{"id":112627,"date":"2021-02-12T22:07:28","date_gmt":"2021-02-12T22:07:28","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/precoinnews.com\/?p=112627"},"modified":"2021-02-12T22:07:28","modified_gmt":"2021-02-12T22:07:28","slug":"donald-trumps-deeply-cynical-impeachment-defense","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/precoinnews.com\/politics\/donald-trumps-deeply-cynical-impeachment-defense\/","title":{"rendered":"Donald Trump’s Deeply Cynical Impeachment Defense"},"content":{"rendered":"

Ex-President Donald Trump\u2019s legal team presented an endless stream of lies, bad faith arguments and out-of-context clips on Friday in an effort to excuse the former president for riling up his supporters to storm the the Capitol, watching silently as they violently overtook the building, and then, when he finally called for peace, still praising the violent mob.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

Instead, his impeachment defense lawyers showed Democrats using the word \u201cfight\u201d over and over again, falsely claimed \u201cantifa\u201d stormed the Capitol on Jan. 6, and presented clips of Black Lives Matter protests to distract from Trump\u2019s long record of encouraging violence.<\/span><\/p>\n

\u201cUnlike the left, President Trump has been entirely consistent in his opposition to mob violence,\u201d Trump attorney Michael van der Veen said. \u201cFor Democrats, they have clearly demonstrated that the opposition to mobs and their view of using the National Guard depends upon the mobs\u2019 political views.\u201d<\/span><\/p>\n

The defense presentation came after two days of House Democratic managers laying out Trump\u2019s long history of encouraging violence. Trump\u2019s team tried to turn the focus elsewhere. They\u2019re at an advantage, since they\u2019re likely to succeed whether they make a strong defense or not. Most Republicans voted earlier this week that the entire trial should be dismissed because Trump is no longer the president. Unlike that vote, which required only a simple majority to proceed, a conviction in the Senate requires a two-thirds vote \u2014 a bar that seems unattainable for Democrats.<\/span><\/p>\n

Still, Trump\u2019s impeachment managers were forced to offer <\/span>something<\/span><\/em> in his defense, beyond that he cannot be impeached now that he\u2019s out of office. <\/span>They wrapped up after less than three hours of defense, even though they were allotted 16, and spent some of that time replaying the same clips.<\/p>\n

\u201cNot only President Trump\u2019s speech on January 6, but indeed his entire challenge to the election result, was squarely focused on how the proper civic process could address any concerns to the established legal and constitutional system,\u201d said van der Veen, who previously said in an impeachment trial brief that Trump was right to claim he\u2019d won the election in a landslide.<\/span><\/p>\n

<\/p>\n

An aide working behind the scenes for Trump\u2019s legal team told HuffPost this week that, after the disastrous performance on Tuesday, Trump\u2019s political aides directed the lawyers to think of the trial more as a press conference being held after they\u2019d already won. The aide said the legal team was walking into the chamber with 45 GOP votes to acquit in their pockets, and they shouldn\u2019t try to win the impeachment case like it was an actual trial before a judge.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

The resulting strategy was a presentation of an alternate reality untethered to Jan. 6 or the Democratic arguments. Trump\u2019s lawyers offered a wholly different view of Trump than the world has known for the past five years \u2015 one who never said there were \u201cvery fine people\u201d among the white nationalist rally in Charlottesville in 2017, or meant violence when he told supporters to \u201cfight like hell\u201d on Jan. 6. They put a video together of Democratic impeachment managers simply using the word \u201creportedly\u201d to show that much of the evidence Democrats presented came from news reports. They recycled clips of Democrats urging for Trump\u2019s impeachment during previous scandals.<\/span><\/p>\n

The focus on language used by Democrats \u2015 often using the same clips multiple times, including celebrities along with actual politicians \u2015 disregarded the crucial fact that Democrats talking about \u201cfighting\u201d didn\u2019t lead to insurrections.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

Trump\u2019s defense also focused narrowly on his speech Jan. 6, rather than rebutting Democrats\u2019 argument that his comments that day were part of a long campaign to argue the election had been stolen and his supporters must act.<\/p>\n

Trump\u2019s supporters \u2014 as they\u2019ve repeatedly said in court statements \u2014 took Trump\u2019s call to arms literally. They stormed the Capitol because that\u2019s what Trump seemed to want them to do \u2014 to \u201cstop the steal\u201d and \u201cstop the count.\u201d<\/span><\/p>\n

Probably the most egregious claim Trump\u2019s lawyers made was that it actually wasn\u2019t<\/em> Trump supporters who stormed the Capitol on Jan. 6; it was various unidentified \u201cextremists\u201d and the supposedly fearsome anti-fascist group known as antifa.<\/span><\/p>\n

After Trump held a rally outside the White House that day, \u201ca small group looking to engage in violent and menacing behavior hijacked the event for their own purposes,\u201d van der Veen said.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

\u201cAccording to publicly available reporting it is apparent that extremists of various different stripes and political persuasions preplanned and premeditated an attack on the Capitol,\u201d van der Veen said. \u201cOne of the first people arrested was a leader of antifa. Sadly, he was also among the first to be released.\u201d<\/span><\/p>\n

It was Trump supporters who attacked the Capitol \u2015 Trump supporters wearing Trump shirts and Trump hats, waving Trump flags and screaming Trump\u2019s name as they sought to stop Congress from certifying Trump\u2019s loss in the November election. Every photograph from that day shows their political paraphernalia; members of Congress and HuffPost reporters saw them firsthand both inside and outside the Capitol.<\/span><\/p>\n

The \u201cleader of antifa\u201d van der Veen had in mind is probably John Sullivan, an odd duck who previously organized protests for racial justice in Utah but who had been <\/span>disowned by Black Lives Matter activists there<\/span>. It\u2019s dishonest to suggest he\u2019s a representative example of the people who stormed the Capitol \u2015 dozens and dozens of people arrested for their involvement in the riot have said on social media and admitted to law enforcement they were there in order to support the president because the president told them to do it.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

It\u2019s not the first time Trump\u2019s legal team suggested it wasn\u2019t Trump supporters at the Capitol. They also <\/span>claimed in a formal brief<\/span> this week that \u201cthe people who criminally breached the Capitol did so of their own accord and for their own reasons.\u201d<\/span><\/p>\n

The presentation also built on the <\/span>culture war arguments<\/span> Trump\u2019s team made during their appearance on Tuesday. Van der Veen said impeachment was \u201cconstitutional cancel culture.\u201d The Black Lives Matter protest footage was overwhelmingly violent. And they even suggested that Democrats were simply misunderstanding Christianity when they noted that Trump retweeted an announcement that \u201ccalvary\u201d was coming on Jan. 6. It wasn\u2019t a misspelling of \u201ccavalry,\u201d they said. It was a reference to Jesus\u2019s crucifixion.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

Whatever it takes to argue Trump did nothing wrong.<\/span><\/p>\n

RELATED…<\/h3>\n

Source: Read Full Article<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Ex-President Donald Trump\u2019s legal team presented an<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":3,"featured_media":112626,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[23055],"tags":[],"yoast_head":"\nDonald Trump's Deeply Cynical Impeachment Defense - Pre Coin News<\/title>\n<meta name=\"robots\" content=\"index, follow, max-snippet:-1, max-image-preview:large, max-video-preview:-1\" \/>\n<link rel=\"canonical\" href=\"https:\/\/precoinnews.com\/politics\/donald-trumps-deeply-cynical-impeachment-defense\/\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:locale\" content=\"en_US\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:type\" content=\"article\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:title\" content=\"Donald Trump's Deeply Cynical Impeachment Defense - Pre Coin News\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:description\" content=\"Ex-President Donald Trump\u2019s legal team presented an\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:url\" content=\"https:\/\/precoinnews.com\/politics\/donald-trumps-deeply-cynical-impeachment-defense\/\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:site_name\" content=\"Pre Coin News\" \/>\n<meta property=\"article:published_time\" content=\"2021-02-12T22:07:28+00:00\" \/>\n<meta name=\"author\" content=\"mediabest\" \/>\n<meta name=\"twitter:card\" content=\"summary_large_image\" \/>\n<meta name=\"twitter:image\" content=\"https:\/\/precoinnews.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2021\/02\/ccelebritiesfoto6026cc7f260000c814c23ce7.jpeg\" \/>\n<meta name=\"twitter:label1\" content=\"Written by\" \/>\n\t<meta name=\"twitter:data1\" content=\"mediabest\" \/>\n\t<meta name=\"twitter:label2\" content=\"Est. reading time\" \/>\n\t<meta name=\"twitter:data2\" content=\"5 minutes\" \/>\n<script type=\"application\/ld+json\" class=\"yoast-schema-graph\">{\"@context\":\"https:\/\/schema.org\",\"@graph\":[{\"@type\":\"WebPage\",\"@id\":\"https:\/\/precoinnews.com\/politics\/donald-trumps-deeply-cynical-impeachment-defense\/\",\"url\":\"https:\/\/precoinnews.com\/politics\/donald-trumps-deeply-cynical-impeachment-defense\/\",\"name\":\"Donald Trump's Deeply Cynical Impeachment Defense - 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