O VOO DO CORVO

 

Prosecutors begin arguments against Trump, saying he ‘became the inciter in chief of a dangerous insurrection.’

https://www.nytimes.com/live/2021/02/10/us/impeachment-trial

 

TRANSCRIPT

 

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‘Ex-President Trump Was No Innocent Bystander,’ Raskin Says

Representative Jaime Raskin, the lead impeachment manager, said evidence will demonstrate that former President Trump abandoned his duties as commander in chief to become “the inciter in chief.”

The evidence will show you that ex-President Trump was no innocent bystander. The evidence will show that he clearly incited the Jan. 6 insurrection. It will show that Donald Trump surrendered his role as commander in chief and became the inciter in chief of a dangerous insurrection. And this was, as one of our colleagues put it, so cogently on Jan. 6 itself, the greatest betrayal of the presidential oath in the history of the United States. The evidence will show you that he saw it coming, and was not remotely surprised by the violence. And when the violence inexorably and inevitably came as predicted, and overran this body in the House of Representatives with chaos, we will show you that he completely abdicated his duty as commander in chief to stop the violence, and protect the government and protect our officers and protect our people. Look, if you’re president of the United states, you’ve chosen to side with your oath of office. And if you break it, we can impeach, convict, remove and disqualify you permanently from holding any office of honor, trust or profit under the United States. As Justice Scalia once said memorably, “You can’t ride with the cops and root for the robbers.” And if you become inciter in chief to the insurrection, you can’t expect to be on the payroll as commander in chief for the union.

 

The House Democrats prosecuting former President Donald J. Trump argued Wednesday that his incitement of the mob that stormed the Capitol began months before the day of the riot as he propagated a “Big Lie” to persuade supporters that his re-election was being stolen.

 

As they formally opened their case on the Senate floor, the managers, as the prosecutors are called, laid out a sweeping narrative of the events leading up to the deadly assault on Congress, playing one video clip after another showing Mr. Trump falsely claiming that the election was being rigged and calling on his backers to “fight like hell” to prevent him from losing power.

 

“The evidence will show that he clearly incited the January 6 insurrection,” Representative Jamie Raskin, Democrat of Maryland and the lead manager told the senators sitting as jurors in the second impeachment trial that Mr. Trump has faced. “It will show that Donald Trump surrendered his role as commander in chief and became the inciter in chief of a dangerous insurrection.”

 

“He told them to fight like hell,” Mr. Raskin added, “and they brought us hell that day.”

 

The prosecution once again made extensive use of chilling images documenting last month’s deadly assault on the Capitol. Later in their presentation the managers planned to unveil never-before-seen security camera footage that they suggested would shock the audience.

 

The arguments have forced senators to relive the raucous attack that day while confronting the question of Mr. Trump’s culpability in the first mass siege of the Capitol since 1814. Never before have senators sat in judgment of a president accused of putting their own lives in jeopardy, much less with the aim of disrupting American democracy by preventing the counting of the Electoral College votes sealing his fall from power.

 

Representative Joe Neguse, a Democrat from Colorado and another manager, outlined the prosecution’s view of the evidence, breaking the narrative into three parts — what he called the provocation, the attack and the harm.

 

Mr. Neguse played several video clips of Mr. Trump asserting even before the vote that “the only way we can lose” is if the other side cheated, priming his base to reject any election result other than a victory for him and then egging them on with repeated phrases like “stop the steal” and “fight like hell.”

 

“He was telling Americans that their vote had been stolen, and in America our vote is our voice,” Mr. Neguse said. “So his false claims about election fraud that was the drumbeat being used to inspire, instigate and ignite them, to anger them.”

 

The managers likewise played video or showed Twitter messages from some of the rioters asserting that they were responding to Mr. Trump’s entreaties.

 

As his actions came under scrutiny on the Senate floor, Mr. Trump remained secluded at his Mar-a-Lago estate in Florida, uncharacteristically silent and deprived of his Twitter account because the social media company concluded that his false and incendiary messages violated its policy. By contrast, he posted or reposted 142 tweets on the first day of prosecution’s arguments in last year’s Senate impeachment trial, a one-day record to that point.

 

This time, he is leaving his case to his lawyers, who did not impress senators in either party with their opening foray on Tuesday and under the bipartisan rules are not scheduled to speak on Wednesday.

 

In defending Mr. Trump’s actions, the lawyers have previously maintained that the former president’s language was protected free speech and hardly incitement of violence or insurrection.

 

“There is no set of facts that ever justifies abrogating the freedoms granted to Americans in the United States Constitution,” Bruce L. Castor Jr., one of the lawyers, said on Fox News on Wednesday before the Senate session resumed.

 

Mr. Castor defended his much-maligned meandering performance on Tuesday and denied reports in the New York Times and elsewhere quoting people close to Mr. Trump saying that the former president was angry. “My reaction is you need to check those sources because that has not been communicated to me by the president or anybody associated with the president,” Mr. Castor said.

 

Mr. Trump and his lawyers could nonetheless afford to be confident because the Senate vote on Tuesday that permitted the trial to proceed also foreshadowed its expected ending. While the Senate dismissed Mr. Trump’s objection to the constitutionality of putting a former president on trial by a 56-to-44 vote, his allies mustered more than the 34 votes needed to assure acquittal given the Constitution’s two-thirds requirement for conviction.

 

— Peter Baker