Home impeachment managers constructed their case in opposition to former President Donald J. Trump on Wednesday, methodically utilizing video and a
Home impeachment managers constructed their case in opposition to former President Donald J. Trump on Wednesday, methodically utilizing video and audio clips to argue that he was liable for the lethal assault on the Capitol on Jan. 6. All through a lot of the day, the managers let Mr. Trump and his supporters do the speaking, exhibiting movies of Mr. Trump’s speeches, his Twitter posts and pictures of his supporters answering his rallying cries that started months earlier than the assault.
Listed here are 5 takeaways from the second day of the trial.
For a time on Wednesday, @realDonaldTrump was again.
Of their efforts to show that Mr. Trump was undeniably behind the assault, Home impeachment managers let the previous president inform the story in his personal phrases, airing a Trump Twitter blitz worthy of the previous tweeter in chief himself.
“Massive protest in D.C. on January sixth. Be there, shall be wild!” he wrote on Dec. 19, a publish the managers repeatedly referred to all through the day as a “save the date.”
After which, on Dec. 26, he wrote, “The ‘Justice’ Division and the FBI have finished nothing in regards to the 2020 Presidential Election Voter Fraud, the most important SCAM in our nation’s historical past, regardless of overwhelming proof. They need to be ashamed. Historical past will keep in mind. By no means hand over. See everybody in D.C. on January sixth.”
Twitter barred Mr. Trump completely on Jan. 8, citing “the danger of additional incitement of violence” as its justification.
Video clips confirmed time and again simply how a lot hazard senators confronted.
The Home managers confirmed senators beforehand unseen footage of the assault from safety cameras within the Capitol. Additionally they performed recordings of officers’ chilling pleas for backup because the chaos unfolded round them.
In clip after clip, the impeachment managers broadened the view for senators of what was occurring round them as they have been operating for canopy on Jan. 6.
“You know the way shut you got here to the mob,” mentioned Consultant Eric Swalwell of California, one of many Home managers. “However many of the public doesn’t understand how shut these rioters got here to you.”
Democrats let Trump and his supporters make their case to convict.
As they began constructing their case on Wednesday, Home impeachment managers argued that Mr. Trump was by no means an harmless bystander to the occasions of Jan. 6, rebutting an assertion the previous president’s protection crew made a day earlier.
All through the day, the managers let Mr. Trump and his supporters do a lot of the speaking, exhibiting footage of marketing campaign rallies, screenshots of the president’s feedback and clips of stories interviews with supporters who mentioned they went to Washington on Jan. 6 in response to his name.
The prosecution emphasised the position racism performed within the riot and within the months earlier than it.
The lead impeachment supervisor, Consultant Jamie Raskin, Democrat of Maryland, quoted a Black officer who battled the mob that day describing his despair at being subjected to racist taunts from a crowd of attackers that was, in line with witness accounts and video, overwhelmingly white.
Mr. Trump’s affinity for teams just like the Proud Boys and his refusal to sentence them publicly and forcefully at a number of factors all through his presidency has lengthy made many Republicans bristle, a response the impeachment managers could have been hoping to elicit within the Senate chamber on Wednesday.
An incitement of rebel in 4 acts.
The impeachment managers laid out 4 efforts to subvert the election, every escalating as Mr. Trump’s desperation to retain his grip on the Oval Workplace grew. With every step, the managers mentioned, he laid the groundwork for the mob assault on Jan. 6.
“The president realized actually by final spring that he might lose — he may lose the election. So what did he do?” mentioned one of many impeachment managers, Consultant Joe Neguse of Colorado. “He began planting the seeds to get a few of his supporters prepared by saying that he might solely lose the election if it was stolen.”
After Mr. Trump misplaced in November, he turned to his subsequent plan: submitting authorized challenges.
And when that didn’t work, the president took the extraordinary step of pressuring Georgia elections officers to “discover 11,780 votes” solid for him. (There’s presently a legal investigation into his makes an attempt to overturn the state’s elections outcomes.)
When the Georgia plan fell by, Mr. Trump noticed one final alternative to “cease the steal”: the bureaucratic counting of the Electoral Faculty votes on Jan. 6.
“He incited this assault, and he noticed it coming,” Mr. Raskin mentioned. “To us, it might have felt like chaos and insanity. However there was methodology within the insanity that day.”
Reporting was contributed by Luke Broadwater, Glenn Thrush, Nicholas Fandos and Nick Corasaniti.