By Nicholas Fandos and Maggie Haberman

WASHINGTON — The House impeachment managers on Tuesday (2) laid out their case against Donald Trump, asserting that he was “singularly responsible” for the deadly assault on the Capitol last month and must be convicted and barred from holding public office.

In an 80-page brief filed Tuesday, the managers outlined the arguments they planned to make when the Senate opens Trump’s trial next week, contending that the former president whipped his supporters into a “frenzy” as part of a concerted campaign to cling to power. Spinning a vivid narrative of a harrowing day when lawmakers were forced to flee as a violent pro-Trump mob breached the Capitol, the prosecutors also reached back centuries to bolster their case, invoking George Washington and the Constitutional Convention.

“The framers of the Constitution feared a president who would corrupt his office by sparing ‘no efforts or means whatever to get himself re-elected,’” wrote the nine House Democrats, led by Rep. Jamie Raskin of Maryland, quoting directly from the 1787 debate in Philadelphia. “If provoking an insurrectionary riot against a joint session of Congress after losing an election is not an impeachable offence, it is hard to imagine what would be.”

In Trump’s own shorter filing, specked with typos and stripped of the former president’s usual bombast, his lawyers flatly denied that he had incited the attack and repeatedly argued that the Senate “lacks jurisdiction” to try a former president. They repeatedly urged an immediate dismissal of the single charge against him, “incitement of insurrection.”

“The Senate of the United States lacks jurisdiction over the 45th president because he holds no public office from which he can be removed, rendering the article of impeachment moot and a non-justiciable question,” the lawyers, Bruce L. Castor Jr. and David Schoen, wrote in their 14-page response to the charge.

Their other broad argument was that Trump’s remarks on Jan. 6 and in the weeks before were constitutionally protected. While they did not argue explicitly that Trump had won the 2020 election, as some said he wanted his legal team to do, the lawyers sought to shroud his false claims of widespread voter fraud in free-speech arguments.

They effectively argued that Trump believed he “won it by a landslide,” and therefore was within his First Amendment rights to “express his belief that the election results were suspect.” His claims could not be disproved, they added, because there was “insufficient evidence.”

President Joe Biden won the election by about 7 million votes, according to results certified by every state. Dozens of cases Trump brought alleging voting fraud or improprieties were tossed out or decided against him, many times by Republican-appointed judges, for lack of evidence.

The impeachment filings provided the clearest preview yet of the legal strategies that are likely to shape a politically fraught impeachment trial of Trump — his second in just over a year — that is scheduled to begin in earnest in the Senate on Tuesday. They indicated that both sides expected drawn-out debates over the constitutionality of a trial, as much as Trump’s culpability for what took place.

If Trump’s lawyers were trying to reassure Republican senators that they could dismiss the case without confronting its merits, the House managers were aiming instead to force them to confront the terror of the Capitol riot with an unusually visceral prosecution. They have compiled hours of footage from Parler, Twitter and elsewhere that they plan to play from the well of the Senate next week to compel Republicans to face Trump’s conduct head on, rather than retreating behind arguments around the process.

The approach was evident in their legal brief, which was more dramatic in parts than a typical courtroom filing. It follows Trump from his early-summer warnings about a “rigged” election, up to his last, futile attempts to target Congress’ Jan. 6 counting session to snatch victory away from Biden.

All the while, the managers argued, Trump was issuing a “call to mobilize” to his supporters to “stop the steal.” He invited them to come to Washington in early January, and then used a speech on the Ellipse outside the White House just before the attack to urge them to “fight like hell”, and march to the Capitol to confront members of Congress and Vice President Mike Pence.

The calls incited the mob to action, they argued, citing videos posted on social media in which supporters of Trump can be heard yelling “invade the Capitol building” after he urges them to “show strength.”

“He summoned a mob to Washington, exhorted them into a frenzy, and aimed them like a loaded cannon down Pennsylvania Avenue,” the managers wrote.

The president’s filing was narrower by design, with a lengthier, more detailed brief due from his lawyers early next week. Still, the contours of their defence were becoming clear.

The lawyers said Democrats had misinterpreted Trump’s actions and his intent, denying that he was responsible for the Capitol riot or that he intended to interfere with Congress’ formalizing of Biden’s win. They said his words to supporters on Jan. 6 — “if you don’t fight like hell, you’re not going to have a country anymore” — were not meant as a call to violent action, but were “about the need to fight for election security in general.”

“It is denied that President Trump incited the crowd to engage in destructive behaviour,” they wrote. In another section, they denied that Trump had “threatened” Georgia’s Republican secretary of state or “acted improperly” when he demanded during a January phone call that the official “find” the votes needed to overturn his loss in that state and vaguely warned of a “criminal offense.”

The lawyers reprised an argument against the constitutionality of the trial popular with Republican senators. They asserted that a plain reading of the Constitution — which does not explicitly discuss what to do with an official impeached but not tried before he leaves office — does not permit the Senate to try a former president.

But they also said that Trump “denies the allegation” that his claims that he won the election were false. If that argument plays a central role in the trial, Republican senators could quickly find themselves painfully wedged between a conspiracy theory they fear could do lasting damage to their party and millions of their own voters who believe it.

-New York Times