‘He can do this again’: Dems rest case against Trump warning of more attacks

 IMPEACHMENT

‘He can do this again’: Dems rest case against Trump warning of more attacks

 

The trial now turns to Trump’s defense team, which will begin presenting its case Friday.

 

By KYLE CHENEY and ANDREW DESIDERIO

02/11/2021 10:17 AM EST

Updated: 02/11/2021 05:52 PM EST

https://www.politico.com/news/2021/02/11/trump-impeachment-trial-day-3-468588

 

House Democrats rested their case against Donald Trump on Thursday insisting that the Senate’s refusal to punish him for inciting a mob to attack the Capitol would pave the way for a future commander-in-chief to subvert the democratic process, weaken America's standing in the world and stoke the recruitment of domestic terrorists.

 

In a sweeping summary of their evidence, the House prosecutors seeking Trump’s conviction in the impeachment trial said they had proven their charge that Trump incited the Jan. 6 insurrection by provoking his supporters to violently attack the Capitol while Congress was tallying the Electoral College votes, and later showed no remorse following an attack that left five people dead. That lack of contrition, they argued, underscores the urgency of a conviction.

 

“We humbly, ask you to convict President Trump for the crime for which he is overwhelmingly guilty of,” said Rep. Joe Neguse (D-Colo.), one of nine impeachment managers prosecuting the case. “Because if you don’t, if we pretend this didn’t happen — or worse, if we let it go unanswered — who’s to say it won’t happen again?”

 

The House managers’ two days of arguments captured the intense fury still felt over the desecration of the Capitol, which senators from both parties have at least partly blamed on Trump.

 

Still, Trump is almost certain to be acquitted, with the vast majority of Republican senators saying the House has not met the legal standard to charge Trump with inciting the violence, and that the Senate has no constitutional authority to try a former president. A conviction in the Senate requires support from two-thirds of the chamber, or at least 17 Republicans.

 

“Senators, America, we need to exercise our common sense about what happened,” said Rep. Jamie Raskin (D-Md.), the House’s lead impeachment manager. “Let's not get caught up in a lot of outlandish, lawyers’ theories here. Exercise your common sense about what just took place in our country.”

 

Aware of that dynamic, the managers argued Thursday that the rioters who stormed Congress did so at Trump’s direction and using his specific words, and said acquitting the former president would embolden him to do it again.

 

“I’m not afraid Donald Trump is going to run again,” said Rep. Ted Lieu (D-Calif.), an impeachment manager. “I’m afraid he’s going to run again and lose. Because he can do this again.”

 

Sen. Mike Rounds (R-S.D.), who opposes conviction on constitutional grounds, said Lieu’s statement was a “powerful” one, adding that he and many of his GOP colleagues wrote it down in their notes. But most Republicans have said that voters, not members of Congress, should decide whether Trump can serve in the Oval Office again.

 

The trial now moves to Trump’s defense, which has forecast a single, eight-hour day of rebuttals on Friday. That could potentially signal the end of the entire trial on Saturday, after senators have an opportunity to grill both sets of lawyers for four hours.

 

The House managers also spent their final day launching a preemptive strike on Trump’s team, which they expect to mount a defense that asserts Trump’s incendiary comments to his supporters on Jan. 6 are protected by the First Amendment, and that Congress has no jurisdiction over a private citizen. Despite a widely panned performance earlier this week on the constitutional debate, Trump attorney David Schoen said on Fox News Thursday that the defense team will stay the course.

 

“President Trump wasn’t just some guy who showed up at a rally,” Neguse continued. “He was the president of the United States, and he had spent months — months — using the unique power of that office, his bully pulpit to spread that big lie that the election was stolen.”

 

Democrats are working to persuade more than a dozen Senate Republicans to join them in convicting Trump, a difficult task that has appeared to make little headway beyond a group of six GOP senators who expressed openness to a conviction at the outset of the trial. They made their most forceful attempt on Wednesday afternoon when they aired a series of harrowing videos of the assault while showing that Trump continued pressing his supporters despite evidence that the Capitol was under siege.

 

Thursday’s argument from the House prosecutors was the culmination of their effort to argue that Trump primed his supporters to prepare for violence for months, ignited them on Jan. 6 with a rally speech, and then sat on his hands while the violence escalated, ignoring pleas for help even from his closest allies. The managers also sought to show that Trump has a history of promoting and glorifying violence against his political opponents, playing video clips of Trump at his campaign rallies dating back to 2015.

 

“You don’t have to take my word for it that the insurrectionists acted at Donald Trump’s direction,” said Rep. Diana DeGette (D-Colo.), another impeachment manager. “They said so. They were invited here. They were invited by the president of the United States.”

 

DeGette punctuated her remarks with videos and excerpts from FBI affidavits that included claims by the rioters that they believed Trump had given permission to storm the Capitol. Some gave television interviews explaining their presence was in response to Trump’s calls for action, and others posted footage of themselves screaming at police officers that Trump had told them to march on the Capitol.

 

New court filings and affidavits from the insurrectionists themselves have asserted that they viewed Trump as authorizing and activating them.

 

“We plan on going to D.C. on the 6th,” because “Trump wants all able-bodied Patriots to come,” said Jessica Watkins, a leader of the militia group the Oath Keepers, told associates, according to a court filing issued Thursday morning. And a lawyer for Patrick McCaughey, who was charged with assaulting a police officer at the Capitol, called Trump a “de facto un-indicted co-conspirator” in the Capitol assault.

 

Republican senators appeared unconvinced after the House managers rested their case.

 

“I don’t think anything has occurred that would change your mind if your view is you can’t impeach a former president,” said Sen. Roy Blunt (R-Mo.), the No. 4 GOP leader. “I actually thought some of the information presented — about how many other efforts were made to plan this [attack] — hurt their case.”

 

The managers got another boost late Wednesday when Sen. Tommy Tuberville (R-Ala.) revealed he spoke to Trump on Jan. 6, just as a violent mob closed in on the Senate, and informed Trump that then-Vice President Mike Pence had just been evacuated from the chamber.

 

“I said ‘Mr. President, they just took the vice president out, I’ve got to go,’” the Alabama Republican told POLITICO, saying he cut the phone call short amid the chaos.

 

Tuberville’s recollection was a new and potentially significant addition to the timeline of Trump’s reaction to the violent mob of his supporters as it stormed the Capitol. Tuberville’s recollection of the call is the first indication that Trump was specifically aware of the danger Pence faced as the mob encroached on the Senate chamber.

 

Just as significantly, the call occurred at virtually the same moment Trump fired off a tweet attacking Pence for lacking “courage” to unilaterally attempt to overturn the presidential election results — a tweet that came after Pence and his family were rushed from the Senate chamber.

 

It has long been unclear precisely when Trump learned of the danger that Congress and his vice president faced — though it was broadcast all over live television — but Tuberville’s claim would mark a specific moment Trump was notified that Pence had to be evacuated for his own safety. House managers say the Trump-Tuberville call took place shortly after 2 p.m. Pence was evacuated from the chamber at about 2:15 p.m., and Trump sent his tweet attacking Pence at 2:24 p.m. The entire Senate was cleared by about 2:30 p.m.

 

There is still no indication whether the House impeachment managers intend to call witnesses to bolster their argument, a decision they do not have to finalize until after the Trump defense presents its rebuttal to their case. Senate Democrats have expressed little appetite for dragging out the trial with a slate of witness testimony, especially with Trump’s acquittal nearly certain.

 

“It feels like, to me, we’re done,” Sen. Elizabeth Warren (D-Mass.) said bluntly after Thursday’s session, calling the House managers’ presentations “terrific.”

 

Burgess Everett, Marianne LeVine and Meridith McGraw contributed to this report.