Trump’s lawyers argue free speech in impeachment defense

WASHINGTON — Lawyers for former President Donald Trump offered a defense Friday of his actions in the siege on the Capitol, charging that Democrats were holding an impeachment trial in the Senate seeking political vengeance.

Attorney Bruce Castor denounced the violent insurrection on Jan. 6 at the Capitol that left five dead, including a policeman. He called the violence “horrific” but said it was not prompted by a speech by Trump moments before.

The former president’s lawyers sought to distance Trump from the mayhem and said there was no “insurrection” cited in the article of impeachment passed by the House in December.

“Clearly, there was no insurrection,” Castor said.

“C’mon. How gullible do you think we are,” lead House impeachment manager Jamie Raskin, D-Md., said later during a testy questions-and-answers session.

The emotional day of arguments was capped by a resolution the Senate unanimously approved to recognize the bravery of Capitol police officer Eugene Goodman, seen on videotape leading violent rioters away from a hallway where Vice President Mike Pence was hiding with family.

Goodman was in the Senate chamber and received a standing ovation when he was honored with the Congressional Gold Medal.

The Goodman tribute came hours after Trump lawyers argued that the president did not incite the hateful crowd to storm the Capitol with a speech and could not be held accountable for the mob’s violent actions.

Another House manager, Joaquin Castro, D-Texas, said the attack did not come from a single speech but from “lie after lie” repeated by the president that the election was rigged and his supporters’ votes were being stolen.

Castro said the repeated rhetoric proved to be “combustible” for the many who followed and believed the president.

Short defense

House managers spent nine hours and 26 minutes this week laying out their case for the Senate to vote to convict Trump on the sole charge of incitement of insurrection.

They used videos from Jan. 6, some previously unseen, that displayed in graphic images the violence by Trump loyalists wearing tactical gear and brandishing an array of weapons. The video showed them hunting for lawmakers inside the Capitol.

The former president’s lawyers took about three hours Friday to offer their defense and to argue that the Senate should acquit because neither Trump nor his legal team was made aware of the previously unseen footage shown by the House managers, thus denying him the right to due process.

The Senate trial process also denied the former president of a fair chance to put on a defense, his attorneys argued.

Raskin, however, maintained Trump was never denied due process.

Raskin noted that Trump or his Republican supporters filed more than 60 lawsuits alleging voter fraud in state and federal courts, including the Supreme Court, where judges dismissed the cases, citing a lack of evidence to support the allegations.

Lawsuits were filed and dismissed in Nevada, Pennsylvania, Georgia, Michigan and other key states.

Meanwhile, Trump’s lawyers also accused House managers of taking out of context images and video footage of the former president and editing out his comments to the crowd to “stay peaceful, no violence. We are the party of law and order.”

In the case against Trump, House managers repeatedly used his comments to “fight like hell” as a clarion call to his supporters to storm the Capitol as Pence was officiating the House and Senate certification of Electoral College results.

Outside the crowd chanted, “Hang Pence.”

Dueling videos

Lawyer David Schoen argued that Democrats used “selective editing” to manipulate the footage, while defense lawyer Michael Van der Veen said Trump was exercising his First Amendment rights and Democrats were carrying out an unjust “political act of vengeance.”

But Trump’s lawyers also prepared a video montage of Democratic lawmakers, including President Joe Biden, Vice President Kamala Harris and several senators using the word “fight” in campaign speeches and interviews.

One snippet in the montage included Nevada’s Sen. Jacky Rosen, a Democrat, saying, “We’re gonna fight.”

That clip came from her 2018 Senate victory speech where she claimed she would fight for voting rights, sensible gun laws, Dreamers and for every Nevada student the right to graduate with a college degree without crushing debt and against attacks on Medicare and Medicaid.

During the questions-and-answers session, Rosen, a former synagogue president from Las Vegas, noted that anti-Semitic Proud Boys and one supporter with a “Camp Auschwitz” shirt were part of the crowd that laid siege to the Capitol.

“Is there evidence that President Trump knew or should have known that his tolerance of anti-Semitic hate speech, combined with his own rhetoric, could incite the kind of violence we saw on January 6th?” Rosen asked in a written question.

House manager Stacey Plaskett, a Democratic delegate from the Virgin Islands, told Rosen that Trump brought white supremacists and other groups together at a specific time at a specific place for a specific purpose.

Democratic House managers also said Trump picked the date of Jan. 6, when the Electoral College votes were set to be counted.

What did the president know?

Sen. Bill Cassidy, R-La., asked defense lawyers if they knew when Trump was told about the whereabouts and evacuation of Pence in the Capitol.

Sen. Tommy Tuberville, R-Ala., said he told Trump in a telephone call about Pence’s predicament about 2:15 p.m., about the time Trump sent tweets placing more pressure on Pence, Cassidy offered. Is that when the former president first knew?

Defense lawyers never directly answered the question, but Democrats said it was shortly between tweeting to further incite rioters.

After Friday’s portion of the trial, Cassidy, when asked if he was pleased with the president’s defense and their answers, told reporters: “not really.” But he said he remained undecided upon how he would vote Saturday.

Although the House voted in December to impeach Trump for his actions prior to the Capitol attack, many were paying close attention to the Senate trial.

“Trump’s lawyers are doing a horrendous job of trying to defend him against the article of impeachment, but in fairness to them, they don’t have a good case to make,” said Rep. Dina Titus, a Democrat and dean of the Nevada congressional delegation, who voted for impeachment.

Senators are expected to vote Saturday on whether to convict Trump on the charge of inciting an insurrection. A conviction requires a two-thirds majority, or 67 senators, which means 17 Republicans would have to join a united Democratic bloc.

Several GOP senators appeared willing to vote for conviction, and several former Republican leaders said a clear-cut case is there to convict Trump for inciting rioters to overturn a presidential election.

The most recent prominent Republican calling for a vote to convict is lawyer Ted Olson, the former U.S. solicitor general who also worked on the George W. Bush legal team in the Supreme Court challenge over the Florida vote in the 2000 presidential election.

A recent Ipsos public opinion poll for ABC News showed 56 percent of those surveyed said Trump should be convicted and barred from holding office again.

But the poll of 508 respondents taken last Saturday showed a near even split among those who declared themselves Democrats and Republicans, with nine out of 10 Democrats backing both actions and eight out of 10 Republicans opposing a vote to convict and barring Trump from holding future office.

The margin of error is plus- or minus- 4.8 percentage points.

Trump is the only president in history to be impeached twice. The Senate in 2020 acquitted him on charges of abuse of office and obstruction of Congress after Trump pressured the president of Ukraine to launch an investigation of Biden.

Both Rosen and Sen. Catherine Cortez Masto, D-Nev., voted to convict Trump on those charges.

Contact Gary Martin at gmartin@reviewjournal.com. Follow @garymartindc on Twitter.