Trump to offer first formal impeachment defence
By Nicholas Fandos
WASHINGTON — Former President Donald Trump will offer his first formal impeachment defence Tuesday (2), when his legal team is scheduled to deliver to the Senate a written answer to the House’s charge that he incited a deadly insurrection last month when a mob of his supporters assaulted the Capitol.
The former president is all but certain to wave off the bipartisan charge as illegitimate, but the exact shape of his defence remains to be seen after a last-minute shake-up of his legal team. While Trump is said to have wanted the trial to include a full defence of his bogus election fraud claims that helped ignite the attack, his advisers and Republican senators are pushing a less inflammatory argument that trying a former president is simply unconstitutional.
The filing is scheduled to arrive alongside a lengthier written brief from the House impeachment managers preparing to prosecute Trump for “incitement of insurrection” that outlines their own theory of the case. Taken together, the two documents should provide the clearest preview yet of how Trump’s second impeachment trial will play out when it begins in one week.
Though Republican senators appear to be lining up to once again acquit Trump, the arguments could determine the difference between a near-party-line verdict like the one that capped the former president’s first trial or a bipartisan rebuke.
Few facts in the case are in serious dispute. TV news broadcasts carried live video Jan. 6 of Trump encouraging thousands of his supporters outside the White House to go to the Capitol and “fight like hell” to overturn the election by confronting lawmakers who were meeting there with Vice President Mike Pence to formalize his loss. Rioters dressed in Trump garb and chanting “hang Pence” violently clashed with police and ransacked the Capitol, sending lawmakers and the vice president fleeing.
The House managers, led by Rep. Jamie Raskin, D-Md., plan to vividly highlight that course of events in their pre-trial brief. They will argue that the Jan. 6 assault was the climax of a months-long campaign by Trump to sow doubts about the election, spread false claims that he won and then finally use Congress to try to overturn President Joe Biden’s victory.
People familiar with the prosecution said the filing would also include a detailed argument that the framers of the Constitution intended impeachment to apply to officials who had committed offenses while in office.
Trump sharply criticized the impeachment push in the waning days of his presidency and argued that the remarks he gave Jan. 6 to thousands of supporters he summoned to Washington were “totally appropriate.” The House moved within a week of the riot to impeach him.
His lawyers, Bruce L. Castor Jr. and David Schoen, will have to walk a fine line to placate both Trump and Republican senators, many of whom have disavowed Trump’s false claims to have won the election and criticized his actions on Jan. 6.
Sen. John Cornyn, R-Texas, warned the president’s team Monday (Feb 1) to steer away from rehashing his grievances and debunked theories about election fraud. Better, he said, to focus on rebutting the particulars of the House’s charge.
“It’s really not material,” Cornyn told reporters in the Capitol. “As much as there might be a temptation to bring in other matters, I think it would be a disservice to the president’s own defence to get bogged down in things that really aren’t before the Senate.”
-New York Times