Most Americans have seen any number of isolated snippets of video from Jan. 6, when a mob of Donald Trump supporters stormed the Capitol complex—rioters in one hall or another, lawmakers ducking for cover, Capitol Police trying to deter Trump's cultists, and the occasional first-hand video of one person's experience that day.
But watching it all knit together in one chronological video documenting Trump's exhortations and the immediate responsiveness of his cultists is a different—and far more powerful—experience altogether. That's exactly what Democratic impeachment managers presented Tuesday to punctuate their opening arguments that Trump’s culpability is too undeniable and his transgressions too inexcusable by any objective measure to escape punishment.
"We will stop the steal," Trump tells his rallygoers in the opening frames of the video. "And after this, we're going to walk down—and I'll be there with you—we're going to walk down to the Capitol ..."
Cut to source video from the crowd, with multiple people yelling, "Yeah ... Let's take the Capitol!" Another Trumper in the crowd helpfully orients his peers to the Capitol, bellowing, "We are going to the Capitol, where our problems are—it's that direction."
Text on the video notes that as "Trump continues his speech, a wave of supporters begins marching to the Capitol."
Action-reaction. Trump directs his cultists to the Capitol—they go to the Capitol. Trump tells them to "fight like hell," and they fight like hell. Trump says that when you catch somebody in a fraud, "you're allowed to go by very different rules," and they employ very different rules.
Then Trump sets up his vice president for a fall from grace among his devotees, concluding, "So I hope Mike has the courage to do what he needs to do."
As Trump very well knew, Vice President Mike Pence had already informed him that he didn't have the power to overturn the election results during certification.
On the floors of the House and the Senate, lawmakers are performing their constitutional duties as the Trump's rabid rioters breach the perimeter and soon after start roaming the halls looking for lawmakers. Pence is ushered off the floor of the Senate chamber, as is Speaker Nancy Pelosi from the House chamber. Lawmakers' speeches are abruptly ended as they are informed the mob is now inside the building and the ones who can be are evacuated.
Action-reaction. Trump sends a tweet criticizing Pence for failing to overturn the election. Chants of "Treason! Treason!" erupt among rioters inside, while "Traitor Pence!" becomes a rallying cry outside the building.
Two hours after the Capitol insurrection began, Trump tweets a video of himself saying, "There’s never been a time like this where such a thing happened, where they could take it away from all of us, from me, from you, from our country. This was a fraudulent election, but we can’t play into the hands of these people. We have to have peace. So go home. We love you. You’re very special. You’ve seen what happens. You see the way others are treated that are so bad and so evil. I know how you feel. But go home and go home at peace."
Back at the Capitol, angry rioters continue destroying the building, beating police officers, and destroying the equipment they confiscated from various journalists.
In the end, the video notes, at least seven people lost their lives and more than 140 law enforcement officers suffered physical injuries, not to mention the mental trauma that remains with many others to this day.
Four hours after the Capitol incursion began, Trump celebrated the lethal havoc that had just unfolded in the heart of our nation’s government. “These are the things and events that happen when a sacred landslide election victory is so unceremoniously & viciously stripped away from great patriots who have been badly & unfairly treated for so long," Trump tweeted. "Go home with love & in peace. Remember this day forever!"
Watch it:
Bruce Castor, former President Donald Trump's defense lawyer, opened his impeachment trial remarks Tuesday by condemning the Capitol riot as "repugnant" while also praising senators as "extraordinary people."
"You will not hear any member of the team representing former President Trump say anything but in the strongest possible way denounce the violence of the rioters and those that breached the Capitol," Castor said.
In a meandering statement, Castor also denied Trump's culpability in the Capitol riot by evoking the former president's right to free speech. Castor said if the Senate were to convict Trump, "the floodgates will open."
His comments included a wide range of philosophical musings, evoking democracy's origins in Ancient Greece and claiming an impeachment conviction would lead to a "slippery slope." Castor said only the Senate could stop the "bitter infighting" from decaying the country's republic and denounced the trial as an "attack on the Constitution."
Castor spent a large portion of his remarks heaping praise on senators, saying they are "extraordinary people" and personally calling out Sens. Pat Toomey and Bob Casey of Pennsylvania. He also offered modest praise to the House impeachment managers, saying they delivered an "outstanding presentation" and calling them "clever fellows."
Rep. Jamie Raskin, the lead House impeachment manager, gave an emotional speech during former President Trump’s Senate trial on Tuesday, remembering his late son, whom he buried the day before the Jan. 6 attack on the U.S. Capitol, and breaking down while talking about being separated from his daughter during the deadly siege.
Raskin’s son, Tommy, who was 25, died by suicide on Dec. 31 and was buried on Jan. 5. The next day, after what the lawmaker called “the saddest day of our lives,” Raskin took his youngest daughter, Tabitha, 24, and son-in-law, Hank, to the Capitol to watch the counting of the electoral votes, he said in the speech Tuesday. He said he considers Hank, the husband of his oldest daughter, a “son, too, even though he eloped with my daughter and didn’t tell us what they were going to do,” to laughter from the audience.
Before they went to the Capitol that day, they asked the Maryland Democrat whether it would be safe, with Trump calling on followers to come to Washington in protest. They wanted to be with him during such a difficult week for the family.
“Of course it should be safe,” Raskin said he told them. “This is the Capitol.”
Jan. 6 started out as a day of being “lifted up from the agony” of his son’s death, he said, with dozens of lawmakers visiting him, Tabitha and Hank in House Majority Leader Steny Hoyer’s office.
And amid Trump’s attempts to subvert the results of the election, Raskin said that through his tears, he was writing a speech quoting Abraham Lincoln and calling for unity for the House ahead of the counting of the votes, a speech that he ended up giving just before rioters stormed the Capitol.
Tabitha and Hank were watching the speech from the gallery and went back to Hoyer’s office after it ended. But Raskin couldn’t get back to the office before the rioters had gotten into the Capitol.
“It was too late. I couldn’t get out there to be with them in that office,” Raskin said.
People were calling their family members, saying what they thought were their last goodbyes. The new chaplain said a prayer for everyone. Then all were told to put on their gas masks before Raskin heard a sound he said he’d never forget: pounding on the door “like a battering ram.”
“It’s the most haunting sound I ever heard, and I will never forget it,” Raskin said.
Meanwhile, Tabitha and Hank were locked and hiding in the office with Raskin’s chief of staff, sending what they thought were goodbye texts and making quiet calls, he said.
More than an hour later, they were reunited. Raskin hugged them and said he was sorry, vowing to Tabitha that it wouldn’t happen again the next time she returned to the Capitol.
“Dad, I don’t want to come back to the Capitol,” she said, which Raskin choked up while recounting.
“Of all of the terrible, brutal things that I saw and I heard on that day, and since then, that one hit me the hardest,” Raskin said.
“That and watching someone use an American flagpole, with the flag still on it, to spear and pummel one of our police officers ruthlessly, mercilessly tortured by a pole with a flag on it that he was defending with his very life,” Raskin said.
Raskin then urged the Senate to vote to rule Trump’s impeachment constitutional, saying the Senate shouldn’t create a “January exception;" many Republicans have argued Trump can’t be impeached because he is no longer president.
“Senators, this cannot be our future,” Raskin said, sniffling. “This cannot be the future of America. We cannot have presidents inciting and mobilizing mob violence against our government and our institutions because they refuse to accept the will of the people under the Constitution of the United States.”
Trump is facing a Senate impeachment trial that began Tuesday, as the former president has been charged with inciting the deadly insurrection at the Capitol. Jan. 6. On Tuesday, the Senate is voting on whether the trial should proceed.
“History does not support a January exception in any way, so why would we invent one for the future?” Raskin said.