Impeachment Briefing: A Combative Protection

That is the Impeachment Briefing, The Occasions’s publication concerning the impeachment investigation. Join right here to get it in your inbox.

What occurred at the moment

• Attorneys for Donald J. Trump delivered a brief protection, utilizing simply three of their allotted 16 hours.

• His attorneys claimed, opposite to information, that Mr. Trump by no means glorified violence, and so they falsely equated his conduct to Democrats’ use of combative rhetoric.

• Senators from each events submitted written questions that have been answered by the Home managers and protection attorneys for Mr. Trump.

• In breaks, Republican senators spoke positively of the protection. Absent any main shifts, it seems unlikely that there shall be sufficient Senate votes to convict Mr. Trump.

• Officer Eugene Goodman, hailed as a hero for diverting the mob and rescuing senators from peril on Jan. 6, was given a standing ovation and can obtain the Congressional Gold Medal.

• The trial adjourned till Saturday, when it’s more likely to conclude.

The protection presents its case

Mr. Trump’s impeachment crew introduced an incendiary protection of the previous president, calling the Home’s cost that he incited an rebel on the Capitol a “preposterous and monstrous lie.”

• Simply earlier than the riot, Mr. Trump advised his supporters: “When you don’t battle like hell, you’re not going to have a rustic anymore.” In an try and recommend the metaphorical nature of political speeches, Mr. Trump’s attorneys introduced video montages of elected Democrats and a few celebrities uttering the phrase “battle.”

• “All of the sudden, the phrase ‘battle’ is off limits?” mentioned Michael T. van der Veen, one of many attorneys employed in latest days to defend Mr. Trump. “Spare us the hypocrisy and false indignation.”

• “OK, you’ve made the purpose that it’s doable to make use of ‘battle’ in a metaphoric sense,” mentioned Adam Liptak, who covers the Supreme Courtroom, in The Occasions’s dwell briefing. “Query is whether or not, in context, Trump known as for preventing within the bodily sense.”

• Mr. Trump’s attorneys dismissed the trial as “constitutional cancel tradition.” Bruce L. Castor Jr. mentioned the impeachment was “about canceling 75 million Trump voters and criminalizing political viewpoints.”

• The attorneys claimed the riot was premeditated, pointing to pipe bombs that have been planted earlier than the rally. “You’ll be able to’t incite what was already going to occur,” mentioned Mr. van der Veen.

• Mr. van der Veen additionally mentioned the Jan. 6 rally had been “hijacked” by extremists, together with antifa activists from the far left. However Republican leaders have dismissed that declare. “Some say the riots have been brought on by antifa,” the Home minority chief, Kevin McCarthy, mentioned final month. “There may be completely no proof of that, and conservatives needs to be the primary to say so.” (For context, right here’s how Mr. Trump used false statements about antifa as a smoke display for a rising right-wing risk.)

• The attorneys leaned closely on Mr. Trump’s single use of the phrase “peacefully” as he urged backers to march to the Capitol whereas minimizing the 20 instances he used the phrase “battle.” “No pondering individual might critically imagine that the president’s Jan. 6 speech on the Ellipse was in any method an incitement to violence or rebel,” Mr. van der Veen mentioned. “The suggestion is patently absurd on its face. Nothing within the textual content might ever be construed as encouraging, condoning or inciting illegal exercise of any type.”

• The protection crew argued that the Senate “lacks jurisdiction” to even strive a former president now out of workplace, that Mr. Trump’s conduct was protected by the First Modification and that it got here nowhere close to the authorized definition for “incitement.” In a letter final week, 144 main First Modification attorneys and constitutional students from throughout the political spectrum known as that argument “legally frivolous.”

• The Trump crew attorneys additionally framed the trial as rushed, claiming Mr. Trump had not been given due course of. “Trump attorneys appear to be complaining that they didn’t get adequate time to view ‘the proof,’” mentioned Mark Leibovich, the chief nationwide correspondent for The Occasions Journal. “However after all, the proof was largely in plain view earlier than.”

What else we’re studying

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