeating, without any evidence, that the 2016 election had been hacked, and falsely and absurdly claimed the President of the United States was a Russian spy.
Speaker Pelosi herself said that the 2016 election was hijacked and that Congress has a duty to protect our democracy.
She also called the president an imposter and a traitor, and recently referred to her colleagues in the House as the enemy within.
Moreover, many Democrat politicians endorsed and encouraged the riots that destroyed vast swaths of American cities last summer.
When violent left-wing anarchists conducted a sustained assault on a federal courthouse in Portland, Oregon, Speaker Pelosi did not call it an insurrection.
Instead, she called the federal law enforcement officers protecting the building stormtroopers.
When violent mobs destroyed public property, she said, people will do what they do.
The Attorney General of the state of Massachusetts stated, yes, America is burning, but that's how forests grow.
Representative Anya Pressley declared, The current Vice President of the United States, Kamala Harris, urged supporters to donate to a fund that bailed out violent rioters and arsonists out of jail.
One of those was released and went out and committed another crime, assault.
He beat the bejesus out of somebody.
She said of the violent demonstrations, everyone beware, they're not going to stop before election day in November, and they're not going to stop after election day, they're not going to let up, and they should not.
Such rhetoric continued even as hundreds of police officers across the nation were subjected to violent assaults at the hands of angry mobs.
A man claiming to be inspired by the junior senator from Vermont came down here to Washington D.C.
to watch a softball game and kill as many senators and congressmen as he could.
It cannot be forgotten that President Trump did not blame the junior senator.
The senior senator from Maine has had her house surrounded by angry mobs of protesters.
When that happened and unnerved her, one of the house managers, I forget which one, tweeted,
cry me a river.
Under the standards of the House impeachment article, each of these individuals should be
retroactively censored, expelled, punished, or impeached for inciting violence by their supporters.
I'm Unlike the left, President Trump has been entirely consistent in his opposition to mob violence.
He opposes it in all forms.
In all places.
Just as he's been consistent that the National Guard should be deployed to protect American communities wherever protection is needed.
For Democrats, they have clearly demonstrated that their opposition to mobs and their view of using the National Guard depends upon the mob's political views.
Not only is this impeachment case preposterously wrong on the facts, no matter how much heat and emotion is injected by the political opposition, it is also plainly unconstitutional.
In effect, Congress would be claiming that the right to disqualify a private citizen, no longer a government official, from running for public office.
This would transform the solemn impeachment process into a mechanism for asserting congressional control over which private citizens are and are not allowed to run for president.
In short, 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.
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.
Now is not the time for such a campaign of retribution.
It is the time for unity and healing.
and focusing on the interests of the nation as a whole.
We should all be seeking to cool temperatures, calm passions, rise above partisan lines.
The Senate should reject this divisive and unconstitutional effort and allow the nation to move forward.
Over the next Over the course of the next three hours or so, you will hear next from Mr. Schoen, who's going to talk about due process and a couple other points you'll be interested to hear.
I'll return with an analysis of why the First Amendment must be properly applied here.
And then Mr. Castor will discuss the law as it applies to the speech of January 6th.
And then we'll be pleased to answer your questions.
Thank you.
It's probably what some of the more loyal would like to call the
I see a reminded of what this location is Chicago
and I'm going to go ahead and get the the
Mr. Schoen?
Leaders?
Senators?
Throughout the course of today, my colleagues and I will explain in some detail the simple fact that President Trump did not incite the horrific, terrible riots of January 6th.
We'll demonstrate that to the contrary, the violence and looting goes against the law and order message he conveyed to every citizen of the United States throughout his presidency, including on January 6th.
First, though, we would like to discuss the hatred The vitriol, the political opportunism that has brought us here today.
The hatred that the House managers and others on the left have for President Trump has driven them to skip the basic elements of due process and fairness and to rush an impeachment through the House claiming, quote, urgency, close quotes.
But the House waited to deliver the articles to the Senate for almost two weeks, only after Democrats had secured control over the Senate.
In fact, contrary to their claim that the only reason they held it was because Senator McConnell wouldn't accept the article, Representative Clyburn made clear that they had considered holding the articles for over 100 days to provide President Biden with a clear pathway to implement his agenda.
Our Constitution and any basic sense of fairness require that every legal process with significant consequences for a person's life, including impeachment, requires due process under the law, which includes fact-finding and the establishment of a legitimate evidentiary record with an appropriate foundation.
Even last year's impeachment followed committee hearings and months of examination and investigation by the House.
Here, President Trump and his counsel were given no opportunity to review evidence or question its propriety.
The rush to judgment for a snap impeachment in this case was just one example of the denial of due process.
Another perhaps even more vitally significant example was the denial of any opportunity
ever to test the integrity of the evidence offered against Donald J. Trump in a proceeding
seeking to bar him from ever holding public office again, and that seeks to disenfranchise
some 75 million voters, American voters.
On Wednesday this week, countless news outlets repeated the Democrat talking point about
the power of never-before-seen footage.
Thank you.
Bye.
Let me ask you this.
Why was this footage never seen before?
Shouldn't the subject of this impeachment trial, President Trump, have the right to see the so-called new evidence against him?
More importantly, The riot and the attack on this very building was a major event that shocked and impacted all Americans.
Shouldn't the American people have seen this footage as soon as it was available?
For what possible reason did the House managers withhold it from the American people and President Trump's lawyers?
For political gain?
How did they get it?
How were they the ones releasing it?
It is evidence in hundreds of pending criminal cases against the rioters Why was it not released through law enforcement or the Department of Justice?
Is it the result of a rushed snap impeachment for political gain without due process?
House Manager Raskin told us all yesterday that your job as jurors, in this case, is a fact-intensive job.
But of course, as several of the House managers have told you, we still don't have the facts.
Speaker Pelosi herself on February 2nd called for a 9-11 style commission to investigate the events of January 6th.
Speaker Pelosi says that the commission is needed to determine the causes of the events.
She says it herself.
If an inquiry of that magnitude is needed to determine the causes of the riot, and it may very well be, Then how can these same Democrats have the certainty needed to bring articles of impeachment and blame the riots on President Trump?
They don't.
The House managers, facing a significant lack of evidence, turned often to press reports and rumors during these proceedings.
Claims that would never meet the evidentiary standards of any court.
In fact, they even relied on the words of Andrew Feinberg, A reporter who recently worked for Sputnik, the Russian propaganda outlet.
You saw it posted.
By the way, the report they cited was completely refuted.
The frequency with which house managers relied on unproven media reports shocked me as I sat in this chamber and listened to this.
There's a lot that we don't know yet about what happened that day.
According to those around him, At the time, reportedly responded.
Trump reportedly reports across all major media outlets.
Major news networks, including Fox News, reported.
Reported.
Reportedly summoned.
Reportedly.
Reportedly not accidental.
According to reports, President Trump was reportedly, who reportedly spoke to the guard.
And was widely reported.
Media reports.
According to reports, reported.
Reportedly.
As any trial lawyer will tell you, reportedly is a euphemism for, I have no real evidence.
Reportedly is not the standard in any American setting in which any semblance of due process is afforded and accused.
Reportedly isn't even, here is some circumstantial evidence.
It is exactly as reliable as, I googled this for you.
And if you're worried that you might ever be tried based on this type of evidence, don't be.
You get more due process than this when you fight a parking ticket.
One reason due process is so important with respect to evidence offered against an accused is that it requires an opportunity to test the integrity, the credibility, the reliability of the evidence.
Here, of course, former President Trump was completely denied any such opportunity.
And it turns out, there is significant reason to doubt the evidence the House managers have put before us.
Let me say this clearly.
We have reason to believe the House managers manipulated evidence and selectively edited footage.
If they did, and this were a court of law, They would face sanctions from the judge.
I don't raise this issue lightly.
Rather, it is a product of what we have found in just the limited time we have had since we first saw the evidence here with you this week.
We have reason to believe that the House managers created false representations of tweets, and the lack of due process means there was no opportunity to review or verify the accuracy.
Consider these facts.
The House managers, proud of their work on this snap impeachment, staged numerous photo shoots of their preparations.
In one of those, Manager Raskin is seen here at his desk reviewing two tweets side by side.
The image on his screen claims to show that President Trump had retweeted one of those tweets.
Now, members of the Senate, let's look closely at this screen.
Because, obviously, Manager Raskin considered it important enough that he invited the New York Times to watch him watching it.
Now, what's wrong with this image?
Actually, there are three things very wrong with it.
Look at the date on the very bottom of the screen on Manager Raskin's computer screen, when we zoom in to the picture.
The date that appears is January 3rd, 2020, not 2021.
Why is that date wrong?
Because this is not a real screenshot that he's working with.
This is a recreation of a tweet, and you got the date wrong when you manufactured this graphic.
You did not disclose that this is a manufactured graphic and not a real screenshot of a tweet.
Now, to be fair, the House managers caught this error before showing the image on the Senate floor.
So you never saw it when it was presented to you.
But that's not all.
They didn't fix this one.
Look at the blue checkmark next to the Twitter username of the account retweeted by the President.
It indicates that this is a verified account, given the blue check by Twitter to indicate it is run by a public figure.
The problem?
The user's real account is not verified and has no blue checkmark, as you can see.
Were you trying to make her account seem more significant?
Or were you just sloppy?
If we had due process of law in this case, we would know the truth.
But that's not all that's wrong with this one tweet.
House Manager Swalwell showed you this tweet this week and he emphasized that this tweet reflected a call to arms.
He told you repeatedly that this was a promise to call in the cavalry for January 6th.
He expressly led you to believe that President Trump's supporter believed that the president wanted armed supporters at the January 6th speech.
Paramilitary groups, the cavalry, ready for physical combat.
The problem is, the actual text is exactly the opposite.
The tweeter promised to bring the Calvary, a public display of Christ's crucifixion, a central symbol of her Christian faith, with her to the President's speech.
A symbol of faith, love, and peace.
They just never want to seem to read the text and believe what the text means.
You'll see this reported in the media last evening also.
Words matter, they told you.
But they selectively edited the President's words over and over again.
They manipulated video, time-shifting clips, and made it appear the President's words were playing to a crowd when they weren't.
Let's take a look.
After this, we're gonna walk down and I'll be there with you.
We're gonna walk down 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.
We have come to demand that Congress do the right thing and only count the electors who have been lawfully slated.
Lawfully slated.
I know that everyone here will soon be marching over to the Capitol building to peacefully and patriotically make your voices heard.
And we are going to walk down to the Capitol.
They showed you that part.
Why are we walking to the Capitol?
Well, they cut that off.
To cheer on some members of Congress, and not others, peacefully and patriotically.
The Supreme Court ruled in Brandenburg that there's a very clear standard for incitement.
In short, to paraphrase, whether the speech was intended to provoke imminent lawless action, and was it likely to do so.
Go to the Capitol and cheer on some members of Congress, but not others.
They know it doesn't meet the standard for incitement, so they edited it down.
We heard a lot this week about Fight Like Hell, but they cut off the video before they showed you the President's optimistic, patriotic words that followed immediately after.
We fight like hell, and if you don't fight like hell, you're not going to have a country anymore.
Our exciting adventures and boldest endeavors have not yet begun.
My fellow Americans, for our movement, for our children, and for our beloved country, and I say this, despite all that's happened, the best is yet to come.
There's that famous quote, like one of the House managers said, A lie will travel halfway around the world before the truth has a chance to put its shoes on.
Well, this lie traveled around the world a few times, made its way into the Biden campaign talking points, and ended up on the Senate floor.
The Charlottesville lie.
Very fine people on both sides.
Except that isn't all he said.
And they knew it then, and they know it now.
Watch this.
But you also had people that were Very fine people on both sides.
You had people in that group, excuse me, excuse me, I saw the same pictures as you did.
You had people in that group that were there to protest the taking down of, to them, a very, very important statue and the renaming of a park from Robert E. Lee to another name.
George Washington was a slave owner.
Was George Washington a slave owner?
So will George Washington now lose his status?
Are we going to take down, excuse me, are we going to take down, are we going to take down statues to George Washington?
How about Thomas Jefferson?
What do you think of Thomas Jefferson?
You like him?
Okay, good.
Are we going to take down the statue?
Because he was a major slave owner.
Now, are we going to take down his statue?
So, you know what?
It's fine.
You're changing history, you're changing culture, and you had people, and I'm not talking about the neo-Nazis and the white nationalists, because they should be condemned totally.
But you had many people in that group other than neo-Nazis and white nationalists, okay?
And the press has treated them absolutely unfairly.
Now, in the other group also, you had some fine people, but you also had troublemakers, and you see them come with the black outfits, and with the helmets, and with the baseball bats.
You had a lot of bad people in the other group too.
You were saying the press has treated white nationalists unfairly?
No.
There were people in that rally, and I looked the night before.
If you look, there were people protesting very quietly the taking down of the statue of Robert E. Lee.
I'm sure in that group there were some bad ones.
The following day it looked like they had some Rough, bad people.
Neo-Nazis, white nationalists, whatever you want to call them.
But you had a lot of people in that group that were there to innocently protest, and very legally protest, because you know, I don't know if you know, they had a permit.
The other group didn't have a permit.
So, I only tell you this, there are two sides to a story.
I thought what took place was a horrible moment for our country.
A horrible moment.
But there are two sides to the country.
Does anybody have a final?
You have an infrastructure.
This might be, today, the first time the news networks played those full remarks in their context.
And how many times have you heard that President Trump has never denounced white supremacists?
Now you in America know the truth.
Here's another example.
One of the house managers made much of the president's supposedly ominous words of, you have to get your people to fight.
But you knew what the president really meant.
He meant that the crowd should demand action from members of Congress and support primary challenges to those who don't do what he considered to be right.
Support primary challenges, not violent action.
I know what he meant because I watched the full video.
And so did the House managers.
But they manipulated his words.
You will see where they stopped it and to give it a very different meaning from the meaning it has in full context.
Let's watch.
You have to get your people to fight.
He told them.
You have to get your people to fight.
And if they don't fight, we have to primary the hell out of the ones that don't fight.
You primary them.
We're going to let you know who they are.
I can already tell you, frankly.
The people who need to fight are members of Congress.
Why did we have to skip the necessary due diligence and due process of law that any legal proceeding should have?
It couldn't have been the urgency to get President Trump out of office.
House Democrats held the articles until he was no longer president, mooting their case.
Hatred, animosity, division, political gain.
And let's face it, for House Democrats, President Trump is the best enemy to attack.
I want to say this for Donald Trump, who I may well be voting to impeach.
Donald Trump has already done a number of things which legitimately raise the question of impeachment.
I don't respect this president, and I will fight every day until he is impeached!
That is grounds to start impeachment proceedings.
Those are grounds to start impeachment.
Those are grounds to start impeachment proceedings.
Yes, I think that's grounds to start impeachment proceedings.
I rise today, Mr. Speaker, To call for the impeachment of the President of the United States of America.
I continue to say, impeach him!
Impeach 45!
Impeach 45!
So we're calling upon the House to begin impeachment hearings immediately.
On the impeachment of Donald Trump, would you vote yes or no?
I would vote yes.
I would vote, I would vote to impeach.
Because we're gonna go in there, we're gonna impeach the mother******.
But the fact is, I introduced articles of impeachment in July of 2017.
If we don't impeach this president, he will get re-elected.
My host requires me to be for impeachment, have an impeachment hearing.
He needs to scarlet eye on his chest.
Representatives should begin impeachment proceedings against this president.
It is time to bring impeachment charges against him.
Bring impeachment charges.
My personal view is that he richly deserves impeachment.
I'm here at an impeachment rally, and we are ready to impeach Bob!
Well, we can impeach him every day of the week for anything he does.
That same hatred and anger has led House managers to ignore their own words and actions and set a dangerous double standard.
The House managers spoke about rhetoric, about a constant drumbeat of heated language.
Well, as I'm sure everyone watching expected, we need to show you some of their own words.
I just don't even know why there aren't uprisings all over the country, and maybe there will be.
There needs to be unrest in the streets for as long as there is unrest in our lives.
You've got to be ready to throw a punch.
You have to be ready to throw a punch.
Donald Trump, I think you need to go back and punch him in the face.
That I thought he should have punched him in the face.
I feel like punching him.
I think I'd like to take him behind the gym if I were in high school.
If you were in high school, I'd take you behind the gym and beat the hell out of him.
No, I wish if you were in high school, I could take him behind the gym.
I will go and take Trump out tonight.
Take him out now.
When was the last time an actor assassinated a president?
They're still gonna have to go out and put a bullet in Donald Trump.
Show me where it says that protests are supposed to be polite and peaceful.
And you put that on there, and you tell them they're not welcome anymore, anywhere.
I have thought an awful lot about blowing up the White House.
Please get up in the face of some Congress people.
People will do what they do.
I want to tell you, Gorsuch, I want to tell you, Kavanaugh, you have released the whirlwind and you will pay the price.
We're going to go in there, we're going to impeach the This is just a warning to you Trumpers.
Be careful.
Walk lightly.
And for those of you who are soldiers, make them pay.
If you had to be stuck in an elevator with either President Trump, Mike Pence, or Jeff Sessions, who would it be?
Does one of us have to come out alive?
Laughter And there's more.
I promise to fight.
Every single day.
One, I'm a fighter and I'm relentless.
But I'm a fighter and I'm relentless.
A fighter and I'm relentless.
I will fight like hell.
The way I see it now is that we pick ourselves up and we fight back.
That's what I think it's all about.
We stand up and we fight back.
We do not back down.
We do not compromise.
Not today, not tomorrow, not ever.
You can either lie down, you can whimper, you can pull up at a ball, you can decide to move to Canada, or you can stand your ground and fight back.
And that's what it's about.
We do fight back, but we are going to fight back.
We are not turning this country over to what Donald Trump has sold.
We are just not.
Look, people are upset and they're right to be upset.
Now we can whimper.
We can whine, or we can fight back.
Me, I'm here to fight back!
I'm here to fight back!
Because we will not forget.
We do not want to forget.
We will use that vision to make sure that we fight harder, we fight tougher, and we fight more passionately than ever.
We still have a fight on our hands.
Fight hard for the changes Americans are demanding.
Get in the fight to winning the fight.
Fight fighting.
He's fighting.
Use every tool possible.
To fight for this change.
We'll fight.
We'll fight.
To fight.
Fighting hard.
Serious about fighting.
And fight!
We gotta get on our front foot and fight back!
Problems, we call them out and we fight back!
Come in this fight!
I am fighting.
I am fighting.
Get in this fight.
Get in this fight!
Get in this fight!
And fighting?
We all need to be in the fight.
We all need to stay in the fight.
We stay in this fight.
We fought back.
We fought back.
I am not afraid of a fight.
I am in this fight all the way!
You don't get what you don't fight for!
Our fight.
Our fight.
We are in this fight for our lives.
This is the fight of our lives.
But we are going to make sure that this fight does not end tonight.
This is a fight For our lives, the lives of our friends and family members and neighbors, it is a fight.
Fight.
And it is a fight that we're gonna work to make sure continues.
It's a fight.
It is a fight.
It is a fight.
And that's what this fight is for.
Well, I'm wired to fight anyone who isn't doing their job for us.
I'm Jon Tester and you're damn right I approve this message.
And I'll have lots of fights ahead of us.
And I'm ready to stand up and keep fighting.
We have to fight.
We're going to fight.
We're going to fight.
We need to fight, fight, fight.
And we need to fight.
We're going to fight.
We got a few more fights.
We're going to take the privilege of a few more fights.
And we have the biggest fight of all.
I will never stop fighting.
I will fight like hell.
To fight back against anyone.
We need to say loud and clear that we are ready to fight.
It's a bare knuckles fight.
Now they're going to have to actually fight back against people.
The fight has to be conducted.
It's so important that we need to fight.
Fight that fight.
We have been fighting.
I was fighting very hard.
Time is of the essence both in terms of the fight.
I think we should be fighting.
Well, I really believe we need to fight.
We're simply not going to take this line down.
We're going to keep fighting.
So I'm telling all my colleagues, this is the fight of our life.
Whose side are you on?
Who are you fighting for?
They're fighting.
I'm fighting.
We're both fighting.
We will fight back.
We're not going to just take this lying down.
I'm just going to keep the fight up.
What we have to do right now is fight as hard as we can.
We have to rise up and fight back.
And so we're going to fight and we're going to continue to fight.
I am going to be fighting like hell.
Keep fighting, fighting, fighting, or we kept fighting and we did, so we're going to keep fighting.
We have to be fighting every single day.
We have to fight back, and we have no choice but to do that.
I think we're doing the right thing to do that.
Fighting.
And I'm fighting.
Our job right now is to fight.
It's really important I'm going to keep fighting.
I'm asking for the support of people across the country to fight back.
And you've got to be fierce in fighting.
Keep fighting.
Proud of been fighting.
I've told President Biden I will fight like mad.
I'll tell you what.
Now, more than ever, we have to fight like hell.
We have these battles on the floor of the Senate.
I'm going to go down and battle, and I'm going to be down there on the floor fighting.
But we Democrats are fighting as hard as we can.
Democrats are fighting as hard as we can.
Credit it in any way, but we're fighting back.
What we've got to do is fight in Congress, fight in the courts, fight in the streets, fight online, fight at the ballot box.
Fighting and pushing around the clock, fighting.
Continue to be brave and be strong and keep fighting.
We're getting people engaged in the fight.
We're fighting.
We've got to keep fighting and keep focused.
Continue to fight.
Fight.
This is going to be a fight.
We'll also fight him and challenge him in every way that we can.
In the Congress, in the courts, and in the streets.
To continue fighting.
We each have an important role to play in fighting.
In this fight, like so many before it, it has been a fight.
The American people are going to have to fight.
And about the importance of fighting, I will always fight.
Fighting.
But we always must fight.
Joe Biden has a deep, deep-seated commitment.
To fight.
And to fight.
And about the importance of fighting.
We always must fight.
To fight.
To fight.
And to fight.
As our willingness to fight.
Continue the fight.
As Joe Biden says, to fight.
It's about fighting.
What we're fighting for.
We will tell them about what we did.
To fight.
Truly about a fight.
But truly, I do believe that we're in a fight.
I believe that we are in a fight.
I believe we are in a fight.
I believe we are in a fight.
So there's a fight in front of us.
A fight for all of these things.
And so we're prepared to fight for that.
We know how to fight.
Our ongoing fight's a fight.
We know how to fight.
We like a good fight.
We were born out of a fight.
This is what is our fight right now.
There's the fight, there's the fight, there's the fight, and then there's the fight to defend.
Back in the fight.
Our mission is to fight.
That is the guiding purpose of House Democrats.
Fighting.
He has never forgotten who he is fighting for.
March and fought.
And we just have to fight.
But this is a fight for our country.
Fighting the health crisis of COVID.
I led the fight and continue to fight.
Never, never, never give up this fight.
I am a citizen fighting for it.
Me is not only fighting.
A leader who fought for progressive change.
As a lawyer who fought for people his whole life.
As well as other fight scenes.
And I'm proud to have Tim in this fight with me.
And above all, it's time for America to get back up.
And once again, fight.
We will fight when we must fight.
What kind of America are we fighting for?
We've been fighting, so we need to fight.
But we also need to fight.
Fight for an America.
I am going to wake up every day and fight hard.
I have been fighting.
We're gonna fight.
We are gonna fight.
We're gonna fight.
We're gonna fight.
And I will fight.
We're in the fight of our lives right now.
We fight like hell to fight To fight.
Fight against the Trump administration.
Democrats are standing up to fight.
We're in this fight in a serious way.
It's your fight.
We're eager to take on this fight.
Get in this fight and we'll fight it out.
I have taken on the fight.
As representatives for the people, as legislators here in the halls of Congress, our job is to fight.
Who has led us in this fight.
Is to fight for this.
This fight.
Every day I'm in the United States Senate.
I will fight.
And one of the things we do is fight, should fight.
Because my constituents send me here each and every day to fight.
We have been fighting this fight and we need to be side by side so we can succeed.
And so I hope that you will all join us in our fight.
And if we fight.
And as the next governor of Georgia, I will never stop fighting.
We can show the old guard something new and we can fight.
My fight.
Those fights.
To fight.
To fight an administration.
Requiring us to fight.
And fight we will.
Their fight.
And their fight.
And their fight.
The fight is a fight.
And so when we fight the fight that we are in.
When we are fighting this fight, we fight this fight.
The strength of who we are is we will fight.
And we will fight.
We will fight.
The fight.
We will fight.
We are in a fight.
The fight.
Fight.
It is a fight.
It is a fight.
And it is a fight born out of patriotism.
This is a fight.
Fighting.
I say fight on.
Fight on.
I'm here to say one more time, in publicly, this is not a fight.
I wanted to take on, but this is the fight in front of us now.
Every single one of you, and every one of you, that's okay.
You didn't do anything wrong.
It's a word people use, but please stop the hypocrisy.
And did you tone down the rhetoric last summer when all of this was happening?
Did you condemn the rioters?
Or did you stand with Nancy Pelosi who said, people are going to do what they're going to do.
This is a movement, I'm telling you.
They're not going to stop.
And everyone beware, because they're not going to stop.
They're not going to stop before Election Day in November, and they're not going to stop after.
And please, show me where it says that protests are supposed to be polite and peaceful.
I just don't even know why there aren't uprisings all over the country.
Maybe there will be.
It was a violent night in St.
Louis.
They shot and killed David in cold blood.
Destroying property which can be replaced is not violent.
This is an apartment complex on fire.
And it just collapsed.
Their building just collapsed.
I have nowhere to go now.
These people did this for no reason.
This is just a snapshot of some of the damage the people will be waking up to.
I'm proud of New York and I'm proud of the protests.
There is damage everywhere you look.
Honestly, it looks like a war zone.
Heartwarming to see so many people turn out peacefully.
They keep doing it day after day after day.
That darn country is a nation of protests.
The patriots were protesters.
St.
John's Church is on fire.
Do you disavow the Augusta Mantee Bill?
That's a myth.
I hope someone burns down your whole precinct and blow you all inside.
It is not generally speaking unruly.
And you push back on them.
And you tell them they're not welcome any more, anywhere.
They're not going to let up, and they should not.
you You claim that it's wrong to object to the certification of election results.
You, along with your allies in the media, attempted to cancel and censor members of this chamber who voiced concerns and objected to certification.
Manager Raskin, you'd been in Congress only three days when you objected in 2017.
It's one of the first things you did when you got here.
I have an objection because 10 of the 29 electoral votes cast by Florida were cast by electors not lawfully certified.
Is the objection in writing and signed not only by the member of the House of Representatives but also by a senator?
It is in writing, Mr. President.
Is it signed by a senator?
Not as of yet, Mr. President.
In that case, the objection cannot be entertained.
Mr. President, I object to the certificate from the state of Georgia on the grounds that the electoral votes were not- There's no debate.
There's no debate.
I object to a certificate from the state of North Carolina based on violations of the Voting Rights Act- There is no debate.
There is no debate in the joint session.
I object because people are horrified Section 18, Title 3 of the United States Code prohibits debate.
I object.
Objected to the counting of the electoral votes of the state of Ohio.
I object to the certificate from the state of Alabama.
The electors were not lawfully certified.
I object to the 15 votes from the state of North Carolina because of the massive voter suppression and the closing of voting polling booths.
There is no debate. There is no debate. There is no debate.
The gentleman was suspended.
I have an objection to the electoral votes.
The objection is in writing, and I don't care that it is not signed by a member of the Senate.
I do not wish to debate.
I wish to ask, is there one United States Senator who will join me in this letter of objection?
There is no debate.
The objection is signed by a member of the House, but not yet by a member of the Senate.
It is over.
Laughter And when the House managers realized that the President's
actual words could not have incited the riot, as you allege in your article of impeachment, you attempted
to pivot.
You said that raising the issue of election security and casting doubt on the propriety of our elections was dangerous.
One of the House managers, Mr. Cicilline, told you that this is not about the words Mr. Trump used in isolation, rather it is about the big lie.
The claim that the election was stolen.
The House managers told you that it's the big lie that incited the riot, and that the big lie was President Trump's claim that the election was not a fair election, or that the election was stolen.
Claiming an election was stolen, you were told, are words that are insightful to a candidate's followers and cause people to respond violently.
Claiming an election was stolen Or not legitimate, is something that a candidate should never do because he or she knows, or should know, that such a claim and such words can actually incite violent insurrection, you were told.
Well it seems that the House Manager's position must be actually a bit narrower than that.
The House Manager's position really is that when Republican candidates for office claim an election is stolen or that the winner is illegitimate, it constitutes inciting an insurrection.
And the candidate should know it.
But Democratic Party candidates for public elective office are perfectly entitled to claim the election was stolen, or that the winner is illegitimate, or to make any other outrageous claim they can.
It is their absolute right to do so.
And it is their absolute right to do so, irrespective of whether there's any evidence to support the claim.
Democratic candidates can claim that an election was stolen because of Russian collusion, or without any explanation at all.
And that is perfectly okay, and is in no way incitement to an insurrection.
And somehow, when Democratic candidates publicly decry an election as stolen or illegitimate, it's never a big lie.
You've been doing it for years.
But can you imagine telling your supporters That the only way you could possibly lose is if an American election was rigged and stolen from you.
And ask yourself whether you've ever seen anyone at any level of government make the same claim about their own election.
If Stacey Abrams doesn't win in Georgia, they stole it.
It's clear.
It's clear.
And I say that publicly, it's clear.
You can run the best campaign.
You can even become the nominee.
And you can have the election stolen from you.
He knows he's an illegitimate president.
He knows.
He knows that there were a bunch of different reasons why the election turned out the way it did.
Votes remain to be counted.
There are voices that are waiting to be heard.
And I will not concede.
I respect where you're coming from and I respect the issues that you're raising.
You're not answering the question.
Do you think it was... I know what I'm not doing.
You're not using the word legitimate.
There are still legitimate concerns over the integrity of our elections and of ensuring the principle of one person, one vote.
I agree with tens of millions of Americans who are very worried that when they cast the ballot on an electronic voting machine that there is no paper trail to record that vote.
But constantly shifting vote tallies in Ohio And malfunctioning electronic machines, which may not have paper receipts, have led to additional loss of confidence by the public.
This is their only opportunity to have this debate while the country is listening, and it is appropriate to do so.
House Manager Castro no longer has to try to imagine it, thanks to the distinguished Senator and others.
It didn't have to be this way.
The Democrats promised unity, They promised to deliver the very COVID relief in the form of $2,000 stimulus checks that President Trump called for.
They should have listened to their own words of the past.
I leave you with the wise words of Congressman Jerry Nadler.
The effect of impeachment is to overturn the popular will of the voters.
We must not overturn an election and remove a president from office except to defend our system of government or our constitutional liberties against a dire threat.
And we must not do so without an overwhelming consensus of the American people.
There must never be a narrowly voted impeachment, or an impeachment supported by one of our major political parties and opposed by the other.
Such an impeachment will produce divisiveness and bitterness in our politics for years to come, and will call into question the very legitimacy of our political institutions.
The American people have heard the allegations against the President, and they overwhelmingly oppose impeaching him.
They elected President Clinton.
They still support him.
We have no right to overturn the considered judgment of the American people.
Mr. Speaker, the case against the President has not been made.
There is far from sufficient evidence to support the allegations.
And the allegations, even if proven true, do not rise to the level of impeachable offenses.
Mr. Speaker, this is clearly a partisan railroad job.
The same people who today tell us we must impeach the President for lying under oath, almost to a person voted last year to re-elect the Speaker who had just admitted lying to Congress in an official proceeding.
The American people are watching and they will not forget.
You may have the votes.
You may have the muscle, but you do not have the legitimacy of a national consensus or of a constitutional imperative.
This partisan coup d'etat will go down in infamy in the history of this nation.
Thank you, Mr. Speaker.
Speaker, I yield back the balance of my time.
Thank you.
Thank you.
Good afternoon again, Senators.
Mr. President.
There are two fundamental questions for purposes of this free speech analysis.
First, does the First Amendment to the Constitution apply in this chamber to these impeachment proceedings?
Second, if it does, do the words spoken by Mr. Trump at the Ellipse on January 6th meet the definition of constitutional incitement so as to void the protections afforded by the First Amendment?
I will explain why the answers to both of these questions must be a resounding yes.
The Constitution and the First Amendment must certainly apply to these impeachment proceedings, and Mr. Trump's speech deserves full protection under the First Amendment.
But before getting into the legal analysis, some preliminary observations about the House Manager's case Should be made.
First, this case, unfortunately, is about political hatred.
It has become very clear that the House Democrats hate Donald Trump.
This type of political hatred has no place in our political institutions and certainly no place in the law.
This hatred has led the House managers to manipulate and selectively edit Mr. Trump's speech to make it falsely appear that he sought to incite the crowd to violently attack the Capitol.
He didn't.
And we will show you why.
The hatred has also led the House managers to make some astounding legal arguments.
They astoundingly urge you to disregard your oath by ignoring the First Amendment of the Constitution.
They also ignore landmark binding United States Supreme Court cases, precedents, wood, and bond.
Both of which unequivocally hold that elected officials have core First Amendment rights to engage in the exact type of political speech which Mr. Trump engaged in.
I was shocked the House managers not only spent a mere three pages on the First Amendment analysis in their trial memo, but yesterday they spent a mere ten minutes at the end of their case as a throwaway.
What we have read and what we have heard is devoid of any constitutional analysis for less than what I would expect from a first-year law student.
They left out landmark cases.
Total intellectual dishonesty.
And finally, Hatred is at the heart of the House Manager's frivolous attempt to blame Donald Trump for the criminal acts of the rioters based on double hearsay statements of fringe right-wing groups based on no real evidence other than rank speculation.
Hatred is a dangerous thing.
We all have to work to overcome it.
Hatred should have no place in this chamber, in these proceedings.
The second observation.
The Senate is presented with an extraordinary task sitting in judgment of a former president's words in a speech that he gave at a political event.
The House managers accused Mr. Trump of using his words to incite The horrific events at the Capitol on January 6th.
But yesterday, they gave you a new and novel standard of incitement with an element of foreseeability, a negligence concept.
They cite zero case law.
They made it up.
This task of applying a completely made-up legal standard of incitement to an impeachment proceeding is truly an unprecedented task for the Senate.
And that is something the Senate must seriously consider when deciding the issue.
Do you want to create a precedent where the Senate will be tasked with sitting in judgment as to the meaning and implied intent of a President's words?
Or words of any elected official?
Will that allow and maybe encourage a majority party to weaponize the awesome power of impeachment against the minority to suppress a point of view?
Will the Senate Then have to deal with constant articles of impeachment by a majority party accusing minority presidents or other elected officials of so-called insightful or false speeches?
You can see where this would lead.
Sadly, we have all seen the political rhetoric get ratched up over the last few years.
We've all been witnesses to many incendiary words by our officials at political events broadcast over the media internet.
In each of those instances, will there now be Senate impeachment hearings?
One last observation.
We agree with the House managers, context does indeed matter.
The inflammatory rhetoric from our elected officials must be considered as part of the larger context of Mr. Trump's speech at the Ellipse on January 6th.
The inflammatory language from both sides of the aisle has been alarming, frankly.
But this political discourse must be considered as part of these proceedings to contentualize Mr. Trump's words.
We have some video to play that highlights some of what I'm talking about.
I preface this video by noting I am not showing you this video as some excuse for Mr. Trump's speech.
This is not about, this is not whataboutism.
I am showing you this to make the point that all political speech must be protected.
I just don't even know why there aren't uprisings all over the country.
Maybe there will be.
There needs to be unrest in the streets for as long as there is unrest in our lives.
You've got to be ready to throw a punch.
You have to be ready to throw a punch.
Donald Trump, I think you need to go back and punch him in the face.
That I thought he should have punched him in the face.
I feel like punching him.
I think I'd like to take him behind the gym if I were in high school.
If you're in high school, I'd take you behind the gym and beat the hell out of him.
No, I wish you were in high school.
I could take him behind the gym.
I will go and take Trump out tonight.
Take him out now.
When was the last time an actor assassinated a president?
They're still gonna have to go out and put a bullet in Donald Trump.
Show me where it says that protests are supposed to be polite and peaceful.
And you push back on them!
And you tell them they're not welcome!
Anymore, anywhere!
I have thought an awful lot about blowing up the White House.
Please, get up in the face of some Congress people.
People will do what they do.
I want to tell you, Gorsuch.
I want to tell you, Kavanaugh.
You have released the whirlwind, and you will pay the price.
We're gonna go in there, we're gonna...
This is just a warning to you Trumpers.
Be careful.
Walk lightly.
And for those of you who are soldiers, make them pay.
If you had to be stuck in an elevator with either President Trump, Mike Pence, or Jeff Sessions, who would it be?
Does one of us have to come out alive?
Again.
I did not show you their robust speech to excuse or balance out the speech of my client, for I need not.
I showed you the video because in this political forum, all robust speech should be protected, and it should be protected evenly for all of us.
As a brief aside, We should all reflect and acknowledge the rhetoric has gotten to be too much and over the top.
It is grading on the collective well-being of the body public, the citizens.
Most would like it to stop.
But the point is, when you see speech such as this, you have to apply the First Amendment evenly.
Blindly.
She is blind, Lady Justice.
Question one.
Does the First Amendment apply to this chamber in these proceedings?
The House Manager's position, as stated in their trial brief, is, and I quote, The First Amendment does not apply at all to an impeachment proceeding.
That's their position.
This is plainly wrong.
The text of the First Amendment expressly restricts Congress from regulating speech.
It says, Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion or prohibiting the free exercise thereof, or abridging the freedom of speech, or of the press, or the right of the people peaceably to assemble, and to petition the government for a redress of grievances.
To ignore the Constitution would be contrary to the oath of office of a United States Senator, I do solemnly swear or affirm that I will support and defend the Constitution of the United States against all enemies, foreign and domestic, that I will bear true faith and allegiance to the same.
Well, y'all know the rest.
No, the Senate cannot ignore the First Amendment.
The Constitution itself limits the ability of the House to impeach to limited items such as high crimes and misdemeanors.
The position advanced by the House managers is essentially an unlimited impeachment standard without constitutional guardrails, unmoored to any specific legal test other than the unbridled discretion of Congress.
This is distinctly not the intent of the framers.
The framers were aware of the danger of any impeachment process that would make the president the mere creature of the legislature, a quote directly from the framers while debating the impeachment process on the floor of the Constitutional Convention of 1787.
The framers were fearful that any impeachment process that gave Congress full discretion on the standard for impeachment would constitute nothing less than a violation, quote, a violation of the fundamental principle of good government.
One founding father, James Wilson, wrote extensively on the impeachment process.
Mr. Wilson was a renowned legal scholar at the time, a law professor at the University of Pennsylvania in Philadelphia.
He was a major force in drafting and adopting the Constitution in 1787.
He served as one of the first six Supreme Court Justices, 1789 to 1798.
of the first six Supreme Court justices, 1789 to 1798.
He was appointed by President George Washington.
In fact, Wilson taught the first course on the new Constitution to President Washington
and his cabinet.
Bye!
The first in the nation's history.
In Philadelphia.
At the University of Pennsylvania in 1789.
Wilson, in his law lectures, the first of their kind under the Constitution, plainly states that the Senate may not ignore the Constitution in impeachment proceedings.
He states that lawful and constitutional conduct may not be used as an impeachable offense.
Let me say that again.
He states That lawful and constitutional conduct may not be used as an impeachable offense.
Read along with me.
The doctrine of impeachments is of high import in the constitutions of free states.
On one hand, the most powerful magistrate should be amenable to the law.
On the other hand, elevated characters should not be sacrificed merely on account of their elevation.
No one should be secure while he violates the Constitution and the laws.
Everyone should be secure while he observes them.
To be clear, James Wilson is saying that the Constitution does indeed apply when judging whether to convict an official by impeachment.
If the complaint of conduct is constitutional, it cannot be impeachable!
Are we to ignore the words and teachings of James Wilson?
The House managers surely want you to.
The House managers have made several references to this letter, signed by 140 partisan law professors, calling Mr. Trump's First Amendment defense legally frivolous.
This is really an outrageous attempt to intimidate Mr. Trump's lawyers.
Whenever a lawyer advances a truly frivolous argument, they may violate professional ethical rules and could be subject to discipline.
This letter is a direct threat to my law license, my career, and my family's financial well-being.
These law professors should be ashamed of themselves and so should the House managers.
How dare you?
Do you really hate Donald Trump so much that you're willing to destroy good, hard-working people's lives?
People that are only doing their jobs and, frankly, as counsel for an accused fulfilling a constitutional role?
It's astounding, really.
I'm a citizen, not a politician.
I know these First Amendment arguments are not anywhere close to frivolous.
They are completely meritorious.
Interestingly, the law professor's letter was issued on February 5th, three days before we even filed our legal brief in this matter, and they ignored landmark, bedrock Supreme Court cases directly addressing this issue.
In our brief, we have a direct quote from James Wilson, the founding father supporting our position.
The direct quote was documented in the founding father's original legal papers.
On the subject, he was the primary draftsman of the Constitution who taught the new Constitution to President Washington.
He says so long as acts of elected officials like Mr. Trump are constitutionally protected, he should not be impeached.
We have landmark U.S.
Supreme Court decisions, would and bonds, which I'll explain in detail, supporting our position.
All of this the House managers and the partisan law professors completely and misleadingly ignore.
Frivolous?
Hardly.
The letter is a bully tactic and I think evidence is the House managers know they have a problem with the First Amendment defense on the merits.
So they're resorting to such tactics.
The House Manager's suggestion that the First Amendment does not apply to this impeachment process is completely untenable.
Ignoring the First Amendment would conflict with the Senator's oath of office.
It would also conflict with well-settled Supreme Court precedent and ignore the intent of the framers of the Constitution, such as James Wilson.
Above all else, ignoring the Constitution would adopt the new Raskin common sense doctrine we heard yesterday eroding hundreds of years of First Amendment protections.
We are here under the Constitution.
It is illogical what the House managers say.
The Constitution does apply to this constitutional impeachment process.
It's double talk.
Nonsense.
Illogical.
If the House managers had their way, they would ignore all of the Constitution.
Does that include the Sixth Amendment?
The right to counsel?
They would have Mr. Trump sitting here without lawyers.
And who would be next?
It could be anyone.
One of you.
Or one of you.
You must reject this invitation to ignore the First Amendment.
It is anti-American and would set dangerous precedent forever.
The law has developed over the years to clearly establish elected officials have the right to engage in protected speech.
Mr. Trump is not just a guy on the street, or a guy at a bar, or a fire chief, or a police officer.
There were a few of them in there.
All analogies given by the House managers.
These sideways analogies are wrong.
Mr. Trump was an elected official and there is an entire body of law, Supreme Court landmark cases, supporting the conclusion That Mr. Trump actually has enhanced free speech rights because he is an elected official.
These cases are ignored by the House managers and the law professors.
And that, too, is total intellectual dishonesty.
The Supreme Court has long held that the First Amendment's right to freedom of speech protects elected officials.
Two important on-point decisions from the Supreme Court, Wood v. Georgia and Bond v. Floyd, expressly contradict the House managers' position.
The House managers do not even cite those cases in their brief.
They barely acknowledge them in their reply, and they were a mum on them yesterday.
In Wood v. Georgia, The Supreme Court addressed a case involving a sitting sheriff whose re-election was being investigated by a grand jury and paneled by a judge based on allegations of irregular Negro bloc voting.
It was in the 60s.
The sheriff spoke publicly in multiple press releases calling the grand jury investigations racist, illegitimate, and an attempt to Intimidate voters.
He even urged the grand jurors on how to decide the issues and not let its high office be a party to any political attempt to intimidate voters.
The sheriff viewed the grand jury as challenging the legitimacy of his election.
The sheriff even sent a letter to the grand jurors with these allegations, which is an extraordinary step since laws in most states, including Georgia, prohibit attempts to influence or intimidate jurors.
The sheriff was charged and convicted of contempt of court and obstruction of the grand jury.
But the Supreme Court, in a decision written by Justice Brennan, reversed.
The court held that the First Amendment protected an elected public official's speech because the voting controversy directly affected the sheriff's political career.
G29.
The petitioner was an elected official and had... Read with me, please.
Everybody.
The petitioner was an elected official and had the right to enter the field of political controversy, particularly where his political life was at stake.
The role that elected officials play in our society makes it all the more imperative that they be allowed freely to express themselves on matters of current public importance.
WOULD, thus, stands for the proposition that a difference of political opinion expressed in the speech on an issue of voting irregularity cannot be punishable where all that was done was to encourage investigation and peaceful political speech.
Just like Mr. Trump has done here.
The legal scholars call that directly on point.
A second case, Bond v. Floyd, involved a state legislature punishing an elected official for protected political speech.
Bond is particularly instructive here, too.
In Bond, the Supreme Court squarely addressed the question of an elected official's punishment by a legislature for statements alleged to have incited public violation of the law, the burning of draft cards.
The court unequivocally rejected the idea, advanced here by the House managers, that an elected official is entitled to no protection under the First Amendment.
The Supreme Court held that the Georgia House of Representatives was, in fact, forbidden by the First Amendment from punishing Bond by not seating him for advocating against the policy of the United States.
There are three fundamental holdings in Bond.
One, the manifest function of the First Amendment in a representative government requires that legislators be given the widest latitude to express their views on issues of policy.
Two.
Just as erroneous statements must be protected to give freedom of expression the breathing space it needs to survive, so statements criticizing public policy and the implementation of it must be similarly protected.
Third holding.
Legislators have an obligation to take positions on controversial political questions so that their constituents can be fully informed by them and be better able to assess their qualifications.
Please read along with me.
Their qualifications for office.
Also, so they may be represented in governmental debates by the person they have elected to represent them.
Mr. Trump enjoys this same First Amendment protection from Congress.
The First Amendment's protections guarantee free speech addressing the electoral integrity issues essential to his career that Mr. Trump has consistently advocated.
The House managers argue that the First Amendment, and I quote, does not shield public officials who occupy sensitive policy-making positions from adverse actions when their speech undermines important governmental interests.
That is flat wrong.
They are, in essence, attempting to treat Mr. Trump as their employee.
This is not the law under Wood and Bond.
Mr. Trump was elected by the people.
He is an elected official.
The Supreme Court says elected officials must have the right to freely engage in public speech.
Indeed, the Supreme Court expressly rejected the House Manager's argument in Wood v. Georgia, holding that the sheriff was not a civil servant, but an elected official who had core First Amendment rights which could not be restricted.
That's Wood v. Georgia, page 395, footnote 21.
The house managers do not mention Wood or Bond.
In the trial brief or anywhere else.
Why?
Why not?
Because it does not fit their narrative or their story.
They want to punish Mr. Trump for engaging in constitutionally protected free speech, and they do not want you to consider the issue.
But you must.
Question 2.
Does Mr. Trump's speech deserve protection under the First Amendment?
There is no doubt Mr. Trump engaged in constitutionally protected political speech that the House has improperly characterized as incitement of insurrection.
The fatal flaw of the House's argument is that it seeks to mete out governmental punishment, impeachment, Based on First Amendment political speech.
Speech, for political purposes, is the kind of activity to which the First Amendment offers its strongest protection.
These are bedrock principles recognized by our Supreme Court for decades.
The Court has stated in no uncertain terms the importance of these principles to our democratic principles.
The general proposition that freedom of expression upon public questions is secured by the First Amendment has long been settled by our decisions.
The constitutional safeguard, we have said, was fashioned to assure unfettered interchange of ideas for the bringing about of political and social changes desired by the people.
New York Times v. Sullivan.
Our First Amendment decisions have created a rough hierarchy in the constitutional protection of speech.
Core political speeches occupy the highest, most protected position.
Even political speech that may incite unlawful conduct is protected from the reach of government punishment.
The court has said, every idea is an incitement.
And if speech may be suppressed when it might inspire someone to act unlawfully, then there is no limit to the state's sensorial power.
The government may not prohibit speech because it increases the chances of an unlawful act will be committed at some indefinite time in the future.
The House managers showed you a series of tweets going all the way back to 2015 in an effort to prove incitement.
All of that evidence is totally irrelevant under the constitutional definition of incitement.
Brandenburg v. Ohio is really the landmark case on the issue of incitement speech.
Half of the case was mentioned yesterday.
In the Brandenburg v. Ohio case, another landmark, the court held the government may only suppress speech for advocating the use of force or a violation of law if such advocacy is directed to inciting or producing eminent lawless action and is likely to incite or produce such action.
The Brandenburg holding has been interpreted as having three basic prongs to determine if speech meet the definition of incitement.
The Brandenburg test precludes speech from being sanctioned as incitement to a riot unless 1.
The speech explicitly or implicitly encouraged use of violence or lawless action.
Two, the Speaker intends that his speech will result in use of violence or lawless action.
And three, the imminent use of violence or lawless action is likely, is the likely result of the speech.
The House managers cannot get past the first prong of the Brandenburg Test.
They have not and cannot prove Mr. Trump explicitly or implicitly encouraged use of violence or lawless action.
Period.
Brandenburg requires a close examination of the words themselves.
The words are either important or they're not.
The House managers admitted that the incitement issue is not about the words.
Why not?
Because on the face of it, Mr. Trump's words are no different than the figurative speech used by every one of the Senators assembled here today.
If it is not about the words, but about the big lie of a stolen election, then why isn't House Manager Raskin guilty since he tried to overturn the 2016 election?
The more the House managers speak, the more hypocrisy gets revealed.
Hypocrisy.
Even though they say it's not about the words, the law under Brandenburg requires a close analysis of the words to determine incitement.
So we need to look at those words.
Mr. Trump did the opposite of advocating for lawless action.
The opposite.
He expressly advocated for peaceful action at the Save America rally.
He explicitly stated, these are the words, I know that everyone here will soon be marching over to the Capitol building to peacefully and patriotically make your voices heard.
To peacefully and patriotically make your voices heard.
That is how this president has spoken for years when he condemns violence, lawlessness, and rioters.
The House managers have played manipulated, selectively edited parts of Mr. Trump's speech.
They focus heavily on the word fight.
The president used the word fight 20 times in his speech. They picked only two. Why? Why not the other
18? Because they don't tell the story the way they want to tell it. Here are all of them. Listen
to the context.
And Rudy, you did a great job. He's got guts.
You know what?
He's got guts, unlike a lot of people in the Republican Party.
He's got guts.
He fights.
He fights.
And I'll tell you, thank you very much, John.
Fantastic job.
I watched.
That's a tough act to follow, those two.
There's so many weak Republicans.
And we have great ones.
Jim Jordan and some of these guys, they're out there fighting.
The House guys are fighting.
But it's incredible.
Many of the Republicans, I helped them get in.
I helped them get elected.
How do you say, I want to get rid of America first?
Even if you're going to do it, don't talk about it, right?
Unbelievable what we have to go through.
What we have to go through, and you have to get your people to fight.
And if they don't fight, we have to primary the hell out of the ones that don't fight.
You primary them.
We're going to let you know who they are.
I can already tell you, frankly.
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're sworn to uphold our Constitution.
And the accountability says, if we see somebody in there that doesn't treat our vets well, or they steal, they rob, they do things badly, we say, Joe, you're fired.
Get out of here.
Before, you couldn't do that.
You couldn't do that before.
So we've taken care of things.
We've done things like nobody's ever thought possible.
And that's part of the reason that many people don't like us, because we've done too much But we've done it quickly and we were going to sit home and watch a big victory and everybody had us down for a victory.
It was going to be great.
And now we're out here fighting.
I said to somebody I was going to take a few days and relax after our big electoral victory.
Ten o'clock it was over.
The American people do not believe the corrupt fake news anymore.
They have ruined their reputation.
But you know, it used to be that they'd argue with me.
I'd fight.
So I'd fight.
They'd fight.
I'd fight.
They'd fight.
Bop, bop.
You'd believe me.
You'd believe them.
Somebody comes out.
You know, they had their point of view.
I had my point of view.
But you'd have an argument.
Now what they do is they go silent.
It's called suppression.
And that's what happens in a communist country.
That's what they do.
They suppress.
You don't fight with them anymore, unless it's a bad story.
If they have a little bad story about me, they make it 10 times worse and it's a major headline.
But Hunter Biden, they don't talk about him.
What happened to Hunter?
Where's Hunter?
With your help over the last four years, we built the greatest political movement in the history of our country, and nobody even challenges that.
I say that over and over, and I never get challenged by the fake news.
And they challenge almost everything we say.
But our fight against the big donors, big media, big tech, and others is just getting started.
This is the greatest in history.
There's never been a movement like that.
Our brightest days are before us.
Our greatest achievements still wait.
I think one of our great achievements will be election security, because nobody until I came along had any idea how corrupt our elections were.
And again, most people would stand there at nine o'clock in the evening and say, I want to thank you very much.
And they go off to some other life.
But I said, something's wrong here.
Something's really wrong.
Can't have happened.
And we fight.
We fight like hell.
And if you don't fight like hell, you're not going to have a country anymore.
Our exciting adventures and boldest endeavors have not yet begun.
my fellow Americans, for our movement, for our children, and for our beloved country.
And I say this, despite all that's happened, the best is yet to come.
A boxer fighting with his hand tied behind his back.
Members of Congress fighting?
Rudy being Rudy?
These are the metaphorical, rhetorical uses of the word fight.
We all know that, right?
Suddenly the word fight is off limits?
Spare us the hypocrisy and false indignation.
It's a term used over and over and over again by politicians on both sides of the aisle.
And of course, the Democrat House managers know that the word fight has been used figuratively in political speech forever.
But don't take it from me.
It's best to listen to them.
Our mission is to fight.
Our job is to fight.
We are in a fight.
Democrats are fighting as hard as we can.
Democrats are standing up to fight.
We know how to fight.
We like a good fight.
Democrats are gonna fight like hell.
We fight like hell.
I'm gonna fight like hell.
I will fight like hell.
We're gonna fight like hell.
I'm gonna fight like hell.
Fight like hell.
I will fight like hell.
We have to fight like hell.
I and I know many other senators and members of the House will fight like hell.
We are going to fight like hell.
We're going to fight like hell.
We're going to fight like hell.
And we just have to fight.
We're going to fight.
We are going to fight.
We're going to fight.
We're going to fight.
Because you'll fight.
To fight.
Political revolution.
That means that millions.
Millions.
Millions.
Millions have got to stand up and fight.
We'll also fight him and challenge him in every way that we can.
Fight in Congress, fight in the courts, fight in the streets.
In the Congress, in the courts, and in the streets.
We're fighting back.
To my fight.
To fight an administration.
You don't get what you don't fight for!
We'll also fight him and challenge him in every way that we can.
Fight in Congress, fight in the courts, fight in the streets.
In the Congress, in the courts, and in the streets.
There's the fight, there's the fight, there's the fight, and then there's the fight to defend.
We're eager to take on this fight.
The American people are going to have to fight.
Get in this fight!
Get in this fight!
Around the clock fighting.
We've got to keep fighting and keep focused.
We will fight when we must fight.
We've been fighting, so we need to fight, but we also need to fight.
There's always going to be an uphill fight.
This is going to be a fight.
We always must fight.
We're in the fight of our lives.
We're going to be in the fight of our lives.
This is the fight of our lives.
The fight of their lives.
We are in this fight for our lives.
We cannot ever give up fighting.
Hypocrisy.
Thank you.
Thank you.
The reality is Mr. Trump was not in any way, shape or form instructing these people to fight or to use physical violence.
What he was instructing them to do was to challenge their opponents in primary elections to push for sweeping election reforms, to hold big tech responsible, all customary and legal ways to petition your government for redress of grievances, which of course is also protected constitutional speech.
But the house managers don't want you to focus on those things because, again, it does not fit their story.
In the end, I leave you with this quote from Benjamin Franklin.
Thank you.
Freedom of speech is a principal pillar of a free government.
When this support is taken away, the constitution of a free society is dissolved and tyranny is erected on its ruins.
Thank you.
Thank you.
I ask unanimous consent the Senate recess for a 15-minute break.
The Senate impeachment trial of former President Donald Trump is recessing for, as we heard,
But as we've seen over the last couple of days, those breaks often last 20 or 30 minutes.
So the first break here after nearly two hours of the presentation by the Former President's attorneys, they heard mostly from Michael Van Der Veen and from David Schoen on several elements.
The constitutionality of the proceedings, their allegations that it violates Mr. Trump's due process, and also that it violates his First Amendment protections that the speech His speech is protected by the First Amendment.
we expect to hear more on the issue of unifying the country or the failure in their view of
this proceedings to unify the country.
We'll get a 15-minute break or so and we'll watch as senators leave and possibly any other
comments and stop bys for senators at the stakeout positions along the Ohio clock quarter.
What comes next is the president's attorneys, the former president's attorneys, have a total
of eight hours.
There are indications that they will only use three or four of those hours today.
And it's possible that the attorneys will wrap up today and that will be a big deal.
That will mean that the tomorrow the questioning of the of the both sides will come from senators the jurors in this case in the impeachment trial they will get a total senators we get a total of four hours to to question those attorneys on both sides the House managers and the former president's attorneys and then they'll they'll also be able to debate possibly debate on calling witnesses or Subpoenaing different additional documents and we expect after that the vote on impeachment where two-thirds of the Senate, 67 senators, are needed to agree on the article of impeachment.
For that question and answer period, it's kind of already gotten underway that senators are filing their questions already.
Frank Thorpe of NBC tweeted this for the Q&A.
A period of the Senate impeachment trial, which could happen as soon as today, he says.
Here's the card that senators will fill out to submit their questions in writing.
And Politico says that Republican Senators Mitt Romney and Lisa Murkowski both said today they have already submitted questions for the dueling impeachment legal teams.
And if passed as president, Senator Pro Tem will ask those questions.
Let's take a look at one of the Senators, Senator Whitehouse, Senator Bennett coming to the, Senator Blumenthal coming to the stakeout.
Trying to draw a false, dangerous and distorted equivalence.
And I think it is plainly a distraction from Donald Trump inviting the mob to Washington, knowing it was armed.
Changing the route and the timing so as to incite them to march on the Capitol and then reveling without remorse, without doing anything to protect his own Vice President and all of us.
I think that the case is even more powerful after this very distorted and false argument.
What they are plainly doing is trying to draw a false and dangerous equivalence to distract
from Donald Trump inviting and then inciting the mob and then failing his oath of office
to protect the Capitol and everybody in it.
Thank you.
Well, again, we'll keep our eye out.
Potentially more senators talking to reporters there in the Senate subway.
They're in a break.
They started about five minutes ago.
We expect a bit longer break than the 15 minutes that's been said in the past.
They've usually run 20 or 30 minutes or so.
If the impeachment effort fails in the U.S.
Senate, a story here in the Hill, two GOP senators suggest, opening, number two GOP senators suggest he's open to censuring Trump.
This is a Hill article that says Senator John Thune, the number two Republican senator, indicated today that he could be open to censuring former President Trump, depending on how the resolution was framed.
Asked about censoring Trump, Thune indicated that proposals are floating around, but noted it would be, quote, need to be effective.
Quote, I know there are a couple of resolutions out there.
I've seen a couple of resolutions, at least that I think could attract some support.
Prest, if he was saying the resolutions could get support from him, he added, Yeah, Senator Tim Kaine, they write, has drafted a censure resolution that would also include language from the 14th Amendment that he hopes could be used to bar Mr. Trump from future office.
Read all of that at thehill.com.
We're waiting for the Senate to come back here in the next 10 minutes, 10-15 minutes or so from their first recess.
And again, the four president's attorneys have started their case.
Defending the former president in the impeachment trial.
Our Capitol Hill producer Craig Kaplan tweets this photo of former House member Asa Hutchinson, the former, the Arkansas governor now, who served as House impeachment manager in 1999.
The Senate trial of President Clinton, he met at the White House today with President Biden and other Republican Democratic governors on COVID-19 relief.
The president took the dogs for a walk, a walk on the I'm just anxious to see what my Republican friends do when they stand up.
And you're not planning to speak with any of them about what they should do or how they should do it?
No, I'm not.
Alright, thanks guys.
Thanks everybody.
I'm just anxious to see what my Republican friends do with their stand-up.
And you're not planning to speak with any of them about what they can do or how they
can do it?
No, I'm not.
All right, thanks, guys.
Thanks, everybody.
Thank you so much.
Thank you.
President Biden, from earlier today, the briefing underway over on our companion network C-SPAN,
the presidential briefing from Jen Psaki and the President and First Lady heading up to
Camp David in the Maryland mountains later today.
A tweet from Jonathan Martin of the New York Times reminding Reminding folks of the National Guard presence still underneath that Senate chamber on the final day of impeachment trial of the former president.
The threat of political violence on Capitol is still so serious that the entire Cannon Capitol tunnel is filled with troops.
The senator from Illinois, Dick Durbin, notes today, February 12th, as the birthday of Abraham
Lincoln, saying, I'll be thinking about President Lincoln today as I return to the Senate floor
for the fourth day of this second impeachment trial of Donald Trump.
And I will strive, as I do every day, to honor his legacy and representing the land of Lincoln.
That from Senator Dick Durbin.
Again, the Senate in a break here, a recess, and we will wait to possibly see more senators come to the stakeout position in the halls of Congress and in the Ohio Clock Quarter and also along the Senate subways there.
This is from Axios and their live reporting of the trial as it's underway.
They're a defense team to focus on arguments.
They say that the president president's lawyer, Donald Shane, played a 13 minute video selectively edited montage of Democrats and media personalities using the word fight and similar phrases during speeches and commentary.
Arguing that's a standard political rhetoric protected by the First Amendment, Democrats in the chamber could also be seen visibly laughing at the clips.
He also reports in the arguments that we've just seen, Trump lawyer Michael Van Der Veen kicked off the presentation by arguing that, quote, no thinking person could conclude that Trump incited the insurrection on January 6th, calling the impeachment A unconstitutional act of, quote, political vengeance and a, quote, political witch hunt.
I'm going to take you in a moment and show you some of the arguments from earlier today of the presidents, two of the presidents, the former president's attorneys, Michael Van Der Veen and also from David Schoen.
The article of impeachment now before the Senate is an unjust and blatantly Unconstitutional act of political vengeance.
This appalling abuse of the Constitution only further divides our nation when we should be trying to come together around shared priorities.
Like every other politically motivated witch hunt, the left has engaged in over the past four years.
This impeachment is completely divorced from the facts, the evidence and the interests of the American people.
The Senate should promptly and decisively vote to reject it.
Michael van der Veen, one of the former president's attorneys from just a short while ago.
Again, the former president's attorneys have begun their arguments the first couple of hours of a total of eight, although reports indicate that they may not use all of that time.
They're in the first break here, and if passed is precedent, it will be a little bit longer than the 15 minutes that the majority leader indicated they started about At about 155 or so.
And just a reminder too, we'll continue to carry live coverage here on C-SPAN 2.
If you missed any of the coverage today or yesterday, you want to find yesterday's coverage or earlier this week, that's at c-span.org slash impeachment.
And you can also get the free C-SPAN radio app and check it out live anytime.
The Supreme Court ruled in Brandenburg that there's a very clear standard for incitement.
As we wait for members to return, senators to return, we'll show you some more of the opening arguments.
The Supreme Court ruled in Brandenburg that there's a very clear standard for incitement.
In short, to paraphrase, whether the speech was intended to provoke imminent lawless action, and was it likely to do so.
Go to the Capitol and cheer on some members of Congress, but not others.
They know it doesn't meet the standard for incitement, so they edited it down.
We heard a lot this week about Fight Like Hell, but they cut off the video before they showed you the President's optimistic, patriotic words that followed immediately after.
We fight like hell, and if you don't fight like hell, you're not going to have a country anymore.
Our exciting adventures and boldest endeavors have not yet begun.
My fellow Americans, for our movement, for our children, and for our beloved country, and I say this despite all that's happened, the best is yet to come.
There's that famous quote, like one of the House managers said, a lie will travel halfway around the world before the truth has a chance to put its shoes on.
Well, this lie traveled around the world a few times, made its way into the Biden campaign talking points, and ended up on the Senate floor.
The Charlottesville lie.
Very fine people on both sides.
Except that isn't all he said.
And they knew it then, and they know it now.
Watch this.
But you also had people that were very fine people on both sides.
You had people in that group.
Excuse me.
Excuse me.
I saw the same pictures as you did.
You had people in that group that were there to protest the taking down of, to them, a very, very important statue and the renaming of a park from Robert E. Lee to another name.
George Washington was a slave owner.
Was George Washington a slave owner?
So will George Washington now lose his status?
Are we going to take down statues to George Washington?
How about Thomas Jefferson?
What do you think of Thomas Jefferson?
You like him?
Okay, good.
Are we going to take down the statue?
Because he was a major slave owner.
Now, are we going to take down his statue?
So, you know what?
It's fine.
You're changing history, you're changing culture, and you had people, and I'm not talking about the neo-Nazis and the white nationalists, because they should be condemned totally.
But you had many people in that group other than neo-Nazis and white nationalists, okay?
And the press has treated them absolutely unfairly.
Now, in the other group also, you had some fine people, but you also had troublemakers, and you see them come with the black outfits, and with the helmets, and with the baseball bats.
You had a lot of bad people in the other group too.
I'm sorry, I just didn't understand what you were saying.
You were saying the press has treated white nationalists unfairly?
No.
There were people in that rally, and I looked the night before.
If you look, there were people protesting very quietly the taking down of the statue of Robert E. Lee.
I'm sure in that group there were some bad ones.
The following day it looked like they had some Rough, bad people.
Neo-Nazis, white nationalists, whatever you want to call them.
But you had a lot of people in that group that were there to innocently protest, and very legally protest, because you know, I don't know if you know, they had a permit.
The other group didn't have a permit.
So, I only tell you this, there are two sides to a story.
I thought what took place was a horrible moment for our country.
A horrible moment.
But there are two sides to the country.
Does anybody have a final?
You have an infrastructure.
This might be, today, the first time the news networks played those full remarks in their context.
And how many times have you heard that President Trump has never denounced white supremacists?
Now you in America know the truth.
The Supreme Court ruled in Brandenburg that there's a very clear standard for incitement.
In short, to paraphrase, whether the speech was intended to provoke imminent lawless action, and was it likely to do so.
Go to the Capitol and cheer on some members of Congress, but not others.
They know it doesn't meet the standard for incitement, so they edited it down.
We heard a lot this week about Fight Like Hell.
But they cut off the video before they showed you the president's optimistic, patriotic words that followed immediately after.
We fight like hell, and if you don't fight like hell, you're not gonna have a country anymore.
Our exciting adventures and boldest endeavors have not yet begun.
My fellow Americans, for our movement, for our children, and for our beloved country, and I say this, despite all that's happened, the best is yet to come.
There's that famous quote, like one of the House managers said, a lie will travel halfway around the world, before the truth has a chance to put its shoes on.
Well, this lie traveled around the world a few times, made its way into the Biden campaign talking points,
and ended up on the Senate floor.
The Charlottesville lie.
Very fine people on both sides.
Except that isn't all he said.
And they knew it then, and they know it now.
Watch this.
But you also had people that were very fine people on both sides.
You had people in that group, excuse me, excuse me, I saw the same pictures as you did.
You had people in that group that were there to protest the taking down of, to them, a very, very important statue and the renaming of a park from Robert E. Lee to another name.
George Washington was a slave owner.
Was George Washington a slave owner?
So will George Washington now lose his status?
Are we going to take down statues to George Washington?
How about Thomas Jefferson?
What do you think of Thomas Jefferson?
You like him?
Okay, good.
Are we going to take down the statue?
Because he was a major slave owner.
Now, are we going to take down his statue?
So, you know what?
It's fine.
You're changing history, you're changing culture, and you had people, and I'm not talking about the neo-Nazis and the white nationalists, because they should be condemned totally.
But you had many people in that group other than neo-Nazis and white nationalists, okay?
And the press has treated them absolutely unfairly.
Now, in the other group also, you had some fine people, but you also had troublemakers, and you see them come with the black outfits, and with the helmets, and with the baseball bats.
You had a lot of bad people in the other group too.
I just didn't understand what you were saying.
You were saying the press has treated white nationalists unfairly?
I just didn't understand what you were saying.
There were people in that rally, and I looked the night before.
If you look, there were people protesting very quietly the taking down of the statue of Robert E. Lee.
I'm sure in that group there were some bad ones.
The following day it looked like they had some Rough, bad people.
Neo-Nazis, white nationalists, whatever you want to call them.
But you had a lot of people in that group that were there to innocently protest, and very legally protest, because you know, I don't know if you know, they had a permit.
The other group didn't have a permit.
So, I only tell you this, there are two sides to a story.
I thought what took place was a horrible moment for our country.
A horrible moment.
But there are two sides to the country.
Does anybody have a final?
Does anybody have?
You have an infrastructure.
This might be the first time the news networks played those full remarks in their context.
And how many times have you heard that President Trump has never denounced white supremacists?
Now you in America know the truth.
This sham impeachment also poses a serious threat to freedom of speech for political leaders of both parties at every level of government.
The Senate should be extremely careful about the precedent this case will set.
Consider the language that the House impeachment article alleges to constitute incitement.
If you don't fight like hell, you're not going to have a country anymore.
This is ordinary political rhetoric that is virtually indistinguishable from the language that has been used by people across the political spectrum for hundreds of years.
Countless politicians have spoken of fighting for our principles.
Joe Biden's campaign slogan was, battle for the soul of America.
No human being seriously believes that the use of such metaphorical terminology is incitement to political violence.
Not only is this impeachment case preposterously wrong on the facts, no matter how much heat and emotion is injected by the political opposition, It is also plainly unconstitutional.
In effect, Congress would be claiming that the right to disqualify a private citizen, no longer a government official, from running for public office.
This would transform the solemn impeachment process into a mechanism for asserting congressional control over which private citizens are and are not allowed to run for president.
In short, 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.
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.
Now is not the time for such a campaign of retribution.
It is the time for unity and healing.
and focusing on the interests of the nation as a whole.
We should all be seeking to cool temperatures, calm passions, rise above partisan lines.
The Senate should reject this divisive and unconstitutional effort and allow the nation to move forward.
The House Manager's position really is that when Republican candidates for office claim an election is stolen, or that the winner is illegitimate, it constitutes inciting an insurrection.
And the candidate should know it.
But Democratic Party candidates for public elective office are perfectly entitled to claim the election was stolen, or that the winner is illegitimate, or to make any other outrageous claim they can.
It is their absolute right to do so.
And it is their absolute right to do so Irrespective of whether there's any evidence to support the claim, Democratic candidates can claim that an election was stolen because of Russian collusion, or without any explanation at all.
And that is perfectly okay, and is in no way incitement to an insurrection.
And somehow, when Democratic candidates publicly decry an election as stolen or illegitimate, it's never a big lie.
You've been doing it for years.
And the impeachment trial of former President Donald Trump is still in a recess.
we see the minority leader Mitch McConnell returning down the corridor,
so they're probably ready to get underway here shortly.
Thank you.
And during the break, senators, some senators appearing on other networks, talking with
reporters, tweeting their reaction.
A couple of reactions so far.
This is Senator Ron Johnson of Wisconsin who tweets this about what he's seen so far.
The president's lawyers blew House managers case out of the water, legally eviscerated them.
Lindsey McPherson from roll call on Senator Kramer, Kevin Kramer of North Dakota, not planning to
convict Trump but thinks the trial may effectively disqualify him from future office in the public eye.
Quote, there's some support that will never leave but I think that is a shrinking population.
And probably shrinks a little bit after this week.
Jake Sherman of Politico, reaction from Lisa Murkowski of Alaska.
She says that we've seen a, quote, much stronger presentation from defense today.
She says they've been, quote, very organized in what they've presented and how they've done it.
And Scott Wong of The Hill saying that Senator Bill Cassidy wants the defense to clarify the timeline about whether President Trump knew that Vice President Pence was in danger When he sent the tweet attacking the Vice President.
Also some reaction, political reaction, from the Chief Political Correspondent for the Washington Examiner, Byron York, and his analysis of what he's seen so far.
Again, we've gone through about two hours of presentations from the former President's legal team.
Byron York tweeting this, fault the Trump lawyers attack on house managers for manipulating video was amazing.
Given the heavily edited videos the Trump team was about to play, also the Calvary thing didn't work, he says, but the big picture this was a total Trumpian defense with a little law, a bunch of blunt force argument, and a lot of dare I say it fight will reinforce Senate Republicans inclination to acquit.
That's from Byron York.
They've been in a break for about 25 minutes or so and as we wait some more of the arguments presented by the president's team.
There are two fundamental questions for purposes of this free speech analysis.
First, does the First Amendment to the Constitution apply in this chamber to these impeachment proceedings?
Second, if it does, do the words spoken by Mr. Trump at the Ellipse on January 6th meet the definition of constitutional incitement so as to void the protections afforded by the First Amendment?
I will explain why the answers to both of these questions must be a resounding yes.
The Constitution and the First Amendment must certainly apply to these impeachment proceedings, and Mr. Trump's speech deserves full protection under the First Amendment.
But before getting into the legal analysis, some preliminary observations about the House Manager's case Should be made.
First, this case, unfortunately, is about political hatred.
It has become very clear that the House Democrats hate Donald Trump.
This type of political hatred has no place in our political institutions and certainly no place in the law.
This hatred has led the House managers to manipulate and selectively edit Mr. Trump's speech to make it falsely appear that he sought to incite the crowd to violently attack the Capitol.
He didn't.
And we will show you why.
The hatred has also led the House managers to make some astounding legal arguments.
They astoundingly urge you to disregard your oath by ignoring the First Amendment of the Constitution.
They also ignore landmark binding United States Supreme Court cases, precedents, wood, and bond.
Both of which unequivocally hold that elected officials have core First Amendment rights to engage in the exact type of political speech which Mr. Trump engaged in.
I doubt they'll speak to that.
It seems to me unavoidable.
I don't think it's apples to apples.
Do you think we'll get clarification on a timeline of when Trump learned about Pence's,
that Pence's life was in danger, and that he then sent a tweet?
Do you think we'll get clarification from the defense team?
Is that something that you're interested in?
I doubt they'll speak to that.
It seems to me unavoidable.
I mean, how could the President of the United States watching what was going on,
knowing that his vice president was in the chamber, be notified that he'd been removed by Secret Service,
not know that his life was in danger?
I mean, heck, like, how could you miss that?
My family, just watching the riot unfolding on, you know, whatever, CNN or on their, were out of their minds with worry.
How could the President of the United States not know that there was an angry mob assaulting the Capitol?
It's his job to know about security, and bluntly, he had just spoken to the mob and then stormed in.
Do you have any thoughts or concerns about how this could play in 2022?
Let's get through this thing.
Thank you, Senator.
Senate as they're still on a break but should be gaveling back in shortly to resume the impeachment trial of former President Donald Trump.
We wait as well for that resumption and we'll continue showing some of the legal arguments so far.
They spent a mere 10 minutes at the end of their case as a throwaway.
What we have read and what we have heard is devoid of any constitutional analysis for less than what I would expect from a first-year law student.
They left out landmark cases.
Total intellectual dishonesty.
And finally, Hatred is at the heart of the House manager's frivolous attempt to blame Donald Trump for the criminal acts of the rioters based on double hearsay statements of fringe right-wing groups based on no real evidence other than rank speculation.
Hatred is a dangerous thing.
We all have to work to overcome it.
Hatred should have no place in this chamber, in these proceedings.
The second observation.
The Senate is presented with an extraordinary task sitting in judgment of a former president's words in a speech that he gave at a political event.
The House of Managers accused Mr. Trump of using his words to incite The horrific events at the Capitol on January 6th.
But yesterday, they gave you a new and novel standard of incitement with an element of foreseeability, a negligence concept.
They cite zero case law.
They made it up.
This task of applying a completely made-up legal standard of incitement to an impeachment proceeding is truly an unprecedented task for the Senate.
And that is something the Senate must seriously consider when deciding the issue.
Do you want to create a precedent where the Senate will be tasked with sitting in judgment as to the meaning and implied intent of a President's words?
Or words of any elected official?
Will that allow and maybe encourage a majority party to weaponize the awesome power of impeachment against the minority to suppress a point of view?
Will the Senate Then have to deal with constant articles of impeachment by a majority party accusing minority presidents or other elected officials of so-called insightful or false speeches?
You can see where this would lead.
Sadly, we have all seen the political rhetoric get ratched up over the last few years.
We've all been witnesses to many incendiary words by our officials at political events broadcast over the media internet.
In each of those instances, will there now be Senate impeachment hearings?
One last observation.
We agree with the House managers, context does indeed matter.
The inflammatory rhetoric from our elected officials must be considered as part of the larger context of Mr. Trump's speech at the Ellipse on January 6th.
The inflammatory language from both sides of the aisle has been alarming, frankly.
But this political discourse must be considered as part of these proceedings to contentualize Mr. Trump's words.
We have some video to play that highlights some of what I'm talking about.
I preface this video by noting I am not showing you this video as some excuse for Mr. Trump's speech.
This is not about, this is not whataboutism.
I am showing you this to make the point that all political speech must be protected.
I just don't even know why there aren't uprisings all over the country.
Maybe there will be.
There needs to be unrest in the streets for as long as there is unrest in our lives.
You've got to be ready to throw a punch.
You have to be ready to throw a punch.
Donald Trump, I think you need to go back and punch him in the face.
That I thought he should have punched him in the face.
I feel like punching him.
I'd like to take him behind the gym if I were in high school.
You're in high school.
I'd take you behind the gym and beat the hell out of him.
No, I wish you were in high school.
I could take him behind the gym.
I will go and take Trump out tonight.
Take him out now.
When was the last time an actor assassinated a president?
They're still gonna have to go out and put a bullet in Donald Trump.
Show me where it says that protests are supposed to be polite and peaceful.
And you push back on them, and you tell them they're not welcome anymore, anywhere.
I have thought an awful lot about blowing up the White House.
Please get up in the face of some Congress people.
People will do what they do.
I want to tell you, Lord Zuch, I want to tell you, Kavanaugh, you have released the whirlwind and you will pay the price.
We're gonna go in there, we're gonna...
This is just a warning to you Trumpers.
Be careful.
Walk lightly.
And for those of you who are soldiers, make them pay.
If you had to be stuck in an elevator with either President Trump, Mike Pence, or Jeff Sessions, who would it be?
Does one of us have to come out alive?
LAUGHTER APPLAUSE
Again, I...
I did not show you their robust speech to excuse or balance out the speech of my client, for I need not.
I showed you the video because in this political forum, all robust speech should be protected, and it should be protected evenly for all of us.
As a brief aside, We should all reflect and acknowledge the rhetoric has gotten to be too much and over the top.
It is grading on the collective well-being of the body public, the citizens.
Most would like it to stop.
But the point is, when you see speech such as this, you have to apply the First Amendment evenly.
Blindly.
She is blind, Lady Justice.
Question one.
Does the First Amendment apply to this chamber in these proceedings?
The House Manager's position, as stated in their trial brief, is, and I quote, The First Amendment does not apply at all to an impeachment proceeding.
That's their position.
This is plainly wrong.
The text of the First Amendment expressly restricts Congress from regulating speech.
It says, Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion or prohibiting the free exercise thereof.
or abridging the freedom of speech, or of the press, or the right of the people peaceably to assemble, and to petition the government for a redress of grievances.
To ignore the Constitution would be contrary to the oath of office of a United States Senator, I do solemnly swear or affirm that I will support and defend the Constitution of the United States against all enemies, foreign and domestic, that I will bear true faith and allegiance to the same.
Well, y'all know the rest.
No, the Senate cannot ignore the First Amendment.
The Constitution itself limits the ability of the House to impeach to limited items such as high crimes and misdemeanors.
The position advanced by the House managers is essentially an unlimited impeachment standard without constitutional guardrails, unmoored to any specific legal test other than the unbridled discretion of Congress.
This is distinctly not the intent of the framers.
The framers were aware of the danger of any impeachment process that would make the president the mere creature of the legislature, a quote directly from the framers while debating the impeachment process on the floor of the Constitutional Convention of 1787.
The framers were fearful that any impeachment process that gave Congress full discretion on the standard for impeachment would constitute nothing less than a violation, quote, a violation of the fundamental principle of good government.
One founding father, James Wilson, wrote extensively on the impeachment process.
Mr. Wilson was a renowned legal scholar at the time, a law professor at the University of Pennsylvania in Philadelphia.
He was a major force in drafting and adopting the Constitution in 1787.
He served... Senators will take their seats.
Who seeks recognition?
Thank you.
Mr. Castro is recognized.
Mr. President, members of the Senate, good afternoon.
Thank you.
It has been my great privilege over the past couple of weeks To lead this outstanding team of lawyers and dedicated professionals in the defense of the 45th President of the United States.
One of the most difficult things in leading such a talented group is deciding who's responsible for what and the strategy and the order in which we will present our evidence.
And you have heard from Mr. Van Der Veen and Mr. Sean One, the importance of the First Amendment and the importance of due process of law.
And because I had the opportunity to set out the schedule, I decided that I would take the last substantive part of the case for myself.
You could take that two ways.
The first, perhaps, is the best, and that would be that it's almost over.
The second is that, perhaps, you have to wait another hour for it to be over.
The reason why I chose this section, and believe me, it was a very difficult decision to make because I thought that the other arguments presented by Mr. Sean and Mr. Van der Veen were outstandingly researched, thoroughly vetted, and wonderfully and articulately presented by them.
But the critical issue in this case is the very narrow issue that is charged against
the 45th president.
And that issue is, did the 45th president engage in incitement of, they continue to
say insurrection.
Clearly there was no insurrection.
Insurrection is a term of art defined in the law.
It involves taking over a country, a shadow government, taking the TV stations over and
having some plan on what you're going to do when you finally take power.
Clearly this is not that.
What our colleagues here across the aisle meant is incitement to violence, to riot.
So the word incitement is the critical case and the critical issue in the case.
Now the first time that you heard from us I told you that you would never hear from our side That what happened on January 6th was anything other than horrific.
And that the 45th President of the United States and his lawyers and his entire team adamantly denounce that violence by those criminals that occurred in this very chamber, this very building.
There was a reason why we started our presentation back on Tuesday in that way.
Because I did not want the Senators to consider that there was any challenge to that particular fact.
And yet, the House managers, knowing it was not contested at all, chose to spend 14 plus hours showing you pictures of how
horrific the attack on the United States Capitol was.
They spent no time at all in connecting legally the attack on the Capitol to the 45th President
of the United States, which is the only question that needs to be answered is, was Donald Trump
responsible for inciting the violence that came to this building on January 6th?
Now, by any measure, President Trump is the most pro-police Anti-mob rule president this country has ever seen.
His real supporters know this.
He made it clear throughout his presidency.
He made it clear during the violence this past summer.
He made it clear on January 6th.
But politics changes things.
Politics has created and interposed an element that should not be here.
It has interposed the element of hatred.
And the political world changes when hatred becomes part of the dynamic.
As we wrote in our answer to the original charging document, And I hope that this is a phrase that lives on long after we are all departed.
And that I hope someday this becomes the mantra by which all of us operate who work for the benefit of the public.
That political hatred has no place in the American justice system and most certainly no place in the Congress of the United
States.
To illustrate the contrast that I am speaking of, we have a video.
I am your president of law and order and an ally of all peaceful protesters.
The vast majority of the protest has been peaceful.
Republicans stand for law and order, and we stand for justice.
I just don't even know why there aren't uprisings all over the country, and maybe there will be.
My administration will always stand against violence, mayhem, and disorder.
There needs to be unrest in the streets for as long as there is unrest in our lives.
I stand with the heroes of law enforcement.
And you push back on them, and you tell them they're not welcome anymore, anywhere.
We will never defund our police.
Together we will ensure that America is a nation of law and order.
When we were in high school, I'd take him behind the gym and beat the hell out of him.
I think you need to go back and punch him in the face.
I feel like punching him.
We just want law and order.
Everybody wants that.
I want to tell you, George W. Bush, I want to tell you, Kavanaugh, you have released the whirlwind, and you will pay the price.
We want law and order.
We have to have law and order.
Show me where it says that protests are supposed to be polite and peaceful.
We believe in safe streets, secure communities, and we believe in law and order.
Is there truly anyone in this chamber who disagrees with the words as spoken by President Trump on that video?
Surely not.
Surely not.
This contrast, and in this context, I ask you to keep that in mind.
My colleagues here, actually my colleague here, Mr. Raskin, They have used selective editing and manipulated visuals to paint a picture far different from this truth.
Make no mistake, and I will repeat it now and anytime I'm ever asked, January 6th was a terrible day for our country.
The attack on this building shocked us all.
President Trump did not incite or cause the horrific violence that occurred on January 6th, 2021.
They know that.
We know the President did not incite the riot because of his plain words that day, as Mr. Van Der Veen elucidated on a few moments ago.
We know the President could not have incited the riots because of the timeline of the events of that day.
We heard a great deal from the House Manager about their prosecutorial bona fides and their ability to analyze evidence, apply it to statutes, use timelines, and figure out what happened based on circumstantial evidence and direct evidence and testimony and forensic analysis.
I can't recall any of the House managers who got up and didn't make some reference to prosecutorial bona fides.
Well, I spent more than three decades locking up killers and I do know a little bit about applying the facts to the law.
We know that the President would never have wanted such a riot to occur because his long-standing hatred for violent protesters and his love for law and order is on display worn on his sleeve every single day that he served in the White House.
But if we're going to apply the facts to the statute, it has to be done systematically.
It has to be done with precision, the way a court would expect us to do that.
Let's look at the letter of the law.
Again, Mr. Vanderveen gave you an overview of the Brandenburg case and some of the related cases.
You notice that when Mr. Vanderveen listed the elements that he took verbatim or close to verbatim right out of Vandenberg, they bore no reference whatsoever to the elements that were flashed up by the Democrat managers the other day, repeatedly.
He actually used the Supreme Court's case.
He didn't make it up.
Let's look at the letter of the law.
The Supreme Court of the United States over 50 years ago laid out a clear test to determine whether speech is incitement.
Under that test, the Brandenburg versus Ohio test, there are three elements that must be proven Beyond a reasonable doubt, by a preponderance of the evidence, whatever the Senate considers, I suggest, beyond a reasonable doubt.
First, the speech in question must explicitly or implicitly encourage the use of violence or lawless action.
But here, the President's speech called for peaceful protest.
Second, the Speaker must intend that his speech will Result in the use of violence or lawless action.
And again, as Mr. Van der Veen pointed out, the president clearly deplores rioters and political violence and did so throughout his term as president and never hesitated to express his admiration for the men and women that protect this country.
Finally, the third element under the Brandenburg Test is the imminent use of violence.
Imminent use of violence.
In other words, right then, the imminent use of violence or lawless action must be the likely result of the speech.
The likely result of the speech.
Well, that argument is completely eviscerated by the fact that the violence was pre-planned, as confirmed by the FBI, Department of Justice, and even the House managers.
Not the result of the speech at all.
Several of my colleagues at the House managers got up and spoke about the proceeding in the House being like a grand jury proceeding.
I've been in grand jury proceedings.
I have run grand juries.
In grand jury proceedings, you call witnesses.
You hear evidence.
You make transcripts.
You take affidavits.
You develop physical evidence.
You hear reports from police officers.
You hear forensic analysis from scientists.
In fact, you invite the target of the grand jury to come in and testify if he or she pleases to be heard By the grand jury.
Which one of those things happened in the House prior to the impeachment article?
I don't believe any of them happened.
So the suggestion that what happened in the House was anything at all like a grand jury investigating a case and preferring it for prosecution is complete nonsense.
And if the House managers are trying to fool you about that, you must ask yourself, what else are they trying to fool
you about?
Let's look more closely at the President's speech.
We have mentioned this line before, but it is so critical we need to talk about it again.
The President asked that the attendees at his rally make their voices heard.
I know that everyone here will soon be marching over to the Capitol Building to peacefully and
patriotically make your voices heard.
The managers would have you believe that the president's supporters usually follow his every word.
But in this case, imputed some imaginary meaning to them while ignoring his most clear instructions.
President Trump said, peacefully and patriotically make your voices heard.
And the House managers heard, took from that, go down to the Capitol and riot.
So you are supposed to put yourselves in the heads of the people who hear, peacefully and patriotically make your voices heard, and conclude that those words do not mean what the President said.
More than that, the President criticized the destruction wrought by left-wing anarchists and rioters.
He told his supporters that they build, they don't destroy.
If this happened to the Democrats, there'd be hell all over the country going on.
There'd be hell all over the country.
But just remember this.
You're stronger.
You're smarter.
You've got more going than anybody.
And they try and demean everybody having to do with us.
And you're the real people.
You're the people that built this nation.
You're not the people that tore down our nation.
Is it possible Listening to those words in the proper cadence without them being edited or the sound changed so that they're indistinguishable or sounds as though the crowd is right there, but listening to it as you have here unedited by us, is it possible that President Trump's disdain for political violence could be any clearer to the persons listening as he was speaking?
Is it possible that his words could have been misunderstood?
I suggest to you, that is impossible.
Now the House Manager said the President told the crowd, quote, you have to get out your people to fight.
The House Manager's claim is that the President of the United States was telling the audience to get each other to physically fight.
But that is not what the President said.
The people who should fight, he said, were members of Congress.
If they don't fight, what the President said is, what should the rally attendees do?
If members of Congress wouldn't fight for the principles they held dear, what was it that the President specifically told his supporters at that rally he wanted them to do?
He wanted them to support primary challenges.
Now, nobody in this chamber is anxious to have a primary challenge.
That is one truism I think I can say with some certainty.
But that's the way we operate in this country.
When the people of a state want to change their representatives and their senators, they use the electoral process.
President Trump told his listeners that if their members of Congress won't fight for their views, then go back home and find others that will.
That's what President Trump said.
The people who should fight were the members of Congress.
You have to get your people to fight.
He told them.
You have to get your people to fight.
And if they don't fight, we have to primary the hell out of the ones that don't fight.
You primary them.
We're going to let you know who they are.
I can already tell you, frankly.
It is pretty stark contrast when you watch that video, isn't it?
When you see the House manager tell you, and I don't know if we're under oath here, but when I walked into this room I sure as heck felt I was under oath and that I was speaking not only to the Senator of the United States but before the entire world and with God watching.
A House manager got up here and told you that the President of the United States on January the 6th, 2021, told the crowd that they had to go and fight.
And the implication that they wanted you to draw was that he was sending them down to Capitol Hill to go and breach the building and trash the very sacred halls of Congress.
But we now know that is not at all Anything near what the President said.
What the President said was, if you can't get your members of Congress to do as you would like them to do, you primary them.
That's the American way.
The first way that the House managers presented and wanted you to conclude, that's the criminal way.
But what the President said was the American way.
Again, House managers manipulated President Trump's words.
I can't stand here and pretend to tell you that I know every time from all those videos that the House managers manipulated what the President said, put up evidence that was not with the foundation of correctness and admissibility we expect I can't tell you that I picked up every one.
I don't think Mr. Vanderveen or Mr. Schoen or any of the others that worked with us can tell you that.
But what I can tell you is that there were an awful lot of times, and I know at least some of you were judges in previous lives, and if one of the lawyers was able to create the impression that one side intentionally presented false or misleading evidence, that judge would give an instruction called falsus in uno, falsus in omnibus.
False in one thing, false in everything.
In other words, if they're trying to fool you about one thing, not only might they be trying to fool you in something else, But under that maximum of the law, you may conclude they're
trying to fool you in everything else.
President Trump was immediate in his calls for calm and respect for law enforcement.
The House managers emphasized President Trump's tweet in the 6 p.m.
hour where he told crowds to, quote, go home in love and peace and remember this day.
What is it that they left out?
Well, the House starts their recitation of what President Trump said as far as the Aftermath of when the Capitol was breached at roughly 6 p.m.
What they don't tell you and didn't tell you and what you probably don't know because I think I'm the first one to say it in this forum At 2.38 p.m., President Trump urged protesters at the U.S.
Capitol to, quote, And before we run the graphic, I just want to point out to you, President Trump's speech ended at 1.11 p.m.
truly on the side of our country. Stay peaceful. And before we run the graphic,
I just want to point out to you, President Trump's speech ended at 1 11
p.m. So at 2 38 p.m. by the time word reaches the president that there's a
problem down here, he's out urging people to support the police, stay
peaceful, support our Capitol Police and law enforcement.
They are on the side of the country.
Stay peaceful.
Stay safe.
President Trump urged protesters at the U.S. Capitol...
Capitol to remain peaceful.
No violence.
Remember, we are the party of law and order.
Respect the law and our great men and women in blue.
President Trump's words couldn't have incited the riot at the Capitol.
Today's events make this clear.
Let's walk through the actual timeline.
At 11.15am, police security camera videos show crowds forming at First Street near the Capitol Reflecting Pool.
This is a full 45 minutes before President Trump even took the stage on January 6th.
Let me repeat that.
Violent criminals were assembling at the Capitol, over a mile away, almost an hour before the President uttered a single word on the ellipse.
You did not hear that fact during the hours and hours of the House Manager's presentation, did you?
When the President spoke, what did he call for?
He called for rally attendees to peacefully and patriotically make their voices heard.
For them to walk down Pennsylvania Avenue to cheer on members of Congress.
President Trump went on for more than an hour ending at 111.
Now why is this important?
Because of all of the events that I am about to describe, they all occurred before, before President Trump's remarks concluded.
At 12.49 p.m., the first barriers at the U.S.
Capitol grounds were pushed over and the crowd entered the restricted area.
At 11.05 p.m., Acting Defense Secretary Christopher Miller received open-source reports of demonstrator movements to the U.S.
Capitol.
At 1.09 p.m., U.S.
Capitol Police Chief Stephen Son called the House and Senate Sergeants-at-Arms, telling them he wanted an emergency declared and he wanted the National Guard called.
The point?
Given the timeline of events, the criminals at the Capitol Weren't there at the Ellipse to even hear the President's words?
They were more than a mile away engaged in their pre-planned assault on this very building.
This was a pre-planned assault, make no mistake.
And that is a critical fact.
Watch this.
Does anyone in this chamber honestly believe that but for the conduct of President Trump That a charge in the article of impeachment, that that attack at the Capitol would have occurred.
Does anybody believe that?
It was not some sort of spontaneous decision by a bunch of, quote, protesters to go up to Capitol Hill and storm Capitol Hill.
This was all planned out.
How much of it was planned?
How much of this was strategized ahead of time?
They are getting indications, some evidence that they've seen that indicates that there was some level of planning.
There appears to be premeditation.
FBI internal report the day before the siege, warning of a violent war at the Capitol.
The FBI issued a warning of a quote, war at the Capitol.
The FBI warned law enforcement agencies about this specific attack.
Be ready to fight.
Congress needs to hear glass breaking, doors being kicked in.
We developed some intelligence that a number of individuals were planning to travel to the D.C.
area with intentions to cause violence.
We immediately shared that information.
The FBI says two pipe bombs discovered near the Capitol on January 6th were placed there the night before.
New video appears to show a person suspected of planting pipe bombs near the U.S.
Capitol the night before.
The FBI now says the bombs were planted the night before the Capitol siege, between 7.30 and 8.30 p.m.
They were planted the day before.
All go to the idea of premeditation and coordination among individuals.
This was a planned assault going after a castle.
So to answer the question of the House manager, does anybody believe that this would have occurred but for the speech from Donald Trump I do.
All of these facts make clear that the January 6th speech did not cause the riots.
The President did not cause the riots.
He neither explicitly or implicitly encouraged the use of violence or lawless action, but in fact called for peaceful exercise of every American's First Amendment rights to peacefully assemble and petition their government for redress of grievances.
In other words, the Brandenburg Standard is not made out.
The House managers admitted many facts are unknown.
Even Speaker Pelosi admitted not knowing the real cause of the violence when she called
for a 9-11-style commission to examine the facts and causes that led to the violence.
On the screen is Speaker Pelosi's call for the 9-11 Commission.
Let's touch now on the second absurd and conflated allegation in the House Manager's single article.
President Trump's phone call to Georgia Secretary of State Ben Roethlisberger, surreptitiously recorded, by the way, and included multiple attorneys and others on the call.
Let me point out the very obvious fact that the House Managers ignored.
The private call that was made public by others cannot really be the basis to claim that the president intended to incite a riot because he did not publicly disclose the contents of the call.
How could he have hoped to use this call to invite his followers if he had no intent to make the conversation public and indeed had nothing to do with it being secretly recorded?
The House Managers told you that the President demanded that the Georgia Secretary of State, quote, find just over 11,000 votes.
The word find, like so many others the House Managers highlighted, is taken completely out of context.
And the word find did not come out of thin air.
based on an analysis of publicly available voter data that the ballot rejection rate in Georgia in 2016
was approximately 6.42%.
And even though a tremendous amount of new first-time mail-in ballots
were included in the 2020 count, the Georgia rejection rate in 2020
was a mere 4 tenths of 1%, a drop-off from 6.42% to .4%.
President Trump wanted the signature verification to be done in public.
How can a request for signature verifications to be done in public be a basis
for a charge for inciting a riot?
With that background, it is clear that President Trump's comments
and the use of the word find were solely related to his concerns
with the inexplicable, dramatic drop in Georgia's ballot rejection rates.
Let's examine how the word find was used throughout that conversation.
Mr. Trump's first use of the word find was as follows, quote, That if you check the signatures, a real check of the signatures going back in Fulton County, you'll find at least a couple hundred thousand of forged signatures of people who have been forged.
And we are quite sure that's going to happen.
President Trump also used find as follows, quote, Now why aren't we doing Signature and why can't it be open to the public?
And why can't we have professionals do it instead of rank amateurs who will never find anything and don't want to find anything?
They don't want to find, you know, they don't want to find anything.
Someday you'll tell me the reason why.
Because I don't understand your reasoning.
But someday you'll tell me the reason why.
But why don't you want to find?
President Trump echoed his previous sentiments, again in the context of pursuing a legitimate and robust investigation into the lack of signature verification for mail-in and absentee ballots.
And why can't we have professionals do it instead of rank amateurs who will never find anything and don't want to find anything?
They don't want to find anything, you know.
They don't want to find anything.
They don't want to find, you know, they don't want to find anything.
Someday, you'll tell me why.
Because I don't understand your reasoning, but someday you'll tell me why.
But why don't you want to find?
We can go through signature verification and we'll find hundreds of thousands of signatures, and you can let us do it, and the only way you can do it, as you know, is to go to the past.
But you didn't do that in Cobb County.
You just looked at one page compared to another.
The only way you could do a signature verification is to go from one that signed it on November whatever, recently, and compare it to two years ago, four years ago, six years ago, you know, or even one.
And you'll find that you have many different signatures.
But in Fulton, where they dumped ballots, you will find that you have many that aren't even signed, Mr. Trump continued to use the word fine throughout the conversation.
Each and every other time in the context of his request that Mr. Raffensperger undertake a signature, a review of signature verifications and his concerns generally with ballot integrity and his reported electoral deficit, here are a few examples.
But why wouldn't you want to find the right answer, Brad?
Instead of keep saying that the numbers are right, because those numbers are so wrong.
Another example, quote, we think that if you check the signatures, a real check of the signatures, going back in Fulton County, You'll find at least a couple hundred thousand of forged signatures of people who have been forged, and we are quite sure that's going to happen."
Moreover, there was nothing untoward with President Trump, or any other candidate for that matter, speaking with the lead elections officer of a state.
That's why the Georgia Secretary of State took A call along with members of his team, one of whom decided to record it and release it to the press.
The only reason this conversation is being discussed in this chamber is because once again the media and their Democratic allies distorted the true conversation to mislead you and the American public.
So we have a complete lack of evidence For the article of impeachment presented by the House managers.
So why are we here?
Politics.
Their goal is to eliminate a political opponent.
To substitute their judgment for the will of the voters.
Why bother with the Senate trial of Donald Trump?
He's no longer president.
He'll be out of office anyway.
Is it to keep him from ever running again?
Make sure he can never run for office again.
Keep him from running for office again.
Donald Trump would not be able to run for office again.
Barring him from running for office again.
Disqualified from running for office.
Disqualify him from ever running from office again.
Disqualified from running for office again.
It's about focusing that he can never run again.
Remove him from ever running for office again.
Never be able to run for office again.
To ban former President Trump from running again.
If we don't impeach this president, he will get re-elected.
The goal is to eliminate a political opponent to substitute their judgment for the will
of the voters.
Thank you.
Thank you.
Members of the Senate, our country needs to get back to work.
I know that you know that.
But instead, we are here.
The majority party promised to unify and deliver more COVID relief.
But instead, they did this.
We will not take most of our time today, us of the defense, in the hopes that you will take back these hours and use them To get delivery of COVID relief to the American people.
Let us be clear.
This trial is about far more than President Trump.
It is about silencing and banning the speech the majority does not agree with.
It is about canceling 75 million Trump voters.
and criminalizing political viewpoints.
That is what this trial is really about.
It's the only existential issue before us.
It asks for constitutional cancel culture to take over in the United States Senate.
Are we going to allow canceling and banning and silencing to be sanctioned in this body?
To the Democrats who view this as a moment of opportunity, I urge you instead to look to the principles of free expression and free speech.
I hope, truly, that the next time you are in the minority, You don't find yourself in this position.
To the Republicans in this chamber, I ask, when you are next in the majority,
please resist what will be an overwhelming temptation to do this very same thing to the opposing party.
Members of the Senate, this concludes the formal defense of the 45th President of the United States
to the impeachment article filed by the House of Representatives.
I understand that there is a procedure in place for questions, and we await them.
Thereafter, we will close on behalf of President Trump.
Mr. President, we yield the balance.
I ask unanimous consent we take a 15 minute recess.
Without objection, the Senate will stand in recess.
Bruce Castor opened the week for the former president's legal team arguing about the constitutionality.
And this afternoon, closing the arguments, the case by the former president's attorneys on the one article of
impeachment, incitement of insurrection.
That article of impeachment passed by the House on January 13th, one week after the election.
After the attack on the U.S.
Capitol on January 6th.
There's a break here and the senators will return and the attorneys will return for questions from senators.
As this break continues, we're going to open up our phone lines to hear from you and ask you the question, did the defense team make their case?
In defending the former president, 202-748-8920 is the line to use.
8921 is the line to use for Republicans, 202-748-8920 for Democrats, and for Independents and others, the line to use, 202-748-8922.
for Republicans 2027488920 for Democrats and for Independents and others the line to use
2027488922.
So the defense, probably about two and a half hours of comments from the defense team as
the Republican leader Mitch McConnell makes his way out of the Senate chamber.
They were allotted 16 hours, as were the House managers.
House managers used a little over 11 hours, and here probably about two and a half hours or so from the team representing Donald Trump.
202-748-8921 for Republicans.
A couple of comments on Twitter.
This is reaction from, actually let's talk about what may be ahead.
And this is Billy House who reports for Bloomberg, covers the Senate for Bloomberg.
He says that Senators on both sides now are preparing for a new segment in Trump's impeachment trial that will allow them To ask lawyers questions.
Doesn't need to be noted that a lot of choreography on both sides is about to occur.
And our Capitol Hill producer, Craig Kaplan, tweeting a look at the card that Senators will fill out, naming the Senator and the question for the Council for the President or the House Managers, the Senate cards on the impeachment trial.
And those cards will be read, those questions will be read by the President pro tem who's presiding over the impeachment trial.
Let's go to our first caller in Phoenix, Stephen on the Independent Line.
Hi there.
Hi there.
I've been watching C-SPAN for a number of years.
Stephen, hold on just a second.
We're going to keep you on hold there.
Oh, we thought we had Ron Johnson there.
We did, but I missed him.
Go ahead with your comments, Stephen.
Sorry to interrupt.
Yeah, it's okay.
You guys have done an outstanding job.
Just want to let you know.
And, you know, I've been listening to people on the different lines, Republican and Democrat and others.
All I heard were Democrats.
None of them were who they said they were.
So my problem comes into being when I listen to people.
I like to hear the truth.
I have watched through many, many years.
I'm in my 70s.
I know what goes on because I've been a Democrat, been a Republican and now an independent.
And to be honest, what I see are nothing but this trial has become an outright joke to the American people.
It is an outright joke to hear people lie to the American people.
And I don't have to tell you who we're talking about because we all know.
I like listening to truth.
I like justice and the American way.
And do you think you heard that from the attorneys representing Donald Trump?
What I heard from them is that I have personally watched the last four years.
I understand where the President Trump's attorneys have come from.
They have spoken the truth.
The other side has spoken the lies, which is typical of that particular section of people.
Art DeMarc in Sewanee, Georgia, Democrats Line.
Welcome.
Hi, thanks for taking my call.
Go ahead.
So, yeah, thank you.
I do not believe that they have established their side very well.
I think that their defense is full of holes, and specifically in regards to just a lot of the things they're using to reinforce their defense, such as the court cases that they're referencing, which don't really have anything to do With the trial that's going on right now, they keep talking about intent and how can intent be established using the Bradenburg defense or the Bradenburg test, excuse me.
I think Trump's unwillingness and disinterest in even addressing the violence at the Capitol until hours after the fact sort of establishes that intent.
So, you know, that cuts that section out.
Their entire defense is based on selective editing and context and they immediately cut to, you know, a supercut, a 13-minute supercut of just individuals saying the word fight over and over and over again.
I don't know if they're implying we need to impeach the coronavirus or we need to impeach Madonna or we need to impeach, you know, other Just celebrities that they were showing that have nothing to do with this case.
It just seems like they're trying to weave a story of inaccuracies that loosely relate to the topic at hand, which is the incitement of violence during.
Uh, the January 6 certification of a free and fair election that was decided and ratified and certified by states, including my home state of Georgia, including Arizona, including, you know, all all of the different branches of government that are included in at the state level.
It's not just this individualized.
Idea that has been stripped from the American people.
It was certified.
It was ratified.
It is not a lie.
It is the truth.
So I really think that, you know, frankly, it's Swiss cheese what they're doing today.
I'm very interested to hear the questions that are going to come from the other senators.
Yeah, that's coming up next.
The attorneys for the former president are finished with their work.
The Senate in a break.
They're coming back in the next 20 minutes or so.
We'll continue with your comments and our question for you.
Did the defense, did the president's team, the former president's team make the case?
Sandy in Holly, Michigan, Republican line.
I just want to say that I'm heartbroken.
I believe that they have done everything that they wanted to prove to the American people.
Our President Trump has stood for law and order.
You know, the riots have been going on, and where has everybody been?
Nobody has been there to do anything.
And they're continuing.
They should have stopped when they got their Democratic president in, and they're still going.
Why?
The House managers, all I heard was for 14 hours, the same They played the same video.
I have shut the mainstream media, TV.
I don't watch news.
I don't read newspapers.
They're lies.
I gather my information through what I see from people who were there filming it, through Facebook, through YouTube.
They were the real journalists.
They know what happened.
They were there.
They stood there in the cold.
They listened to our president speak.
This is a mockery of the justice system.
And if these Republicans and congressmen want their lives to continue in the Congress and in the Senate, they need to step up.
I mean, we the people have spoken.
They're coming out now that there's 300 votes in different counties that weren't even involved in all the fraud.
But yet they're finding all these different ballots.
They never went to a court.
They never proved it.
OK, well, Sandy, let me ask you, given that this judicial proceeding in the Senate, this impeachment trial, was not to re-litigate the election, do you think that the managers here, excuse me, the defense team here, has made their case that exonerates The former president, Donald Trump, of the article of impeachment, an incitement of insurrection.
Do you think they made their case?
He didn't incite anything.
He didn't incite anything.
If you listen to the whole thing, which they didn't, the other side didn't, they pieced everything they wanted.
If you sat there like I did, I sat and listened to the whole The whole thing, the whole speech.
He never did say to incite anything.
He is a godly man, and a godly man is not going to tell you to go and hurt people.
He's not going to do it.
Okay, Holly in, excuse me, Sandy in Holly, Michigan.
Let's listen in.
Senator Hirono coming to the microphone.
The president's remarks on January 6th and we all know that there was months of a lead up to his remarks on January 6th that have to do with the big lie culminating in the January 6th speech where He had to have known that there would be violence.
They were prepared for violence, and he just lit the match.
And the Mr. Law and Order President, once the riots were going on, did absolutely nothing to tell the rioters and the insurrectionists, stop.
Nothing.
Also, the Mr. Law & Order Rule of Law President is the same guy who says, I could shoot a guy on 5th Avenue and get away with it.
Yeah, that's the Law & Order Rule of Law President.
That's all I have to say.
Senator, what do you think of the endless montages of Democrats saying, Fight!
Fight!
Fight!
Are these the same things?
Of course not!
Of course not.
What about them?
What about this?
What about that?
It has nothing to do with the real question, which is, did the president incite an insurrection that led to rioters at the Capitol ending up and seven people dying?
That is the question.
The focus is on what he did, not what everybody else did or said.
It was so childish.
It was so, to me, just totally pathetic and amateurish.
Were you surprised that his legal team brought up questions again about the validity of the election as well?
They were talking about, you know, they were arguing that President Trump was allowed to raise questions about that.
That was ridiculous because when they tried to argue that, the president was telling the crowd,
yes, you should wait until the election two years from now to go get the people who didn't agree with you.
At the same time as they're all waiting, thousands of them, he tells them to go march on the Capitol and fight like
hell.
So, I'm going to go ahead and get my phone out of the way.
So that was another, I just found that argument to be just, it was like an alternative universe.
recitation of what was really going on in that crowd and what their beliefs were, what they were prepared to do.
I'd like to ask why the president didn't do anything or say anything that said,
you rioters stop.
Stop what you're doing right now.
Stop right now.
He didn't do that.
I'd also like to know whether the President's team believes that there was a free and fair election and that Joe Biden is the duly elected President of the United States.
I don't know if those questions will be asked, but yeah, I'd kind of like to know.
Do you have a problem with some of the Republican senators seem to be working with the Trump's legal team having private meetings in between the sessions?
Well, that goes to show that this is an impeachment trial.
And so it is what the senators determined to be the president having incited an insurrection.
And whether to us that constitutes a high crime and misdemeanor leading to an impeachment conviction.
How do you think Americans outside the chamber are hearing this defense?
And they keep claiming that the House of Managers better.
Well, I hope that the American people will recognize that I would say most people have used words like, you know, we
need to fight back.
We need to stand up for our rights and all of that.
But how many of us have?
Thanks everyone.
Thank you, Senator.
cause thousands of people to march on the Capitol and proceed to destroy the
Capitol and beat police officers. Now, if they actually found someone who did
that, now that would be an apt comparison. But there was none of that.
Thanks, everyone.
Democrat Maisie Hirono, a member of the Judiciary Committee, is she, along with
her 99 other colleagues returning shortly for a question time of up to
four hours of the House managers and the former president's attorneys
questions that that could go, as we mentioned, up to four hours.
Some reaction from members of the House, Republican members here.
This is Mike Johnson.
of Louisiana saying truth from the Trump defense team today, highlighting the intellectual dishonesty and utter
shameless hypocrisy of his liberal Democrat accusers and the House managers. Jody Heiss of Georgia, the
video played by Trump's defense team, just did a slam dunk job exposing the Democrats' outrageous
record of hypocrisy and double standards. And the Senate trial has forced every major news
network to cover it. This impeachment will backfire on the left again. Adam Kinzinger of Illinois,
I should say, Whose words were used and who voted for impeachment and words were used by house managers.
Video from Adam Kinzinger was used as well.
Tweets today, happy birthday to our 16th president on Illinois' own Abraham Lincoln.
May we remember his leadership and his unwavering commitment to doing what was right and just.
We heard from Senator Hirono a moment ago.
Just before that, we didn't get all of it, we'll show it to you now.
Senator Ron Johnson, Republican of Wisconsin.
Sure.
I think the president's lawyers blew the house manager case out of the water.
They legally eviscerated them.
I think their arguments in when they showed the distortions of the tweets, the selective editing showed the reason why due process is important.
And they certainly proved The First Amendment applies to political speech probably more than anything.
So again, I think the President's lawyers just blew the House Manager case out of the water.
Thank you.
Ron Johnson there just a short while ago.
We will go back to your calls and comments about the defense and whether they made their case.
Roll call here reporting with maybe becoming more obvious as the minutes go by.
Senators in both parties predict the trial will end on Saturday with the defense team using just three hours of their allotted 16 hours of time.
To Julianne in Traverse City, Michigan.
Independent line, go ahead.
Hi, thanks for taking my call.
I mainly wanted to comment on the inappropriateness of the music that the defense played behind their video clips, the unnecessary war drums.
Why do you think they used that?
What was your take on that?
To sway emotional opinions, to present Just to make it seem like that we're on some kind of war path, particularly when Democrats spoke about the events of last summer, and then I noticed interspersed when Trump was speaking, sometimes it returned to uplifting tones.
I found that inappropriate.
Okay, to Gardiner, Maine, next on our Republican line, this is Heidi.
Hi, thanks so much for taking my call.
And for your representation of the events, I like how When they're not live, you're showing footage from both sides.
I think they clearly demonstrated there is no case here.
Trump has been nothing but pro-America, America first, law and order for his entire life, not just while he's been president.
And if nothing else, the hypocrisy stands out.
And the divide isn't going anywhere.
When I just watched the one Democrat that just spoke, Um, on camera, she saw something completely different than what Johnson just said, right?
So how do we mend?
How do we bridge the gap?
When, in my opinion, it was evident I was actually there, and it was one of the most wonderful days of my life.
We didn't know what was happening up there.
It was very peaceful.
It was like hanging out with a million of my closest neighbors.
They don't show you any of that.
There's a lot of footage from that day that really is not represented.
So, Heidi, you never made it up to the Capitol, though.
You never came up to Capitol Hill.
I did, but we walked.
We strolled.
We took photos.
We talked with the people.
We were literally strolling.
There were elderly people with walkers we were talking with.
When did you kind of become aware that things were turning bad?
We passed the U.S.
Supreme Court, and every time a group would pass there, we let our voices be heard and said, you know, stop this field.
There was a large chanting that was intermittent.
Every time we would pass—well, when I passed, I saw the group, but through footage I saw—anyway, that wasn't the target of Antifa.
I saw Antifa throughout the whole day.
It was clearly pre-planned, but you don't go up to somebody and say, hey, are you Antifa when there's a million people there?
It was very uncomfortable, and in hindsight, I think My God, there were so many flags.
There were so many obvious things that weren't right.
It was clearly a pre-planned event.
And as we got, I got very close, certainly wasn't going to go in.
It's not what we do.
We follow the law.
I wanted to be, I wanted to stand in front of my Capitol as a person, as a citizen of this country, and just be heard.
I wanted, I wanted them to see our faces.
We weren't there to scare or intimidate.
I just wanted them to know that we really, really felt this election was stolen from our president.
And I still do.
Go ahead, finish up.
Yeah.
Oh, and I think there's many of us, 75 million of us, that still do feel this election was stolen.
And that's a problem for America.
How do you vote again?
All right.
Thanks for your comments and your experience here on January 6th.
We're seeing senators return to the chamber.
They're going to return for up to four hours of questions.
For the attorneys on both sides, the House managers and the former president's team, Orting Washington is next.
Michael, go ahead.
We may be going back to the Senate floor shortly, but welcome your comments.
Hi, thank you for taking my call.
I just wanted to real quick respond.
You know, a caller earlier was mentioning this to the music that was being played over the clips.
It was blatantly propaganda music of the drums of war every time a Democrat is speaking, and the flowing, uplifting music whenever the former president is speaking.
It was clearly emotionally manipulative, and I think it's an insult to the intelligence of the American people to be doing that while simultaneously accusing the House managers of using edited footage.
Even when they went on to try to re-argue about the alleged stolen election and the president trying to find the votes, the only thing that I agree with that the president's lawyer said was, if they're trying to fool you about one thing, they're trying to fool you about everything.
OK, Michael, a tweet here from Burgess Everett of Politico on the eventual vote.
He's saying this, Senate abuzz.
Senate GOP is abuzz.
Over who is voting to convict.
Smart Money is still 5-6.
Privately, 5-6 Republicans believe that 5-10 Senators are weighing conviction votes according to the latest reporting.
McConnell's still saying nothing to colleagues.
Eyes are on Burr and Portman.
Montclair, New Jersey is next.
We'll hear from Robin on the Independent Line.
Hi, this is Robin.
Hi, I'm glad you take my call.
I just wanted to say that on TV, everybody is for with the Democrats, but the Democrats are wrong.
They are trying to frame Trump, which he had no reason to do, or did he do, have those people go to the Capitol building.
He wasn't at the Capitol building, so how are they going to charge him?
He didn't do anything at the Capitol building.
He didn't go there and go and harm any of the senators.
All right, Pittstown, Pennsylvania, Republican line.
John, did the attorneys make their case for the former president?
I really believe that President Trump did, and his attorneys made his case very good.
I'd also like to just throw something in there, a little curveball in there.
I noticed that last few of these, last two impeachments, including this one, when are we going to end the divide?
You know, like down the middle.
We already know what's going to happen.
All the Democrats are going to vote yes to impeach, and six are going to vote on Republican side no.
So I'm wondering, when do we come into the middle?
When do we meet in the middle?
You know, like, when is this going to stop?
You know, it's just so side at one side, side at one other side.
You know, it's too much right for us.
I mean, I agree with the attorneys.
Talk about COVID relief.
Let's talk about getting people back in school.
Let's help Americans out there that are struggling.
You know, I mean, that's how I feel.
Like, just watching this is very heartbreaking for the country and to see this nonsense, really.
Yeah, that's pretty much it.
I just wanted to throw that out there.
To Daniel, Redding, Connecticut, on our Democrats' line, what are your thoughts on the case made by the former president's attorneys?
Well, it was a pretty good case the way they laid it out, showing the full clips that the Democrats did very Very deceptive editing.
Another thing I will say is it's all about control.
You can't go outside.
You can't go to church.
You can't go to the store.
And now you can't vote for who you want in 2024.
That's all this is about.
And it's disgusting.
I hope the American people have the intelligence to see it.
And I just hope that these Democrats, who I am a Democrat myself, are held accountable. It's unbelievable. They know the
truth, they know the facts, yet they still try to mislead the American people.
We're a little over 20 minutes into a break here.
The legal arguments have ended.
The cases have been presented.
So up next is up to four hours of questions by Senators of the teams on both sides.
Those questions will be written by the Senators, handed to the President Pro Tem Patrick Leahy of Vermont, and he will likely read those questions.
Up to four hours of that, and it is increasingly more likely that we could see a final action, a final vote on the impeachment of former President Trump by tomorrow, sometime
of final vote tomorrow.
The schedule beyond these allotted four hours is unknown, but that's the way it's looking,
with the defense team taking about three hours of their time, and earlier in the week, of course,
wrapping up yesterday, the House managers using just over 11 of their 16 hours.
We'll continue with our comments and questions from you, our callers,
on whether or not the defense attorneys made their case.
Next up is Keisha in Tampa, Florida on The Other's Line.
Hey, can you hear me?
Yes, we can.
Go ahead, Keisha.
Hi, thanks for taking my call.
Okay, here's the thing.
And just to say, like, I'm not a Biden fan, I'm not a Trump fan.
In my opinion, whoever is there, we got to deal with them regardless.
I did listen to the whole thing and saw the videos and things like that.
I mean, let's be honest, there's editing on both sides.
But the only thing I keep going back to is everyone keeps saying Trump had no influence.
And it's just hard for me to get over that when you are seeing video going around of confirmed Trump supporters saying, we're here in the Capitol because of Trump.
I mean, so how can people keep saying he had no influence?
I'm confused.
Let's hear from James.
James is calling from Philadelphia on our Democrats' line.
Hi there.
I just want to make a strange, uh, point out something I've noticed here.
This so-called president of law and order, on his very last day in office, pardoned handfuls of lawbreakers and people that were convicted by groups of their peers.
The total law and order, you know, one person, one rule, and everyone follows it, American way.
And to ignore something like that and try to build a case off of law and order seems very strange to me.
I do want to say the defense prosecution made a case today.
I don't know if it was one that benefited President Trump.
They made a loophole series of arguments where they would say, you know, do as we say not as we do.
They would say, well, we can't use Edited clips or anything that seems deceiving whereas you know, and they said talk about context context context and then they proceeded to Defy their own rules and show series of clips that were hyper edited I mean super edited talk about an understatement This was not letting people finish the sentence and sometimes splicing the exact same thing over top of itself accompanied with dramatic music so, you know the idea that You know
They are representing a man that represents law and order, so much so that they feel the need to attack the prosecution on a personal level is exactly what one does when they don't have the facts or the arguments on their side.
So, these circular arguments saying that, you know, there's too much heated rhetoric, but the Democrats hate Donald Trump, and that's enough of the reason that brought them here.
I mean, it's just continuous, continuous Dave's next on the Republican line in Southbridge, Massachusetts.
Hey Dave, just mute your volume there and go ahead with your comment.
while accusing the other side of being hypocrites.
It's extremely unprofessional and juvenile.
And I know that it might please Donald Trump, but the American people are watching
and the senators in that room are not the only audience.
Dave's next on the Republican line in Southbridge, Massachusetts.
Hey Dave, just mute your volume there and go ahead with your comment.
Okay, I just wanted to say that, you know, I watched all the videos
that they presented on TV and I was seeing one of them with the gallo.
If Trump, you know, I do not think it was, you know, his fault at all.
This was pre-planned.
You know, how could they come up with a gallo, you know, the same day, you know?
So that's why I was thinking, it's like, how could it be true and convict the guy?
You know, he was a very good president.
He did good for our country, protected us, built the wall.
Help the military.
Got us out of stimulus checks.
I'll tell you, he is... All I have to say is, God bless him.
Still waiting for the Senate to gavel back in to begin the up to four hours of testimony.
We're going to show you next Bruce Castor, the lead attorney concluding the defense just a short while ago.
We'll break away if we hear from senators and obviously if the Senate gavels back in in the next three minutes or so.
Here's Bruce Castor with his closing arguments.
The goal is to eliminate a political opponent, to substitute They're judgment for the will of the voters.
Members of the Senate.
Our country needs to get back to work.
I know that you know that.
But instead we are here.
The majority party promised to unify and deliver more COVID relief.
But instead they did this.
We will not Take most of our time today, us of the defense, in the hopes that you will take back these hours and use them to get delivery of COVID relief to the American people.
Let us be clear.
This trial is about far more than President Trump.
It is about silencing and banning the speech The majority does not agree with.
It is about canceling 75 million Trump voters and criminalizing political viewpoints.
That is what this trial is really about.
It's the only existential issue before us.
It asks for constitutional cancel culture to take over in the United States Senate.
Are we going to allow canceling and banning and silencing to be sanctioned in this body?
To the Democrats who view this as a moment of opportunity, I urge you instead to look to the principles of free expression I hope, truly, that the next time you are in the minority, you don't find yourself in this position.
To the Republicans in this chamber, I ask, when you are next in the majority, please resist what will be an overwhelming temptation to do this very same thing to the opposing party.
Members of the Senate, this concludes the formal defense of the 45th President of
the United States to the impeachment article filed by the House of
Representatives.
I understand that there is a procedure in place for questions, and we await them.
Thereafter, we will close on behalf of President Trump.
That is Bruce Castor, the lead attorney on the defense team for the former president, Donald Trump.
The impeachment trial is set to resume shortly.
A new phase here, four hours, up to four hours anyway, of questions for the attorneys on both sides.
Here on C-SPAN 2, our coverage, our live coverage continuing, and when they gavel back in, we'll go back inside the Hi, thank you for taking my call.
I think it's obvious this is just a four plus year charade of Trump hate.
This is the culmination.
much as we can here as the gavel is probably pretty imminent. San Antonio,
Texas. Steve, go ahead with your comments. Hi, thank you for taking my call. I think
it's obvious this is just a four-plus year charade of Trump hate. This is the
culmination and I'm not gonna praise on Trump's defense team. I don't think
they did a very good job but they did enough of a job.
There wasn't a case.
How do you defend yourself against a case that makes no sense?
All right, Steve, an update on timing here as well.
Senator Braun, this is Alan He of CBS tweeting that Senator Braun, on tomorrow's impeachment proceeding timing, I think it's being moved to 10 o'clock, final vote, I think in the early afternoon.
My understanding, it starts at 10.
The full four hours will not be used to close by early afternoon.
We could have already voted.
So let's hear from Eric in Tonopah, Arizona, Republican lines.
We await the Senate's return.
Hello.
Hi.
Thanks for taking my call.
Sure.
I just want to say that, number one, I was there in D.C.
on January 6th, and I would just like to speak about how they like to say that people were armed.
Well, first of all, Muriel Bowser put signs up and made the entire D.C.
area a gun-free zone.
I was there for both days.
I was at the Alex Jones event the day before on the 5th, And there was one person who was disguised as a sheriff who got caught with a gun.
Other than that, nobody down there took weapons with them.
And those who did take weapons with them, I will say the reason that they did is because people on a daily basis in this country have been attacked by BLM and Antifa, just like what happened the night before.
But nobody wants to speak about that.
And another thing about D.C., nobody is saying anything about the Chinese population who was down there handing out pamphlets and getting signatures to vote against the Chinese Communist Party, saying, you can't do this.
You can't allow this to happen to America.
You know, I've marched all the way down the National Mall with a law enforcement officer from Long Island and a firefighter from Long Island.
And we had a discussion on the way down there.
We weren't headed down there for violence, but we sure as hell did walk into a fight.
And, I mean, what happened happened.
You can't control that many people at one time.
And really, I would just like for people to understand that.
And did you get involved in that fight, Eric?
Actually, my mother was hit in the chest by tear gas, and we were standing about 100 yards behind the front line.
And when we got there to the reflecting pool, the barricades were nowhere to be found.
They were nowhere to be found.
We thought that everybody was just invited up there onto the lawn, and there was a guy with a bullhorn on the tower where they had the cameras, and he was just waving people on, like, come on, come on, come on up here.
And when we got there, they were already firing flashbangs, And shooting tear gas into the crowd and what really upset the crowd was when we started seeing senior citizens up there in the front line being pepper sprayed right in the face for no reason.
Nobody was doing anything violent but it turned violent and I mean really that's what happened.
Eric, I appreciate you calling and letting us know your experience.
We wait for the Senate return, we go to Palm Bay, Florida, and this is Justin, Democrat side.
Hello, thank you for taking my call.
The way I see it is Trump's legal team failed to prove that Trump did not know this was going to happen with all the evidence that leading up to his speech and his plan that day.
That's what set it for me.
There's no way you couldn't have known that was going to happen with all of the open dialogue that was plastered everywhere.
And I feel that I'll let you go there.
The Senate's coming back.
Thank you.
Take their seats.
Senate will be in order.
And...
Pursuant to the provisions of Senate Resolution 47.
The Senate is provided up to four hours during which senators may submit questions in writing directed either to the managers on the part of the House of Representatives or counsel for the former president.
Majority leader.
President.
I ask unanimous consent that the answers within the four-hour question period be limited to five minutes each, and if the questions are directed to both parties, the times be equally divided.
Furthermore, that questions alternate sides for posing questions for as long as both sides have questions.
Without objection, so ordered.
Mr. President, I have a question at the desk, for the desk.
The senator will submit it.
The question from Senator Schumer and Senator Feinstein is directed to the House managers.
Here's the clerical read it.
Isn't it the case that the violent attack and siege on the Capitol on January 6th
would not have happened if not for the conduct of President Trump?
of up to five minutes.
To answer your question very directly, Donald Trump summoned the mob.
He assembled the mob and he lit the flame.
Everything that followed was because of his doing.
And although he could have immediately and forcefully intervened to stop the violence, he never did.
In other words, this violent, bloody insurrection that occurred on January 6th would not have occurred but for President Trump.
The evidence we presented at trial makes this absolutely clear.
This attack, as we said, didn't come from one random speech, and it didn't happen by accident, and that mob didn't come out of thin air.
Before the election, Donald Trump spread lie after lie about potential fraud.
In an election, remember, that hadn't even happened yet.
Months before the election took place, he was saying it was rigged, that it was going to be stolen.
All to make his supporters believe That the only way he was going to lose is if the election was stolen, if the election was rigged.
And what he did lose, he spent week after week inciting his supporters to believe that their votes had been stolen, and that the election was fraudulent, and that it was their patriotic duty to fight like hell to stop the steal and take their country back.
And remember, this is in the United States where our vote is our voice.
You tell somebody that an election victory is being stolen from them, that's a combustible situation.
And he gave them clear direction on how to deal with that.
For example, on December 19th, 18 days prior to January 6th, President Trump told them how and where to fight for it.
He first issued his call to action for January 6th.
This was a save-the-date sent 18 days before the event on January 6.
And it wasn't just a casual one-off reference or a singular invitation.
For the next 18 days, he directed all of the rage he had incited to January 6.
And that was, for him, what he saw as his last chance to stop the transfer of power, to stop from losing the presidency.
And he said things like, quote, fight to the death, and January 6th will be a, quote, wild and, quote, historic day.
And this was working.
They got the message.
In the days leading to the attack, report after report, social media post after social media post, confirmed that these insurgents were planning armed violence.
But they were planning it because he had been priming them, because he had been amping them up.
That's why they were planning it.
These posts, confirmed by reports from the FBI and Capitol Police, made clear that these insurgents were planning to carry weapons, including guns, to target the Capitol itself.
And yet, Donald Trump, from January 5th to the morning of his speech, tweeted 34 times, urging his supporters to get ready to stop the steal.
He even, on the eve of the attack, warned us that it was coming.
He warned us that thousands were descending into D.C.
and would not take it anymore.
And when they got here at the Save America March, he told them again in that speech exactly what to do.
His lawyer opened with, quote, let's have trial by combat.
That was Rudy Giuliani.
And Donald Trump brought that message home.
In fact, he praised Rudy Giuliani as a fighter.
And President Trump used the words fight or fighting 20 times in that speech.
Remember, you've just told these people, these thousands of people, that somebody has stolen your election, your victory.
You're not going to get the president that you love.
Senators, that is an incredibly combustible situation.
When people are armed, and they've been saying that they're mad as hell, and they're not going to take it anymore.
He looked out to a sea of thousands, some wearing body armor, helmets, holding sticks and flagpoles, some of which they would later use to beat Capitol Police, and told them that they could play by different rules.
Play by different rules.
He even at one point quite literally pointed the Capitol as he told them to fight like hell.
After the attack, You know, we've shown clearly, well that once the attack began, insurgent after insurgent made clear they were following the President's orders.
You saw us present that evidence of the insurgents who were there that day, who said, I came because the President asked me to come.
I was here at his invitation.
You saw that of the folks that were in the Capitol that day.
The time has expired.
Are there further questions?
Mr. President.
Senator from South Carolina, I have a question.
Thank you very much, Mr. President.
Submit it.
I send a question to the desk on behalf of myself, Senator Cruz, Marshall, and Cramer
to counsel.
Senator Graham for himself, Senator Cruz, Senator Marshall, Senator Cramer.
Thank you.
Submits a question for the Council for Donald Trump.
The clerk will read it.
Does a politician raising bail for rioters encourage more rioting?
Thank you.
Thank you.
Council has five minutes.
Yes.
Does Council yield back the rest of their time?
Council's time is yielded back.
Are there other questions?
Mr. President?
The Senator from Georgia.
I have a question for the desk.
I'll send it to the desk.
The senator from Georgia, Senator Warnock, has a question for the House managers.
The clerk will read the question.
Is it true or false that in the months leading up to January 6th,
dozens of courts, including state and federal courts in Georgia,
rejected President Trump's campaign's efforts House managers recognized for five minutes.
Mr. President, Senators, that is true.
That's true.
I want to be clear, though, that we have absolutely no problem with President Trump having pursued his belief that the election was being stolen Or that there was fraud or corruption or unconstitutionality.
We have no problem at all with him going to court to do it.
And he did.
And he lost in 61 straight cases.
In federal court and state court.
In the lowest courts in the land.
In the US Supreme Court.
He lost it.
He lost in courts in Pennsylvania, Arizona, Georgia, Michigan, Minnesota, Nevada, and Wisconsin.
All of them said the same thing.
They couldn't find any corruption.
They couldn't find any fraud.
Certainly nothing rising to a material level that would alter the outcome of any of the elections.
And there was no unconstitutionality.
That's the American system.
And so, I mean, it's hard to imagine him having gotten more due process than that in pursuing what has come to be known popularly as the Big Lie.
The idea that somehow the election was being stolen from him.
And we have no problem with the fact that he went to court to do all those things.
But notice, number one, the big lie was refuted, devastated, and demolished in federal and state courts across the land,
including by eight judges appointed by President Donald Trump himself.
We quoted earlier in the case what happened in Pennsylvania, where US District Court Judge
Matthew Brand said, in the United States,
the court has been presented with strained legal arguments without merit.
And speculative accusations in the US, this cannot justify the disenfranchisement
of a single voter, let alone all the voters of its sixth most
populous state.
Our people, laws, and institutions demand more than and went up to Judge Stephanos Bibas, who
is a Trump appointee, who was a part of the appeals court panel.
He said, the campaign's claims have no merit.
The number of ballots it specifically challenges is far smaller than the 81,000 vote margin victory, and it never claims fraud or that any votes were cast by illegal voters.
Plus, tossing out millions of mail-in ballots would be drastic and unprecedented, disenfranchising a huge swath of the electorate and upsetting all of the down-ballot races too, which incidentally weren't being challenged, even though it was the exact same ballot that had been brought.
The problem was when the president went from his judicial combat, which was fine, to intimidating and bullying state election officials and state legislators, and then finally, as Representative Cheney said, summoning a mob, assembling a mob, and then lighting the match.
for an insurrection against the Union.
When he crossed over from non-violent means, no matter how ridiculous or absurd,
that's fine, he's exercising his rights, to inciting violence.
That's what this trial is about.
And we heard very little of that from the presentation of the President's lawyers.
They really didn't address the facts of the case at all.
There were a couple propaganda reels about Democratic politicians that would be excluded in any court in the land.
They talked about the rules of evidence.
All of that was totally irrelevant to the case before us.
Whatever you think about it, it's irrelevant.
And we'll be happy, of course, to address the First Amendment arguments, too.
Mr. President.
Senator Vermeer.
Mr. President, I send a question to the desk.
The question is from Senator Collins and Senator Murkowski.
It's a very, very important issue.
It is for the Council, for the former president, Clerk O'Reid.
Exactly when did President Trump learn of the breach of the Capitol?
What specific actions did he take to bring the rioting to an end?
And when did he take them?
Please be as detailed as possible.
Thank you.
it again. Getting it back.
Exactly when did President Trump learn of the breach of the Capitol?
And what specific actions did he take to bring the rioting to an end?
And when did he take them?
Please be as detailed as possible.
The House managers have given us absolutely no evidence on the way the other on to that question.
We're able to piece together a timeline and It goes all the way back to December 31st, January 2nd.
There is a lot of interaction between the authorities and getting folks to have security beforehand.
On the day, we have a tweet at 2.38, so it was certainly sometime before then.
With the rush to bring this impeachment, there's been absolutely no investigation into that.
And that's the problem with this entire proceeding.
The house managers did zero investigation, and the American people deserve a lot better than coming in here with no evidence, hearsay on top of hearsay on top of reports that are of hearsay.
Due process is required here.
And that was denied.
Thank you.
Thank you.
Senator Navarro.
Mr. President, I send a question to the desk.
The senator from Nevada, Senator Rosen.
Um, submits a question for the House managers.
Thank you.
And the clerk will read it.
On January 6.
The anti Semitic Proud Boys group that President Trump had told to stand by
laid siege to the Capitol alongside other rioters, including one wearing a
Camp Auschwitz shirt.
Thank you.
Is there evidence that President Trump knew or should have known that his tolerance of
anti-Semitic speech, hate speech, combined with his own rhetoric could incite the kind
of violence we saw on January 6th?
Mr. President, Senators, Donald Trump has a long history of praising and encouraging
violence, as you saw.
He has espoused hateful rhetoric himself.
He has not just tolerated it, but he's encouraged hateful speech by others.
He has refused, as you saw in the September debate, that interview, to condemn extremist and white supremacist groups like the Proud Boys.
And he has at every opportunity encouraged and cultivated actual violence by these groups.
Yes, he has encouraged actual violence, not just the word fight.
He told groups like the Proud Boys, who had beaten people with baseball bats, to stand by.
When his supporters in the 50-car caravan tried to drive a bus of Biden campaign workers off the road, he tweeted a video of that incident with fight music attached to it and wrote, I love Texas.
When his supporters sent death threats to the Republican Secretary of State, Raffensperger, in Georgia, He responded by calling Mr. Raffensperger an enemy of the state, after he knew of those death threats.
And in the morning of the 2nd Million MAGA March, when it erupted in violence and burned churches, he began that day with the tweet, we have just begun to fight.
I want to be clear that Donald Trump is not on trial for those prior statements.
However, that hateful and violent and inappropriate they may be.
But his statements, the President's statements, make absolutely clear three important points for our case.
First, President Trump had a pattern and practice of praising and encouraging violence, never condemning it.
It is not a coincidence that those very same people, Proud Boys, organizers of the Trump Caravan, supporters and speakers of the Second Million MAGA March, all showed up on January 6th to an event that he had organized with those same individuals who had organized that violent attack.
Second, his behavior is different.
It's not just that it was a comment by an official to fight for a cause.
This is months of cultivating a base of people who were violent.
Not potentially violent, but were violent.
And that that prior conduct both helped him cultivate the very group of people that attacked us, it also shows clearly that he
had that group assembled, inflamed, and all the public reports ready to attack. He
deliberately encouraged them to engage in violence on January 6th. President Trump had
spent months calling his supporters to a march on a specific day, at a specific time, for a
specific purpose.
What else were they going to do to stop the certification of the election on that day, but to stop you?
But to stop you physically?
There was no other way, particularly after his vice president said that he would refuse to do what the president asked.
The point is this, that by the time he called the cavalry, cavalry, not Calvary, but Cavalry, of his thousands of supporters on January 6th, an event he had invited them to, he had every reason to know that they were armed, violent, And ready to actually fight.
He knew who he was calling and the violence they were capable of.
And he still gave his marching orders to go to the Capitol and, quote, fight like hell to stop the steal.
How else was that going to happen?
If they had stayed at the Ellipse, maybe it would have just been to violently fight in protest with their words.
But to come to the Capitol?
That is why this is different.
And that is why he must be convicted and acquitted.
and disqualified.
Mr. President, on behalf of Senator Scott of South Carolina and myself, I'd like to
submit a question to the desk.
Thank you.
Senator Terracee shall submit it.
Thank you.
Thank you.
The question is for counsel for the former president from Senators Hagerty and
Scott of South Carolina.
them.
I'll read the question.
Given that more than 200 people have been charged for their conduct at the Capitol on
January 6th, that our justice system is working to hold the appropriate persons accountable
and that President Trump is no longer in office, isn't this simply a political show trial that
is designed to discredit President Trump and his policies and shame the 74 million Americans
who voted for him?
Thank you.
Thank you, Senators, for that question.
That's precisely what the 45th President believes this gathering is about.
We believe in law and order and trust that the federal authorities that are conducting investigations and prosecutions against the criminals that invaded this building will continue their work and be as aggressive and thorough as we know them to always be, and that they will continue to identify those that entered the inner sanctum of our government and desecrated
it.
The 45th president no longer holds office.
There is no sanction available under the Constitution, in our view, for him to be removed from office
that he no longer holds.
The only logical conclusion is that the purpose of this gathering is to embarrass the 45th President of the United States, and in some way try to create an opportunity for Senators to suggest that he should not be permitted to hold office in the future, or at the very least, publicize this throughout the land to try to damage his ability to run for office when and if he is acquitted and
at the same time tell the 74 million people who voted for them that their choice was
the wrong choice. I believe that this is a divisive way of going about handling impeachment
and it denigrates the great solemnity that should attach to such proceedings. I
yield the remainder of my time, Mr. President.
Mr. President.
Senator from Massachusetts.
Mr. President, I send a question for the House managers to the desk because the President's lawyers did not answer the question.
The Senator will send the question.
Debate's not allowed.
The question is from Senator Markey with Senator Duckworth
to the manager of the part of the House of Representatives.
The clerk will read the question.
Exactly when did the president learn of the breach at the Capitol?
And what steps did he take to address the violence?
Please be as detailed as possible.
I just wish to respond.
I just wish to respond.
Thank you.
Thank you.
different ones.
Mr. President, Senators, This attack was on live TV, on all major networks, in real time.
The President, as President, has access to intelligence information, including reports from inside the Capitol.
He knew the violence that was underway.
He knew the severity of the threats.
And most importantly, he knew the Capitol Police were overwhelmingly outnumbered and in a fight for their lives against thousands of insurgents with weapons.
We know he knew that.
We know that he did not send any individuals.
We did not hear any tweets.
We did not hear him tell those individuals, stop.
This is wrong.
You must go back.
We did not hear that.
So what else do the President do?
We are unclear.
But we believe it was a dereliction of his duty.
And that was because he was the one who had caused them to come to the Capitol.
And they were doing what he asked them to do.
So there was no need for him to stop them from what they were engaged in.
But one of the things I would like to ask is we still have not heard and posed to you all the questions that were raised by Mr. Raskin, Manager Raskin, in his closing argument.
Why did the President Trump not tell the protesters to stop as soon as he learned about it?
Why did President Trump do nothing to stop the attack for two hours after the attack
began?
Why did President Trump do nothing to help protect the Capitol and law enforcement battling
the insurgents?
You saw the body cam of a Capitol Police officer at 4.29, still fighting.
4.29 after since what time?
One?
Two o'clock in the afternoon?
Why did he not condemn the violent insurrection on January 6th?
Those are the questions that we have as well.
And the reason this question keeps coming up is because the answer is nothing.
The Senator from Utah.
I send a question to the desk.
Senator from Utah, Mr. Romney, on behalf of myself and Senator Collins.
Thank you.
It's a question and.
Clerk will read it.
And I apologize The question is for both sides so the time will be evenly
divided.
When President Trump sent the disparaging tweet at 2 24 p.m.
regarding Vice President Pence, was he aware that Vice President had been
removed from the Senate by the Secret Service for his safety?
The House manager?
And time will be evenly divided between... of course, would the clerk read the
question again?
When President Trump sent the disparaging tweet at 2.24 p.m.
regarding Vice President Pence.
Was he aware that the Vice President had been removed from the Senate
by the Secret Service for his safety?
The House of Representatives managers are recognized two and a half minutes.
Thank you.
Well, let me tell you what he said at 2.24 p.m.
He said Mike Pence didn't have the courage to do what should have been done to protect our country and our Constitution.
The USA demands the truth.
And you know by now what was all over the media.
You couldn't turn on the television.
Couldn't turn on the radio.
Couldn't consume any media.
Or probably take any phone calls or anything else without hearing about this.
And also hearing about the Vice President.
And here's what Donald Trump had to know at that time.
Because the whole world knew it.
All of us knew it.
Live television had, by this point, shown that the insurgents were already inside the building, and that they had weapons, and that the police were outnumbered.
And here are the facts that are not in dispute.
Donald Trump had not taken any measures to send help to the overwhelmed Capitol Police.
As President, at that point, when you see all this going on, and the people around you are imploring you to do something, and your Vice President is there, Why wouldn't you do it?
Donald Trump had not publicly condemned the attack, the attackers, or told them to stand down, despite multiple pleas to do so.
And Donald Trump hadn't even acknowledged the attack.
And after Wednesday's trial portion concluded, Senator Tuberville spoke to reporters and confirmed the call that he had with the President and did not dispute Manager Cicilline's description in any way that there was a call between he and the President around the time that Mike Pence was being ushered out of the chamber.
And that was shortly after 2 p.m.
And Senator Tuberville specifically said that he told the president, Mr. President, they just took the vice president out.
I've got to go.
That was shortly after 2 p.m.
There were still hours of chaos and carnage and mayhem.
The vice president and his family were still in danger at that point.
Our commander in chief did nothing.
Council for the former president?
The answer is no.
Thank you.
At no point was the President informed the Vice President was in any danger because the House rushed through this impeachment in seven days with no evidence.
There is nothing at all in the record on this point because the House failed to do even a minimum amount of due diligence.
What the President did know is that there was a violent There was a violent riot happening at the Capitol.
That's why he repeatedly called via tweet and via video for the riots to stop, to be peaceful, to respect Capitol Police and law enforcement, and to commit no violence and to go home.
But to be clear, this is an article of impeachment for incitement.
This is not an article of impeachment for anything else.
So one count, they could have charged anything they wanted.
They chose to charge incitement.
So that the question, although answered directly, no, it's not really relevant to the charges for the impeachment in this case.
And I just wanted to clear up one more thing.
Mr. Castro In his first answer, may have spoke, but what he said was Mr. Trump had said, fight to the death.
That's false.
I'm hoping he misspoke.
Thank you.
Mr. President.
The Senator from Minnesota.
Mr. President, on behalf of myself and Senators Casey and Brown, I send a question to the desk.
Thank you.
Thank you.
Here's the clerk will report.
In presenting your case, you relied on past precedents from impeachment trials, such as
William Belknap's impeachment.
After what you have presented in the course of this trial, If we do not convict former President Trump, what message
will we be sending to future presidents and congresses?
I think they have enough for two hours each, but that's his question.
They have the balance for over two hours.
President Trump engaged in a course of conduct that incited an armed attack on the Capitol.
He did so while seeking to overturn the results of the election and thwart the transfer of power.
And when the attack began, he further incited violence aimed to his own vice president, even as demonstrated his state of mind by failing to defend us and the law enforcement officials who protect us.
The consequences of his conduct were devastating on every level.
Police officers were left overwhelmed, unprotected.
Congress had to be evacuated.
Our staff barricaded in this building, calling their families to say goodbye.
Some of us, like Mr. Raskin, had children here.
And these people in this building, some of whom were on the FBI's watch list, took photos Stole laptops, destroyed precious statues, including one of John Lewis.
Desecrated the statue of a recently deceased member of Congress who stood for nonviolence.
This was devastating.
And the world watched us.
And the world is still watching us.
To see what we will do this day, and we'll know what we did this day, 100 years from now.
Those are the immediate consequences, and our actions will reverberate as to what are the future consequences.
The extremists who attacked the Capitol at the President's provocation will be emboldened.
All our intelligence agencies have confirmed this.
It is not house managers saying that.
There are quite literally standing by and standing ready.
Donald Trump told them this is only the beginning.
They are waiting and watching.
See if Donald Trump is right that everyone said this was totally appropriate.
Let me also bring something else up.
I'll briefly say The defense counsels put a lot of videos out in their defense, playing clip after clip of black women talking about fighting for a cause or an issue or a policy.
It was not lost on me.
So many of them were people of color and women, black women.
Black women like myself, who are sick and tired of being sick and tired for our children.
Your children.
Our children.
This summer, things happened that were violent.
But there were also things that gave some of us black women great comfort.
Seeing Amish people from Pennsylvania standing up with us.
Members of Congress fighting up with us.
And so I thought we were past that.
I think maybe we're not.
There are long-standing consequences.
Decisions like this that will define who we are as a people.
Who America is.
We have, in this room, made monumental decisions.
You all have made monumental decisions.
We've declared wars, passed civil rights acts, ensured that no one in this country is a slave.
Every American has the right to vote, unless you live in a territory.
At this time, some of these decisions are even controversial.
But history has shown that they define us as a country and as a people.
Today, It's one of those moments, and history will wait for our
decision.
Thank you.
Senator Muto.
I send a question to the desk.
I will be back.
Senator Crapo, Senator Blackburn, Senator Portman.
And...
And the question is for the Council for the former president.
Clark will read.
Multiple state constitutions enacted prior to 1787 Namely, the constitutions of Delaware, Virginia, Pennsylvania, and Vermont specifically provided for the impeachment of a former officer.
Given that the framers of the U.S.
Constitution would have been aware of these provisions, does their decision to
omit language specifically authorizing the impeachment of former officials
indicate that they did not intend for our Constitution to allow for the
impeachment of former officials?
Good question.
And the answer is yes, of course they left it out.
The framers were very smart men.
And they went over draft after draft after draft on that document.
And they reviewed all the other drafts of all of the state constitutions.
All of them.
And they picked and chose what they wanted, and they discarded What they did not.
And what they discarded was the option for all of you to impeach a former elected official.
I hope that's answering your question.
Thank you.
Mr. President.
Senator from California.
Mr. President, I send a question to the desk.
Senator from California submits a question for the House managers.
the Carco report.
Thank you.
The 2020 election was built on lies and conspiracy theories.
How did this plot to unconstitutionally keep President Trump in power lead to the radicalization
of so many of President Trump's followers and the resulting attack on the Capitol?
Senators, Donald Trump spent months inciting his base to believe that their election was stolen.
And that was the point, that was the thing that would get people so angry.
Think about that.
What it would take to get a large group of thousands of Americans so angry to storm the Capitol.
That was the purpose behind Donald Trump saying that the election had been rigged, And that the election had been stolen.
And to be clear, when he says the election is stolen, what he's saying is that the victory, and he even says one time, the election victory, is being stolen from them.
Think about how significant that is to Americans.
Again, you're right, over 70 million, I think 74 million people voted for Donald Trump.
And this wasn't a one-off comment.
It wasn't one time.
It was over and over and over and over and over again.
with a purpose.
And we're not having this impeachment trial here because Donald Trump contested the election.
Thank you.
As I said during the presentation, nobody here wants to lose an election.
We all run our races to win our elections.
But what President Trump did was different.
What our Commander-in-Chief did was the polar opposite of what we're supposed to do.
We let the people decide the elections.
Except President Trump.
He directed all of that rage that he had incited to January 6th, the last chance.
Again, to him, this was his last chance.
This was certifying the election results.
He needed to whip up that mob.
Amped them up enough to get out there and try to stop the election results, the certification of the election.
And y'all, they took over the Senate chamber to do that.
They almost took over the House chamber.
There were 50 or so or more House members who were literally scared for their lives up in the gallery.
A woman who bought into that big lie died.
Because she believed the President's big lie.
This resulted in a loss of one of his supporters' lives.
A Capitol Police officer died that day.
Other of President Trump's supporters.
Two Capitol Police officers ended up taking their own lives.
Defense counsel, their defense is basically everything President Trump did is okay.
And he could do it again.
Is that what we believe?
That there is no problem with that?
That it's perfectly fine if he does the same thing all over again?
This is dangerous.
He's inciting his base.
He was using the claim of a rigged election.
We have never seen somebody do that over and over and over again, tell a lie, say six months ahead of time that it's a rigged election.
There is a dangerous consequence to that.
When you've got millions of followers on Twitter and millions of followers on Facebook, and you've got that huge bully pulpit from the White House, and you're the President of the United States, there is a cost to doing that.
People are listening to you in a way that, quite honestly, they're not listening to me, and they're not listening to all of us in this room.
And I just want to clear up, the Defense Council made a point about Something that I read earlier.
The Defense Council suggested I misspoke.
And I just want to clarify for the record that the tweet I referenced, let me read you the tweet directly.
If a Democrat presidential candidate had an election rigged and stolen with proof of such acts at a level never seen before, the Democrat senators would consider it an act of war and fight to the death.
Mitch and the Republicans do nothing, just want to let it pass.
No fight.
So Donald Trump was equating what Democrats would do if their election was stolen.
He said they'd fight to the death.
Why do you think he sends that tweet?
Because he's trying to say, hey, the other side would fight to the death, so you should fight to the death.
I mean, do we read that any other way?
Yep.
Senator from Missouri.
Mr. President, on my behalf and on behalf of Senator Kramer, I send a question to the
desk.
Thank you.
Thank you.
And following our procedure, the first one to respond after it's read will be the counsel
for the former president.
If the Senate's power to disqualify is not derivative of the power to remove a convicted
president from office, could the Senate disqualify a sitting president but not remove him or
her?
If the Senate's power to disqualify is not derivative of the power to remove a convicted president from office, could the Senate disqualify a sitting president but not remove him or her?
President, has two and a half minutes.
No.
Bye.
But I can't let this rest.
Mr. Castro attributed a statement the time before last that he was up here that Donald Trump had told his people to fight to the death.
I'm not from here.
I'm not like you guys.
I was being very polite and giving an opportunity to correct the record, and I thought that's exactly what he would do.
But instead what he did is he came up and illustrated the problem with the presentation of the House case.
It's been smoke and mirrors, and worse, it's been dishonest.
He came up and tried to cover when he got caught, as they were caught earlier today with all of the evidence.
Checking tweets, switching dates, everything they did.
And bear in mind, I had two days to look at their evidence.
And when I say two days, I mean they started putting in their evidence, so I started to be able to get looking at it.
That is not the way this should be done.
But what we discovered was, he knew what he was doing.
He knew that the President didn't say that to his people.
What he said was, if it happened to the Dems, this is what they would do.
In his speech that day, you know what he said?
He said, if this happened to the Democrats, if the election was stolen from the Democrats, All hell would break loose, but he said to his supporters, we are smarter.
We are stronger.
And we're going to do what they did all summer long.
So what he did was he misrepresented a tweet to you to put forth the narrative that is wrong.
It's wrong.
It's dishonest, and the American people don't deserve this any longer.
You must acquit.
Thank you.
So I'm going to get back to the question.
So under Article 2, Section 4, a president who is in office must be convicted before removal.
and then must be removed before disqualification.
Okay.
But if the president is already out of office, then he can be separately disqualified,
as this president is.
But these powers have always been treated as separate, which is why I think there have been...
Eight people who've been convicted and removed and just three of them disqualified.
And as you know, there's a totally separate process within the Senate for doing this.
The Constitution requires two-thirds vote for conviction, but for disqualification it's
a majority vote.
So people could vote to convict and then vote not to disqualify.
If they felt that the evidence demonstrated that the President was guilty of incitement to insurrection, they could vote to convict.
But if they felt that they didn't want to exercise the further power established by the Constitution to disqualify, they wouldn't have to do that and that could be Mr. President?
that's taken up separately by the Senate by majority vote.
Mr. President?
The senator from Massachusetts.
I send a question to the desk.
The senator from Massachusetts has a question for the House managers.
the clerk will read the question.
The defense's presentation highlighted the fact that Democratic members of
Congress raised objections to counting of electoral votes in past joint
sessions of Congress.
Thanks.
To your knowledge, were any of those democratic objections raised after insurrectionists stormed
the Capitol in order to prevent the counting of electoral votes and after the President's
personal lawyer asked senators to make these objections specifically to delay the certification?
Thank you very much, Mr. President, for the opportunity to respond to that.
The answer is no, we are not aware that any other objections raised in the counting of Electoral College votes, either by Democrats or Republicans, and this has actually been a kind of proud bipartisan tradition under the Electoral College, just because the Electoral College is so arcane and has so many rules to it, I think that My co-counsel on the other side had some fun because I was one of the people who took, I think, about 30 seconds in 2016 to point out that the electors from Florida were not actually conforming to the letter of the law because they have a rule in Florida that you can't be a dual office holder.
In other words, you can't be like a state legislator and also be an elector.
And so that was improper form.
But I think that Vice President, then Vice President Biden, properly gaveled me down and said, look, we're going to try to make the Electoral College work and we're going to vindicate the will of the people.
And that's pretty much what's happened.
And nobody has stormed the Capitol before or, as Representative Cheney, the Secretary of the Republican Conference, said, gone out and summoned a mob, assembled a mob, incited a mob, and lit a match, as Representative Cheney said, This would that all of this goes to the doorstep of the president.
None of it would have happened without him and everything is due to his actions.
This would not happen.
That is the chair of the House Republican Conference who was the target of an effort to remove her which was rejected on a vote of by more than two to one in the House Republican Conference when there was an attempt to remove her for voting for impeachment and becoming a leader for vindicating our constitutional values.
So, please don't mix up what Republicans and Democrats have done, I think, in every election for a long time to say there are improprieties going on in terms of conforming with state election laws, with the idea of mobilizing a mob insurrection against the government that got five people killed, 140 Capitol officers wounded, And threatened the actual peaceful succession of power and transfer of power in America.
If we want to talk about reforming the Electoral College, we can talk about reforming the Electoral College.
You don't do it with violence.
Mr. President, thank you.
My apologies to the Senator from Massachusetts for butting in.
I send a question to the desk for the former president's attorneys.
The question from Senator Cramer is for the counsel for the former president.
The clerk will read the question.
Given the allegations of the House manager that President Trump has tolerated anti-Semitic rhetoric,
has there been a more pro-Israel president than President Trump?
The clerk will now read the question.
The clerk will now read the question.
Thank you.
No, but it's apparent that nobody listened to what I said earlier today because the victorial speech needs to stop.
You need to stop.
There was nothing fun here, Mr. Raskin.
We aren't having fun here.
This is about the most miserable experience I've had down here in Washington, D.C.
There's nothing fun about it.
And in Philadelphia, where I come from, when you get caught doctoring the evidence, your case is over.
And that's what happened.
They got caught doctoring the evidence and this case should be over.
Senator from Vermont.
Thank you.
Senator from Vermont, Senator Sanders has a question for both the Council for the
former president and the House manager.
The clerk will read it, and following our procedure, the House managers will go first.
The House prosecutors have stated over and over again That President Trump was perpetrating a big lie when he repeatedly claimed that the election was stolen from him and that he actually won the election by a landslide.
Are the prosecutors right when they claim that Trump was telling a big lie or in your judgment did Trump actually win the election?
The House managers have up to two and a half minutes.
Are we moving?
Okay.
As we all know, President Trump did lose the election by 7 million votes, 306 electoral
votes.
Thanks.
By the time of the January 6 attack, the courts, the Justice Department, all 50 states across the country had done, agreed that the votes were counted, the people had spoken, and it was time for the peaceful transfer of power.
As our Constitution and the rule of law demands.
61 courts.
61 courts the President went to.
That's fine.
Appropriate.
He lost.
He lost!
He lost the election.
He lost the court case.
As Leader McConnell recognized the day after the electors certified the votes on December 14th, he said, quote, many millions of us had hoped that the presidential election would yield a different result.
But our system of government has processes to determine who will be sworn in on January 20th.
The Electoral College has spoken.
Patriotism.
Sometimes there is a reason to dispute an election.
Sometimes the count is close.
Sometimes we ask for a recount.
Go to courts.
All of that's appropriate.
I lost my first election.
I stayed in bed for three days.
We do what we need to do.
And we move on.
This was not that.
Because when all of these people confirmed that Donald Trump had lost, when the courts His, his Department of Justice, state officials, Congress, his vice president were ready to commit to the peaceful transfer of power.
The peaceful transfer of power.
Donald Trump was not ready.
And so we are all here because he was not ready.
Day after day, he told his supporters false outlandish claims of why this election was rigged.
Now let's be clear.
President Trump had absolutely no support of these claims.
But that wasn't the point of what he was doing.
He did it to make his supporters frustrated.
To make them angry.
Time has expired.
And counsel for the former president, you're recognized for two and a half minutes.
Of course.
The clerk will read the question again.
The House prosecutors have stated over and over again that President Trump was perpetrating a big lie when he repeatedly claimed that the election was stolen from him and that he actually won the election by a landslide.
Are the prosecutors right when they claim that Trump was telling a big lie, or in your judgment, did Trump actually win the election?
The counsel for the former president have two and a half minutes.
My judgment?
Who asked that?
I did.
My judgment's irrelevant in this proceeding.
It absolutely is.
What's supposed to happen here is the article of impeachment is supposed to be- The Senate will- Be in order.
Um...
The senators under the rules cannot challenge the content of the response.
The council will continue.
May I have the question read again, please?
The House prosecutors have stated over and over again that President Trump was perpetrating a big lie
when he repeatedly claimed that the election was stolen from him
and that he actually won the election by a landslide.
Are the prosecutors right when they claim that Trump was telling a big lie, or in your judgment, did Trump actually win the election?
In my judgment, it's irrelevant to the question before this body.
What's relevant in this impeachment article is, were Mr. Trump's words insightful to the point of violence and riot?
That's the charge.
That's the question.
And the answer is no.
He did not have speech that was insightful to violence or riot.
Now what's important to understand here is the house managers have completely, from the beginning of this case to right now, done everything except answer that question!
The question they brought before you.
The question they want my client to be punished by.
That's the questions that should be getting asked.
And the answer is, he advocated for peaceful, patriotic protests.
They're his words.
The House managers have showed zero, zero evidence that his words did anything else.
Remember, all of the evidence is, this was premeditated.
The attack on the Capitol was pre-planned.
It didn't have anything to do with Mr. Trump in any way what he said on that day on January 6th at that ellipse.
And that's the issue before this Senate.
Now on the issue of contesting elections and the results, The Democrats have a long, long history of just doing that.
I hope everybody was able to see the video earlier today.
Over and over again, it's been contested.
When Mr. Trump was elected president, we were told that he was hijacked.
Council's two and a half minutes has expired.
Oh, the senator from Wisconsin.
I'm sorry, I couldn't see who was... I understand.
I send a question to the desk for both parties.
I'll go to employers.
Senator from Wisconsin sends a question for both counsel for the former president and the house managers.
I...
Clerk will read it and the counsel for the former president will have the first two and a half minutes.
The House managers assert that the January 6th attack was predictable and it was foreseeable.
If so, why did it appear that law enforcement at the Capitol were caught off guard and unable to prevent the breach?
Why did the House Sergeant at Arms reportedly turn down a request to activate the National Guard,
stating that he was not comfortable with the optics?
Council, the former president is recognized.
Thank you.
Clerk will read the question again.
The House managers assert that the January 6th attack was predictable and it was foreseeable.
If so, why did it appear that law enforcement at the Capitol were caught off guard and unable to prevent the breach?
Why did the House Sergeant at Arms reportedly turn down a request to activate the National Guard, stating that he was not comfortable with the optics?
Holy cow.
That is a really good question.
And had the House managers done their investigation, maybe somebody would have an answer to that.
But they didn't.
They did zero investigation.
They did nothing.
They looked into nothing.
They read newspaper articles, they talked to their friends who know a TV reporter or something or something or another.
But Jiminy Crickets, there is no due process in this proceeding at all.
And that question highlights the problem when you have no due process, you have no clear-cut answers.
But we do know that there was, I think, a certain level of foreseeability.
It looks like from the information they were presenting, some law enforcement knew that something could be happening.
I was, in my presentation, we knew that the mayor two days before, before had been offered to have federal troops or National Guard deployed, beef up security here in Capitol Police.
It was offered.
So somebody had to have an inkling of something.
And my question is, who ignored it?
And why?
If an investigation were done, we would know the answer to that, too.
Thank you.
The House managers have two and a half minutes.
First, if Defense counsel has exculpatory evidence, you're welcome to give it to us.
We would love to see it.
You've had an opportunity to give us evidence that would exculpate the President.
Haven't seen it yet.
Everyone, the Defense Council wants to blame everyone else except the person who was most responsible for what happened on January 6th.
And that's President Trump.
Donald Trump.
And he is the person who foresee this the most.
Because he had the reports.
He had access to the information.
He as well had, we all know how he is an avid cable news watcher.
He knew what was going to happen.
He cultivated these individuals.
These are the undisputed facts.
The National Guard was not deployed until over two hours after the attack.
I heard reference to Mayor Bowser in Defense's presentation.
Mayor Bowser does not have authority over the Capitol or federal buildings.
She could not deploy National Guards to the Capitol.
That is outside of the jurisdiction of the Mayor of the District of Columbia.
At no point in that entire day did the President of the United States, our Commander-in-Chief, tell anyone, law enforcement struggling for their lives, insurgents who felt empowered by the sheer quantity of them, any of us in this building, or the American people, that he was sending help.
He did not defend the Capitol.
The President of the United States did not defend the Capitol of this country.
It's indefensible.
Mr. President.
Senator Morgan.
Mr. President, I send a question to the desk.
Thank you.
Senator Merkley submits a question for the House managers.
Thursday, the clerk will read the question.
If a president spins a big lie to anger Americans and stokes the fury by repeating the lie at event after event, and
invites violent groups to D.C. on a daily basis, on the day and hour necessary to interrupt the electoral college count, and does nothing to stop those groups from advancing on the Capitol, and fails to summon the National Guard to protect the Capitol,
And then expresses pleasure and delight that the Capitol was under attack.
Is the president innocent of inciting an insurrection?
Because in a speech he says be peaceful The house managers have five minutes
I I
Thank you.
You all ask a very important question, which is, given everything that the President did leading up to the election, after the election, and leading up to January 6th, all of the incitement of his supporters, whom he convinced with a big lie over and over that the election had been stolen from them and from him, and then once the mob had stormed the Capitol, The Vice President was in danger, the Speaker was in danger, the members of the House and the Senate, and all the staff here, the janitorial staff, the cafeteria workers, everybody, and all of the hot rhetoric that he spoke with, and then simply a few times said, stay peaceful.
Remember, he said stay peaceful when they'd already gotten violent.
When they'd already brought weapons.
When they'd already hurt people.
What he never said was stop the attack.
Leave the Capitol.
Leave immediately.
And let me be clear.
year.
The President's message in that January 6th speech was incendiary.
So in the entire speech, which was roughly 1,100 words, he used the word peaceful once.
And using the word peaceful was the only suggestion of nonviolence.
And President Trump used the word fight or fighting 20 times.
Now again, consider the context.
He'd been telling them a big lie over and over, getting them amped up, getting them angry because an election had been stolen from them.
There's thousands of people in front of him.
Some of them are carrying weapons and arms.
They're angry.
He's telling them to fight.
And President Trump's words in that speech, just like the mob's actions, were carefully chosen.
His words incited their actions.
And how do we know this?
For months, the President had told his supporters his big lie, that the election was rigged.
and he used the lie to urge his supporters not to concede and to stop the steal.
If you rob a bank and on the way out the door you yell, respect private property, that's not a defense to robbing
the bank.
Mr. President.
The Senator from Texas.
Mr. President, I send a question to the desk directed at both sides.
Okay.
Thank you.
Thank you.
The clerk will read it and the house managers will go first for two and a half minutes.
Out of their 16 hours, the house managers devoted all of 15 minutes to articulating
a newly created legal standard for incitement.
One.
One, Was violence foreseeable?
Two, did he encourage violence?
Three, did he do so willfully?
Is this new standard derived from the criminal code or any Supreme Court case?
While violent riots were raging, Kamala Harris said on national TV, they're not going to let up and they should not.
And she also raised money to bail out violent rioters.
Using the manager's proposed standard, is there any coherent way for Donald Trump's
words to be incitement and Kamala Harris's words not to be incitement?
Thank you Mr. President, Senators.
I'm not familiar with the statement that is being referred to with respect to the Vice President, but I find it absolutely unimaginable that Vice President Harris would ever incite violence or encourage or promote violence.
Obviously, it's completely irrelevant to the proceeding at hand, and I will allow her to defend herself.
The president's lawyers are pointing out that we've never had any situation like this before in the history of the United States.
And it's true.
There's never been a president who has encouraged a violent insurrection against our own government.
So we really have nothing to compare it to.
So what we do in this trial will establish a standard going forward for all time.
Now there are two theories that have been put before you.
And I think we've got to get past all of the picayune little critiques that have been offered today about this or that.
Let's focus on what's really at stake here.
The president's lawyers say, echoing the president, his conduct was totally appropriate.
In other words, he would do it again.
Exactly what he did is the new standard for what's allowable for him or any other president who gets into office.
Our point is that his incitement so overwhelms any possible legal standard we have that we've got the opportunity now to declare that presidential incitement to violent insurrection against the Capitol and the Congress is completely forbidden to the President of the United States under the impeachment clauses.
So we set forth for you the elements of encouragement to violence and we saw it overwhelmingly We know that he picked the date of that rally.
In fact, there was another group that was going to rally another date and he got it moved to January 1st.
He synchronized it exactly with the time that we would be in joint session.
And as Representative Cheney said, he summoned that mob, he assembled that mob, he incited that mob, he lit the match.
Come on, get real.
We know that this is what happened.
And the second thing is the foreseeability of it.
Was it foreseeable?
Remember Lansing, Michigan, and everything we showed you.
They didn't mention that, of course.
Remember the MAGA II march, the MAGA II rally.
They didn't mention that.
Violence all over the rallies.
The President cheering it on, delighting in it, reveling in it, exulting in it.
Come on, how gullible do you think we are?
We saw this happen.
We just spent 11 or 12 hours looking at all that.
I think the manager's time has expired.
Counsel for the former president has two and a half minutes.
Senator Cruz, I believe the first part of your question refers to the newly created Raskin Doctrine on First Amendment.
And he just in his answer actually gave you a new one, appropriateness.
The standard that this body needs to follow for law is Brandenburg v. Ohio, and the test really, the three-part test, really comes out of Bible believers versus Wayne County, to be specific.
The speech has to be explicitly or implicitly encouraged.
The use of violence, in other words, it has to be in the words itself, which is clearly it's not in the words itself.
That's step one.
They don't get past it.
Two, the speaker intends that his speech will result in use of violence or lawless action.
There's no evidence of that and it's ludicrous to believe that that would be true.
Third, the imminent use of violence or lawless action is likely to result in speech.
Also, they fail on all three points of the law as we know it and needs to be applied here.
I don't know why he said he never heard Kamala Harris say about the riots and the people rioting and ruining our businesses and our streets that they're not going to let up and they should not because we played it three times today.
We gave it to you in audio, I read it to you, and you got it in video.
That's what she said.
But it's protected speech.
Her speech is protected also, Senator.
That's the point.
You all have protections as elected officials.
The highest protections under the First Amendment.
And that First Amendment applies here, in this chamber, to this proceeding.
And that's what you need to keep focused on.
You need to keep focused on what is the law and how do we apply it to this set of facts.
It's your duty.
You can't get caught up in all of the rhetoric and the facts that are irrelevant.
You need to keep focused on what is the issue before you decide it based on the law, Brandenburgian Bible believers, and apply it to the facts.
And that requires you to look at the words.
And there were no words of incitement of any kind.
The Council's time has expired.
Thank you.
Mr. President?
Senator from Washington City.
President, I send a question to the desk.
The senator from Washington, Senator Murray, has a question for the house managers.
The clerk will read the question.
Thank you.
Thank you.
Eastern Time on January 6th, President Trump tweeted, these are the things that happen when a sacred landslide election victory is so unceremoniously and viciously stripped away from great patriots who have been badly and unfairly treated for so long.
Adding for rioters to go home with love and in peace.
What is the relevance of this tweet to President Trump's guilt?
The House managers are recognized for up to five minutes.
Thank you.
Senators, this was a key quote and a key statement by the President that day.
That horrific day.
Remember, the Capitol had been stormed.
It had been attacked.
People had yelled, hang Mike Pence.
People had gone after Speaker Pelosi.
People brought baseball bats and other weapons.
Many members of Congress and the Senate and the House were fearful for their own lives.
The President didn't call the National Guard.
His own administration didn't list him as somebody that they had spoken with to activate the Guard.
And he said, remember this day forever.
So if he was not guilty of inciting this insurrection, if this is not what he wanted, if it wasn't what he desired, By that time, the carnage had been on television for hours.
He saw what was going on.
Everybody saw what was going on.
If it wasn't what he wanted, why would he have said, remember this day forever?
Why commemorate a day like that, an attack on the U.S.
Capitol, for God's sake?
Why would you do that?
Unless you agreed that it was something to praise, not condemn.
Something to hold up and commemorate.
No consoling the nation.
No reassuring that the government was secure.
Not a single word that entire day condemning the attack, or the attackers, or the violent insurrection against Congress.
This tweet is important because it shows two key points about Donald Trump's state of mind.
First, this was entirely and completely foreseeable and he foresaw it.
And he helped incite it over many months.
He's saying, I told you this was going to happen if you certified the election for anyone else besides me.
And you got what you deserved for trying to take it away from me.
And we know this because that statement was entirely consistent with everything he said leading up to the attack.
Second, this shows that Donald Trump intended and reveled in this.
Senators, he reveled in this.
He delighted in it.
This is what he wanted.
Remember this day forever, he said.
Not as a day of disgrace as it is to all of us, but as a day of celebration and commemoration.
And if we let it, if we don't hold him accountable and set a strong precedent, possibly a continuation later on.
We will, of course, all of us remember this day, but not in the same way that Donald Trump suggested.
We'll remember the bravery of our Capitol and Metro police forces.
We'll remember the officer who lost his life.
and sadly the others who did as well, and the devastation that was done to this country
because of Donald Trump.
Mr. President, I send a question to the desk.
Silence.
Silence.
The Senator from Louisiana, Mr. Cassidy, has a question for both counsel for the former president and counsel for the
House.
The clerk will read it, and counsel for the former president will go first for two and a half minutes.
then the House of Representatives will have two and a half minutes.
Senator Tuberville reports that he spoke to President Trump at 2.15 p.m.
15 p.m.
Thank you.
He told the President that the Vice President had just evacuated.
I presume it was understood at this time that rioters had entered the Capitol and threatened the safety of Senators and the Vice President.
Even after hearing of this at 2.24pm, President Trump tweeted that Mike Pence lacked courage.
He did not call for law enforcement back up until then.
The tweet and lack of response suggests President Trump did not care that Vice President Pence was endangered or that law enforcement was overwhelmed.
Does this show that President Trump was tolerant of the intimidation of Vice President Pence?
Counsel, I have two and a half minutes.
Directly, no.
But I dispute the premise of your facts.
I dispute the facts that are laid out in that question.
And unfortunately, we're not going to know the answer to the facts in this proceeding, because the House did nothing to investigate what went on.
We're trying to get hearsay from Mr. Tuberville.
There was hearsay from Mr. Lee, I think it was two nights ago when we ended, where Mr. Lee was accused of making a statement that he never made.
But it was a report from a reporter from a friend of somebody who had some hearsay that they heard the night before at a bar somewhere.
I mean, that's really the kind of evidence that the House has brought before us.
And so I have a problem with the facts in the question, because I have no idea.
And nobody from the House has given us any opportunity to have any idea.
But Mr. Trump and Mr. Pence have had a very good relationship for a long time, and I'm sure Mr. Trump very much is concerned and was concerned for the safety and well-being of Mr. Pence and everybody else that was over here.
Thank you.
The manager and the prior of the House of Representatives has two and a half minutes.
Thank you, Mr. President.
You know, my counsel said before, this has been my worst experience in Washington, and
for that I guess we're sorry, but man, you should have been here on January 6th.
So the counsel for the president keep blaming the House for not having the evidence that's
within the sole possession of their client who we invited to come and testify last week.
We sent a letter on February 4th, I sent it directly to President Trump, inviting him to come and to explain and fill in the gaps of what we know about what happened there.
And they sent back a contemptuous response just a few hours later.
I think they maybe even responded more quickly to my letter than President Trump did, as a commander-in-chief, to the invasion And the storming of the Capitol of the United States.
But in that letter I said, you know, if you decline this invitation, we reserve all rights, including the right to establish a trial, that your refusal to testify supports a strong adverse inference.
What's that?
Well, Justice Scalia was the great champion of it.
If you don't testify in a criminal case, it can't be used against you.
Everybody knows that.
That's the Fifth Amendment privilege against self-incrimination.
But if it's a civil case, and you plead the Fifth, or you don't show up, then, according to Justice Scalia and the rest of the Supreme Court, you can interpret every disputed fact against the defendant.
That is totally available to us.
So, for example, if we say the President was missing in action for several hours, and he was derelict in his duty, and he deserted his duty as Commander-in-Chief, and we say that as Insider-in-Chief he didn't call off dogs, and they say, oh no, he was really doing whatever he can, if you're puzzled about that, you can resolve that dispute, factual dispute, against the defendant who refused to come to a civil proceeding.
He will not spend one day in jail, If you convict him, this is not a criminal proceeding.
This is about preserving the republic, dear Senate.
That's what this is about.
Setting standards of conduct for the President of the United States so this never happens to us again.
So rather than yelling at us and screaming about how we didn't have time, To get all of the facts about what your client did, bring your client up here and have him testify under oath about why he was sending out tweets denouncing the Vice President of the United States while the Vice President was being hunted down by a mob that wanted to hang him and was chanting in this building, Hang Mike Pence!
Hang Mike Pence!
Traitor!
Time of the managers are up.
Next question.
The Senator from West Virginia.
Mr. President, I'll send a question to the desk directed to the House managers.
Senator from West Virginia has a question for the House.
The house managers.
Thursday clerk will report. Would the president be made aware of the FBI and intelligence
information of a possible attack.
And would the president be responsible for not preparing to protect the Capitol and all elected officials of government with National Guard
and law enforcement, as he did when he appeared in front of the St. John's Episcopal
Church.
It's the responsibility of the president to know.
President of the United States, our Commander-in-Chief, gets daily briefings on what is happening in the country that he has a duty to protect.
Additionally, the President would have known, just like the rest of us know, all of the reports that were out there and publicly available.
How many of you received calls saying to be careful on January 6th?
To be careful that day?
I'm seeing reports.
It doesn't seem safe.
How much more the President of the United States?
Donald Trump, as our Commander-in-Chief, absolutely had a duty and a sworn oath to preserve, protect, and defend us, and to do the same for the officers under his command.
And he was not just our Commander-in-Chief.
He incited the attack.
The insurgents were following his commands, as we saw when we read aloud his tweet attacking the Vice President.
And with regard to the Vice President, I'm sure they did have a good relationship.
But we all know what can happen to one who has a good relationship with the President when you decide to do something that he doesn't like.
I'm sure some of you have experienced that when he turns against you after you don't follow his command.
You heard from my colleagues that when planning this attack, the insurgents predicted that Donald Trump would command the National Guard to help them.
Well, he didn't do much better.
He may not have commanded the guard to help them, but it took way, way too long for him to command the guard to help us.
This is all connected.
We're talking about free speech?
This was a pattern and practice of months of activity.
That is the incitement, that is the incitement, the activity he was engaged in for months before January 6th, not just the speech on January 6th.
All of it in its totality is a dereliction of duty of the President of the United States
against the people who elected him, all of the people of this country.
Thank you.
Mr. President, I send a question to the desk for the former President's Council.
Thank you.
Senator Velasco, Senator Sullivan has a question for the House Council and the clerk will report
the question.
Thank you.
Mr. President.
For the former President's Council, sorry about that.
Thank you, Mr. President.
The House Manager said yesterday that due process is discretionary.
Meaning the House is not required to provide, and indeed did not provide in this snap impeachment, any constitutional protections to a defendant in the House impeachment proceedings.
What are the implications for our constitutional order of this new House precedent combined with the Senate's power to disqualify from public office a private citizen in an impeachment trial?
Council has five minutes.
That's a complicated question.
Could I have that read again, please?
The House managers said yesterday that due process is discretionary, meaning the House is not required to provide and indeed did not provide in this snap impeachment Well, first of all, due process is never discretionary.
in House impeachment proceedings.
What are the implications for our constitutional order of this new House precedent combined
with the Senate's power to disqualify from public office a private citizen in an impeachment
trial?
Well, first of all, due process is never discretionary.
Good Lord.
The Constitution requires that an accused have the right to due process because the
power that a prosecutor has to take somebody's liberty when they're prosecuting them is the
ultimate thing that we try to save.
In this case, just now, in the last two hours, we've had prosecutorial misconduct.
What they just tried to do was say that it's our burden to bring them evidence to prove their case.
And it's not.
It's not our burden to bring any evidence forward at all.
What's the danger?
Well, the danger is pretty obvious.
If a majority party doesn't like somebody in the minority party, and they're afraid they may lose the election, or if it's somebody in the majority party and there's a private citizen who wants to run against somebody in the majority party, well, they could simply bring impeachment proceedings.
And of course, without due process, they're not going to be entitled to a lawyer.
They're not going to be entitled to have notice of the charges against them.
It puts us into a position where we are the kind of judicial system and governing body that we're all very, very afraid of.
From what we left hundreds of years ago, and what regimes all around this world that endanger us, that's how they act.
That's how they conduct themselves, without giving the accused due process.
Taking their liberty without giving them just a basic fundamental right under the 5th through the 14th applied to the states, due process.
If you take away due process in this country from the accused, If you take that away, there will be no justice and nobody, nobody will be safe.
But it's patently unfair for the House managers to bring an impeachment proceeding without any, again, without any investigation at all, and then stand up here and say, one, they had a chance to bring us evidence, And two...
Uh, uh, let's, uh, let's, uh, let's see what we can do about, uh, flipping around, uh, somebody's, uh, other constitutional rights to having a lawyer or to having, uh, uh, to see the evidence at all.
It just gets brought in without anybody, as it was here, without anybody having an opportunity to review it beforehand.
They actually sent it to us on the 9th, the day after we started this.
So, it's a really big problem.
The Due Process Clause applies to this impeachment hearing and it's been severely and extremely violated.
This process is so unconstitutional because it violates due process.
I'm not even going to get into the jurisdiction part.
The due process part should be enough to give anybody who loves our Constitution and loves our country great pause to do anything but acquit Donald Trump.
Thank you.
Mr. President?
Please, Senator from Connecticut.
Thank you, Mr. President.
Mr. President, I send a question to the desk for the House managers.
The Senator from Connecticut, Senator Blumenthal, has a question for the House managers and
the clerk will report the question.
Thank you.
Former President Trump and his attorneys have cited the Brandenburg v. Ohio case in support of their argument that the First Amendment protects Trump.
Did the Brandenburg case prohibit holding public officials accountable
through the impeachment process for the incitement of violence?
Thank you Mr. President, Senators.
So let's Let's start with the letter of more than 140 constitutional law professors, which I think they described as partisan in nature.
That's a slur on the law professors, and I hope that they would withdraw that.
There are very conservative luminaries on that list, including the co-founder of the Federalist Society, Ronald Reagan's former Solicitor General, Charles Freed, As well as prominent law professors across the intellectual, ideological, and jurisprudential spectrum.
And they all called their First Amendment arguments frivolous, which they are.
Now, they've retreated to the position of Brandenburg versus Ohio.
They want their client to be treated like a guy at the mob, I think they said, a guy in the crowd who yells something out.
Even on that standard, this group of law professors said there's a very strong argument that he's guilty even under the strict Brandenburg Standard.
Why?
Because he incited imminent lawless action, and he intended to do it, and it was likely to cause it.
How do we know it was likely to cause it?
It did cause it.
They overran the Capitol.
Right?
So even if you want to hold the President of the United States of America to that minimal standard and forget about his constitutional oath of office, but as I said before, that would be a dereliction of legislative duty on our part if we said all we're going to do is treat the President of the United States like one of the people he summoned to Washington to commit insurrection against us.
Okay?
The President swore to preserve, protect, and defend the Constitution of the United States.
That's against all commerce.
Domestic or foreign, that's what ours says, right?
Did he do that?
No, on the contrary.
He's like the fire chief.
He doesn't just say, go ahead and shout fire in a crowded theater.
He summons the mob and sends the mob to go burn the theater down.
And when people start madly calling him and ringing the alarm bells, he watches it on TV.
And he takes his sweet time.
For several hours he turns up the heat on the Deputy Fire Chief who he's mad at because he's not making it possible for him to pursue his political objectives.
And then, when we say, we don't want you to be Fire Chief ever again, he starts crying about the First Amendment.
Brandenburg was a case about a bunch of Klansmen who get assembled in a field, and they weren't near anybody such that they could actually do violent damage to people, but they said some pretty repulsive, racist things, but the Supreme Court said they weren't inciting imminent lawless action, because you couldn't have a mob, for example, Break out.
The way that this mob broke out and took over the capital of the United States of America.
And by the way, don't compare him to one of those Klansmen in the field.
Asserting their First Amendment rights?
Assume that he were the chief of police of the town who went down to that rally and started calling for, you know, a rally at the city hall, and then nurturing that mob, cultivating that mob, pulling them in over a period of weeks and days, naming the date and the time and the place, riling them up beforehand, and then just saying, be my guest.
Go and stop the steal.
Come on.
Back to Tom Paine.
Use your common sense.
Use your common sense.
That's the standard of proof we want.
They're already treating their client like he's a criminal defendant.
They're talking about beyond a reasonable doubt.
They think that we're making a criminal case here.
My friends, the former president is not going to spend one hour or one minute in jail.
This is about protecting our republic and articulating and defining the standards of presidential conduct.
And if you want this to be a standard for totally appropriate presidential conduct going forward, be my guest.
But we're headed for a very different kind of country at that point.
I send a question to the desk.
I'm going to start the video.
The clerk will read the question.
The House managers single article of impeachment is centered on the accusation that President Trump
singularly incited a crowd into a riot.
it.
Didn't the House managers contradict their own charge by outlining the premeditated nature
and planning of this event, and by also showing the crowd was gathered at the Capitol even
before the speech started, and barriers were pushed over some 20 minutes before the conclusion
of President Trump's speech?
.
The House managers contradicted their own charge by outlining the premeditated nature and planning of this event, and by also showing the crowd gathered at the Capitol even before the speech started, and barriers were pushed over some 20 minutes before the conclusion of President Trump's speech.
The answer is yes.
And I want to take the rest of my time to go back to the last question because it was completely missed by the House managers.
Brandenburg v. Ohio is an incitement case.
It's not an elected official case.
That's wood and bond.
And the whole problem that the House managers have in understanding the First Amendment argument here is that elected officials are different than everybody else.
He's talking about fire chiefs.
Fire chiefs are not elected officials.
Police officers aren't elected officials.
Elected officials have a different, a higher standard From the holdings that I gave you, the highest protections, I should say.
It's not a higher standard, it's a higher protection to your speech because of the importance of political dialogue.
Because of what you all say in your public debate about policy, about the things that affect all of our lives, that's wicked important stuff.
And you should be free to talk about that in just about any way that you can.
Brandenburg comes into play from a constitutional analyst perspective when you're talking about incitement.
Is the speech itself insightful to riot or lawlessness?
One of the two.
And the answer here is no.
And Brandenburg, through, again, Bible believers, require you to look at the words of the speech.
You actually can't go outside the words of the speech.
You're not allowed to in the analysis.
So all the time they're trying to spend on tweets going back to 2015, or everything they want to focus on that was said in the hours and the days afterwards, are not applicable or relevant To the scholastic inquiry as to how the First Amendment is applied in this chamber in this proceeding.
And so again, you need to be focused on what's the law?
And then how do we apply it to this set of facts?
And so it's important to have that understanding that elected officials and fire chiefs are treated differently under First Amendment law.
And that's to the benefit of you all, which is to the benefit of us all.
Because we do want you to be able to speak freely without fear that the majority party is going to come in and impeach you or come in and prosecute you.
To try to take away your seat where you sit now.
That's not what the Constitution says should be done.
But yes, they do.
They do contradict themselves, of course.
Thank you.
Mr. President.
Mr. Senator from Maryland.
I send a question to the desk for the House managers.
The Senator from Maryland, Senator Van Hollen, has a question.
has a question for the managers.
The clerk will report the question.
Would you please respond to the answer that was just given by the former president's counsel.
Mr. President, thank you.
I'm not quite sure which question the Senator was referring to, but let me quickly just dispense of the Council's invocation again of Bond versus Floyd.
This is a case I know well, and I thank him for raising it.
Julian Bond was a friend of mine.
He was a colleague of mine at American University.
He was a great civil rights hero.
And in his case, he got elected to the Georgia State Legislature.
And as a member of SNCC, the Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee, the great committee headed up by the great Bob Moses for a long time, he got elected to the Georgia legislature and they didn't want to allow him to be sworn in.
They wouldn't allow him to take his oath of office because SNCC had taken a position against the Vietnam War.
And so the Supreme Court said that was a violation of his First Amendment rights not to allow him to be sworn in.
That's the complete opposite of Donald Trump.
Not only was he sworn in on January 20th, 2017, he was president for almost four years before he incited this violent insurrection against us.
And he violated his oath of office.
That's what this impeachment trial is about.
His violation of his oath of office.
Thank you.
Let's just be clear.
uphold the law and take care that the laws are faithfully executed.
Please don't desecrate the name of Julian Bond, a great American, by linking him with
this terrible plot against America that just took place in the storming of the U.S. Capitol.
I'm going to turn it over to my colleague, Ms. Plasske.
Thank you.
Let's just be clear. President Trump summoned the mob, assembled the mob, lit the flame.
Everything that followed was his doing.
And although he could have immediately and forcefully intervened to stop the violence, he didn't.
In other words, this attack would not have happened without him.
This attack is not about one speech.
Most of you men would not have your wives with one attempt at talking to her.
It took numerous trials.
You had to build it up.
That's what the president did as well.
He put together the group that would do what he wanted.
And that was to stop the certification of the election so that he could retain power
to be President of the United States in contravention of an American election.
Mr. President.
The Senator from Florida.
I send a question to the desk.
Thank you.
The question is from the senator from Florida, and it is to both sides.
The clerk will read the question and the house managers will go first for the first two and a half minutes.
Voting to convict the former president would create a new precedent that a former official
can be convicted and disqualified by the senate.
Therefore, is it not true that under this new precedent, a future House facing partisan
pressure to lock her up could impeach a former Secretary of State and a future Senate be
forced to put her on trial and potentially disqualify from any future office?
The House managers go first.
Mr. President.
President, Senators, three quick points here.
First of all, I don't know how many times I can say it, the jurisdictional issue is over.
It's gone.
The Senate settled it.
The Senate entertained jurisdiction exactly the way it has done since the very beginning of the Republic.
In the Blunt case, in the Belknap case.
And you'll remember both of them, former officials.
And in this case, we have a president who committed his crimes against the republic while he was in office.
He was impeached by the House of Representatives while he was in office.
So, you know, the hypothetical suggested by the gentleman from Florida has no bearing on this case because I don't think you're talking about an official who was impeached while they were in office for conduct that they committed while they were in office.
The counsel for the former president has two and a half minutes.
Thank you.
Could I have the question read again to make sure I have it right?
I can answer it directly.
Voting to convict the former president would create a new precedent that a former official can be convicted and disqualified by the Senate.
Therefore, is it not true that under this new precedent, a future House facing partisan pressure to lock her up could impeach a former Secretary of State And a future Senate be forced to put her on trial and potentially disqualify from any future office.
If you see it their way, yes.
If you do this the way they want it done, that could happen to the example there, a former Secretary of State.
But it could happen to a lot of people.
And that's not the way this is supposed to work.
And not only could it happen to a lot of people, it'd become much more regular, too.
But I want to address that, and I want you to be clear on this.
Mr. Raskin can't tell you on what grounds you acquit.
If you believe, even though there was a vote that there's jurisdiction, if you believe jurisdiction's unconstitutional, you can still believe that.
If you believe that the House did not give appropriate due process in this, that can be your reason to acquit.
If you don't think they met their burden in proving incitement, that these words incited the violence, you can acquit.
Mr. Raskin doesn't get to give you under what grounds you can acquit.
And so you have to look at What they've put on in its totality.
And come to your own understanding as to whether you think they've met their burden to impeach.
But the original question is an absolutely slippery slope that I don't really think anybody here wants to send this country down.
Thank you.
Thank you.
The senator from Colorado sent a question to the desk.
I would note just for the, as the hour tends to get late, I would note for all
council, as Chief Justice Roberts noted on January 21st, 2020, citing the trial of
Charles Swain in 1905, all parties in this chamber must refrain from using
language that is not conducive to civil discourse.
The.
The Senator from Colorado, Senator Bennett, has a question for the House managers and
the clerk will read the question.
Since the November election, the Georgia Secretary of State, the Vice President, and other public
officials withstood enormous pressure to uphold the lawful election of President Biden and
the rule of law.
What would have happened if these officials had bowed to the force President Trump exerted
or the mob that attacked the Capitol?
And if they had, what would have happened?
What would have happened?
The House managers have five minutes.
Five minutes.
Five minutes.
Thank you.
.
I want to take a minute and remind everybody about the incredible pressure that Donald Trump was putting on election officials in different states in this country and the intimidation that he was issuing.
I want to remind everyone of the background of Donald Trump's call to one Secretary of State, the Secretary of State from Georgia, Mr. Raffensperger.
Donald Trump tried to overturn the election by any means necessary.
He tried again and again to pressure and threaten election officials to overturn the election results.
He pressured Michigan officials, calling them late at night and hosting them at the White House.
He did the same thing with officials in Pennsylvania.
He called into a local meeting of the Pennsylvania Legislature, and he also hosted them at the White House, where he pressured them.
And in Georgia, it was even worse.
He sent tweet after tweet attacking the Secretary of State, until Mr. Raffensperger got death threats to him and his family.
His wife got a text that said, quote, your husband deserves facing a firing squad.
Firing squad?
For doing his job?
Mr. Raffensperger stood up to him.
He told the world that elections are the bedrock of this society and the votes were accurately counted for Donald Trump's opponent.
Officials, like Mr. Sterling, warned Trump that if this continued, Someone's going to get killed.
But Donald Trump didn't stop.
He escalated it even further.
He made a personal call.
You heard that call because it was recorded.
The President of the United States told a Secretary of State that if he does not find votes, he will face criminal penalties.
Please, Senators, consider that for a second.
The President putting all of this public and private pressure on election officials, telling them that they could face criminal penalties if they don't do what he wants.
And not just any number of votes that he was looking for.
Donald Trump was asking the Secretary of State to somehow find the exact number of votes Donald Trump lost the state by.
Remember, President Biden won Georgia by 11,779 votes.
In his own words, President Trump said, quote, all I want to do is this, I just want to find 11,780 votes.
He wanted the Secretary of State to somehow find the precise number plus one of votes that he needed to win.
As a Congress and as a nation, we cannot be numb to this conduct.
If we are, And if we don't set a precedent against it, more presidents will do this in the future.
This will be a green light for them to engage in that kind of pressure and that kind of conduct.
And this could have gone a very different way if those election officials had bowed to the intimidation and the pressure of the President of the United States.
It would have meant that instead of the American people deciding this election, President Trump alone would have decided this American election.
That's exactly what was at stake.
And that's exactly what he was trying to do.
He intended, wanted to, and tried to overturn the election by any means necessary.
He tried everything else that he could to do to win.
He started inciting the crowd.
Issuing tweet after tweet.
Issuing commands to stop the count.
Stop the steal.
Worked up the crowd.
Sent to save the date.
So it wasn't just one speech or one thing.
He was trying everything!
He was pressuring elected officials.
He was riling up his base, telling them the election had been stolen from them.
That it had been stolen from him.
It was a combination of things that only Donald Trump could have done.
And for us to believe otherwise is to think that somehow a rabbit came out of a hat and this mob just showed up here on their own, all by themselves.
This is dangerous, Senators.
and the future of our democracy truly rests in your hands.
Thank you.
The Senator from Texas.
Mr. President, I send a question to the desk.
The Senator from Texas, Mr. Cornyn, has a question for both counsel for the former president
and the House manager.
The clerk will read the question.
And we'll recognize first the counsel for the former president.
The House managers have argued that if the Senate cannot convict former officers, then the Constitution creates a January exception, pursuant to which a president is free to act with impunity because he is not subject to impeachment, conviction, and removal and or disqualification.
But isn't a president subject to criminal prosecution after he leaves office for acts committed in office,
even if those acts are committed in January?
The senator from Texas's question raises a very free.
Very important point.
There is no such thing as a January exception to impeachment.
There is only the text of the Constitution which makes very clear that a former president is subject to criminal sanction after his presidency for any illegal acts he commits.
There is no January exception to impeachment.
There is simply a way we treat high crimes and misdemeanors.
allegedly committed by a president when he is in office impeachment,
and how we treat criminal behavior by a private citizen when they are not in office.
House managers.
Thank you for this excellent question.
Wouldn't a president who decides to commit his crimes in the last few weeks in office, like President Trump, by inciting an insurrection against the counting of electoral college votes, be subject to criminal prosecution by the U.S.
Attorney for the District of Columbia, for example, the Department of Justice?
Well, of course he would be.
But that's true of the President, regardless of when he commits his offenses in office.
In other words, that's an argument for prosecuting him if he tried to stage an insurrection against the Union in his third year in office or his second year in office.
You could say, well, he could be prosecuted afterwards.
The reason that the framers gave Congress The House, the power to impeach.
The Senate, the power to try, convict, remove, and disqualify was to protect the Republic.
It's not a vindictive power.
I know a lot of people were very angry with Donald Trump about these terrible events that took place.
We don't come here in anger, contrary to what you've heard today.
We come here in the spirit of protecting our republic.
And that's what it's all about.
But their January exception would essentially invite presidents and other civil officers To run rampant in the last few weeks in office on the theory that the House and the Senate wouldn't be able to get it together in time, certainly according to their demands for months and months of investigation, wouldn't be able to get it together in time in order to vindicate the Constitution.
That can't be right.
That can't be right.
We know that the peaceful transfer of power is always the most dangerous moment for democracies around the world.
Talk to the diplomats.
Talk to the historians.
They will tell you that is a moment of danger.
That's when you get the coups.
That's when you get the insurrections.
That's when you get the seditious plots.
And you know what?
You don't even have to read history for that.
You don't even have to consult the framers.
You don't have to look around the world.
It just happened to us.
The moment when we were just going to collect the already certified electoral college votes from the states by the popular majorities within each state, except for Maine and Nebraska, which do it by congressional district as well as statewide.
But otherwise, it's just the popular majorities in the states.
And we were about to certify it, and we got hit by a violent insurrectionary mob.
Don't take our word for it.
Listen to the tapes!
Unless they're going to claim those are fabricated too, and the people are yelling, this is our house now.
And where are the blank votes at?
Time is up.
And show us the votes, etc.
Thank you.
The Majority Leader?
Mr. President, it's my understanding there are no further questions on either side.
The Republican Leader?
That's correct.
I know of no further questions on our side.
I ask unanimous consent that the time for questions and answers be considered expired.
Without objection, so ordered.
Now, Mr. President, I ask unanimous consent that it be in order for myself and Senator McConnell to speak for up to one minute each, and then it be in order for me to make a unanimous consent to request as if in legislative session.
The objection is ordered.
The senator from New York.
Thank you, Mr. President.
And Mr. President, in a moment, I will ask the Senate to pass legislation that would award Capitol Police Officer Eugene Goodman the Congressional Gold Medal.
In the weeks after the attack on January the 6th, the world learned about the incredible, incredible bravery of Officer Goodman.
On that fateful day, here in this trial, we saw a new video, powerful video, showing calmness under pressure, his courage in the line of duty, his foresight in the midst of chaos, and his willingness to make himself a target of the mob's rage so that others might reach safety.
Officer Goodman is in the chamber tonight.
Officer Goodman, thank you.
Thank you.
But I just, before we move to pass this legislation, I want to be clear that he was not alone that day.
The nation saw and has now seen numerous examples of the heroic conduct of
the Capitol Police, the Metropolitan Police, the SWAT teams that were with us
on January 6th here in the Capitol protecting us. Our heartfelt gratitude extends to each and
every one of them, particularly now as members of the force continue to bear scars, seen and unforeseen,
from the events of that disgraceful day. Let us give them all the honor and
recognition they so justly deserve.
Thank you.
Thank you.
Mr. President, I'm pleased to join the Majority Leader's request.
January 6th was a day of fear for those who work here in the Capitol and of sadness for many more watching from afar.
But that awful day also introduced our nation to a group of heroes whom we in Congress were already proud to call our colleagues and to whom we owe a great debt.
In the face of lawlessness, the officers of the U.S.
Capitol lived out the fullest sense of their oaths.
If not for the quick thinking and bravery of Officer Eugene Goodman, in particular, people in this chamber may not have escaped that day unharmed.
Officer Goodman's actions reflect a deep personal commitment to duty, And brought even greater distinction upon all his brave brothers and sisters in uniform.
So I'm proud the senator is taking this step forward recognizing his heroism
with the highest honor we can bestow.
So Mr. President, as if in legislative session, I ask unanimous consent that the
Committee on Banking, Housing and Urban Affairs be discharged from further consideration of S-35
and then at the Senate proceed to its immediate consideration.
Without objection.
And the clerk will report.
S-35, a bill to award a Congressional Gold Medal to Officer Eugene Goodman.
Without objection, the committee is discharged, and the Senate now proceeds to the measure.
Mr. President, I ask unanimous consent that the Van Hollen substitute amendment, which is at the desk, be considered and agreed to, the bill as amended be considered read a third time and passed, and the motions to reconsider be considered, made, and laid upon the table.
Without objection, so ordered.
Now, Mr. President, I ask unanimous consent the trial adjourned until 10 a.m.
tomorrow, Saturday, February 13th, and that this also constitute the adjournment of the Senate.
▲
Export Selection