Donald Trump’s impeachment lawyers have accused Democrats of waging a campaign of “hatred” against the former US President, as they sped through their defence of his actions and words before the January 6 insurrection at the U.S. Capitol.
Using just three hours out of the allotted 16 to present their case, the defence team denied that Mr Trump had incited the deadly riot and said his encouragement of followers to “fight like hell” was routine political speech. The lawyers played a 10-minute video of Democratic politicians repeatedly using the word “fight” in speeches, rallies, interviews and political ads.
Defence Lawyer Michael van der Veen intimated that, “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.”
Lead defence lawyer, Bruce Castor then argued that there was evidence that the attack on the Capitol was pre-planned, as hundreds of people assembled at the Capitol even before Mr Trump began his remarks. He said law enforcement agencies had advanced warnings that people attending the rally intended to assault the Congress.
“The President did not cause the riots, either explicitly or implicitly encourage 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 of redress for grievances. This was a pre-planned assault, make no mistake, and that is a critical fact.”
Lawyer Bruce Castor
Mr Castor also argued that Former President Donald Trump’s instructions to protestors at his January rally were 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’. Again, the House managers manipulated the president’s words.”
The lawyers replayed the video of his January 6 speech to a rally of his supporters showing that he used the words “fight” or “fighter” or “fighting” 20 times.
“These are the metaphorical and rhetorical uses of the word ‘fight’,” lawyer Michael van der Veen said. “We all know that.”
House Democratic prosecutors’ focus on only two of the 20 times Trump used the word in his speech is “hypocrisy”, he said, again showing video clips of Democratic politicians using the same phrases.
Lawyer David Schoen added that “there is significant reason to doubt evidence that house managers have put before us. 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.
“They manipulated video, time shifting clips and made it appear the president’s words were playing to a crowd.”
Lawyer David Schoen
Michael van der Veen further argued that the former President’s speech was protected by the First Amendment to the US Constitution, which protects free speech.
“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.
“There is no doubt Mr Trump engaged in constitutionally protected political speech that the House has improperly characterised as incitement of insurrection.”
Michael van der Veen
impeachment impeachment
