FACT CHECK
Trump’s defense made inaccurate claims about
antifa, the Jan. 6 siege and impeachment.
https://www.nytimes.com/live/2021/02/12/us/impeachment-trial
Donald J.
Trump’s lawyers, mounting their defense of the former president on Friday, made
a number of inaccurate or misleading claims about the Jan. 6 siege of the
Capitol, Mr. Trump’s remarks and the impeachment process itself. Here are some
of them.
On the
former president’s own words in his speech at the Jan. 6 rally.
Michael van
der Veen, one of the lawyers, misleadingly said that Mr. Trump did not express
“a desire that the joint session be prevented from conducting its business” but
rather “the entire premise of his remarks was that the democratic process would
and should play out according to the letter of the law.” But Mr. Trump
repeatedly urged former Vice President Mike Pence to “send it back to the
States to recertify” and noted that he was “challenging the certification of
the election.”
“Far from
promoting insurrection of the United States, the president’s remarks explicitly
encouraged those in attendance to exercise their rights peacefully and
patriotically,” Mr. van der Veen said. Mr. Trump used the phrase “peacefully
and patriotically” once in his speech, compared to 20 uses of the word “fight.”
On the role
of left-wing antifa activists.
Mr. van der
Veen also claimed that one of the first people arrested in connection with the
riots at the Capitol “was the leader of antifa.” That was a hyperbolic
reference to John E. Sullivan, a Utah man who was charged on Jan. 15 for
violent entry and disorderly conduct. Mr. Sullivan, an activist, has said he
was there to film the siege. He has referred to antifa — a loose collective of
antifascist activists that has no leader — on social media, but he has
repeatedly denied being a member of the movement, though he shares its beliefs.
The Federal
Bureau of Investigation has said there is no evidence that supporters of the
antifa movement had participated in the Jan. 6 siege.
On a
previous protest outside the White House.
Mr. van der
Veen equated the Jan. 6 siege to the protests at Lafayette Square in front of
the White House last summer, and presented a false timeline, claiming that
“violent rioters” repeatedly attacked Secret Service officers and “at one
point, pierced a security wall, culminating in the clearing of Lafayette
Square.”
There was
no breach. Law enforcement officials began clearing Lafayette Square after 6
p.m. on June 1, to allow Mr. Trump to pose, while holding a Bible, in front of
a church near the square. Additional security fencing was installed after those
events, according to local news reports and the National Park Service.
On Russian
interference in the 2016 election.
Similarly,
Mr. van der Veen compared Mr. Trump’s complaints and political language about
the 2020 election with concerns about the integrity of the 2016 election,
arguing that “the entire Democratic Party and national news media spent the
last four years repeating without any evidence that the 2016 election had been
hacked.” But American intelligence agencies concluded years ago that Russia
tried to interfere in the 2016 election. The Republican-led Senate agreed last
year that Russia disrupted that election to help Mr. Trump.
On the timing
of when the article of impeachment was delivered.
David
Schoen, another lawyer, misleadingly claimed that the House held on to the
article of impeachment until “Democrats had secured control over the Senate”
and “Representative Clyburn made clear they had considered holding the articles
for over 100 days to provide President Biden with a clear pathway to implement
his agenda.”
In fact,
Democrats had considered delivering the article to the Senate earlier, almost
immediately after it was approved, but Senator Mitch McConnell, then the
majority leader, precluded the possibility of an immediate trial in a letter
informing Republican lawmakers that the Senate was in recess and “may conduct
no business until January 19.” Mr. Clyburn made his suggestion of withholding
the article even longer, after Mr. McConnell had sent his letter.
On a
graphic the House managers were preparing for their case.
Mr. Schoen
also accused Democrats of presenting a “manufactured graphic,” referring to a
New York Times photo of Representative Jamie Raskin, Democrat of Maryland and
the lead impeachment manager, looking at a computer screen. The screen featured
an image of a tweet Mr. Trump shared stamped with an erroneous date. Left
unsaid was that the image was recreated because Mr. Trump has been banned from
Twitter and House managers could not simply show the retweet itself. Mr. Schoen
then acknowledged that House managers fixed the incorrect date before
presenting the graphic during the trial.
On whether
Mr. Trump had due process.
Mr. Schoen
complained once again that the impeachment did not afford Mr. Trump “due
process” — a point Mr. Trump’s lawyers and supporters had previously argued
during his first impeachment, and a point law scholars had dismissed.
There are
no “enforceable rights” to due process in a House inquiry, and while those
rights exist in the Senate trial, they are limited, said Frank O. Bowman III, a
law professor at the University of Missouri and an expert on impeachment. Former
President Andrew Johnson, for example, was impeached by the House before it
even drew up the articles.
— Linda Qiu
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