Trump’s legal team doesn’t actually have a case to present, they just don’t believe it will matter

Posted on by Mark Sumner

In two days of presentations, the House impeachment managers laid out a case that seems more than ironclad; it seems to demand action. Starting with a chilling video of events on Jan. 6, they’ve walked the case both backward and forward to demonstrate every aspect of Donald Trump’s guilt. They’ve shown how Donald Trump groomed his supporters not to accept any outcome but a Trump victory from months before the election was held. How Trump immediately began insisting that the election was being “stolen” even as the votes were still being counted. Then how Trump exhausted every legal action, attempted to strong arm state and local officials, and attempted to leverage Mike Pence into taking unconstitutional action. Finally, deprived of everything else, Trump used the army of rabid supporters who he had inflamed with “stop the steal” and directed them at the Capitol on Jan. 6.

Perhaps the most chilling and effective portion of the whole presentation dealt with what Trump did after the assault was underway. Far from attempting to stop the attack or provide help to either Congress or the police, Trump acted to increase the peril. In particular, Trump used knowledge of Pence’s movement to inflame the crowd further, and repeatedly signaled his support for their actions.

On Friday, Trump’s legal team will present their case. Early indications are that it will be brief. Because, despite everything else that’s been revealed about Trump’s actions leading up to Jan. 6, many Republicans are once again prepared to give him a pass.

Imagine going to a trial in which the defendant is charged with multiple, monstrous crimes. Then, as the prosecutors are laying out the facts of the case—including the most compelling evidence that reveals details previously unknown to the public—looking over to see that half the jury isn’t even paying attention. One is doodling on a notepad. Another is playing a silly game designed for children. Others are snickering to each other and passing notes. 

As it turns out, no imagination is required. Because that’s exactly how Republicans have treated this trial. As House managers showed how the police lines were being forced, Josh Hawley moved back into the viewing gallery to play. As they described the incredibly close call between Pence and rioters seeking to murder him, Rand Paul was doodling his next hair style. As House managers showed how Trump had constantly not just overlooked violence by his supporters, but encouraged it, Lindsey Graham, who was a House impeachment manager for the impeachment of Bill Clinton, was chortling over his chance to show disdain for the current trial.

Despite the way that Republicans have reacted, it’s clear that the House team laid out a compelling case immediately understandable not just in the Senate, but to the public. 

I’ve closely studied every impeachment trial in our history. No impeachment has ever been as ably prosecuted in the Senate. In no prior impeachment has a conviction been as overwhelmingly justified. Now the Senate is on trial. To acquit itself, it must convict Donald J. Trump.

— Laurence Tribe (@tribelaw) February 11, 2021

But going into Friday, Trump’s legal team let it be known that their presentation may be as brief as three hours. Some of that time will likely be devoted to rehashing their nonsensical arguments about how the First Amendment protects calling for violence. Or pretending that Trump acted to do something, anything, to end the insurgency. But most of the reply from Bruce Castor and David Schoen is likely to be a funhouse mirror version of the House case.

It can be expected that they will show video of Democratic candidates urging their supporters to “fight” or “never give up.” It can be expected they’ll intersperse unconnected clips of violence from protests in Seattle or Portland or, based on other recent Republican ads, from any number of foreign countries. And because this presentation is going to be 100% aimed at giving Republican senators talking points on Fox News, it's an easy bet it will play heavily into existing memes around women of color. Expect to see Rep. Maxine Waters, Rep. Ilhan Omar, Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, all saying things that Trump’s team will indicate are somehow “worse” than anything Trump said.

Expect to see random images of violence taken out of context, with Black Lives Matter marches put next to images of burning stores. Or black-suited figures identified as “antifa.” Expect to see a video, and a presentation, that leans heavily into the racist message that Fox News has already been selling for at least as long as Trump had been grooming his supporters—that BLM marchers are destructive and violent, and that Democratic officials have encouraged them in that violence. Expect to hear a claim that Vice President Kamala Harris asking for support in bailing out protesters was just putting violent extremists back on the street to commit more crimes.

Or … maybe not. Maybe they won’t do anything at all. After all, the real test this week wasn’t one of Trump’s guilt. That was clear even before the trial began, and every moment of the presentation only made the certainty and the extent of Trump’s crimes more obvious.

The real test was whether Republicans in Congress would step away from Trump and move toward doing what the nation needs to move forward. On that point, the evidence suggests that Trump’s team could use their three hours to recite recipes, or promote the next season of Hannity, or simply provide the details for the next assault on the Capitol.

House managers did a fantastic job. They left it all on the floor. No one watching could have any question about Donald Trump’s guilt. Republicans don’t have any question about Trump’s guilt. 

But they seem shockingly willing to convict themselves.

Thanks to Mike Lee’s odd objection, one thing is now clear: Donald Trump tried to murder Mike Pence

Posted on (Updated by Mark Sumner

Over the course of their presentation, House impeachment managers showed how Donald Trump groomed his supporters to be outraged, repeatedly encouraged violence, and finally directed them to carry out their assault on the Capitol building in order to interrupt the counting of electoral college votes. The day was full of shocking moments and previously unseen images. The number of moments when enraged insurgents intent on murder came within feet of members of Congress should have been sobering—if not terrifying—to everyone watching in the Senate.

One other thing that came up during the day was a repeated theme of praise for the way that Mike Pence did his job on Jan. 6. That may seem like a strange approach for a Democratic team to take in dealing with the impeachment of a Republican president. But pointing out how Pence stood up to Trump in saying he would certify the results of the count serves two purposes: First, it allows the House managers to showcase that a Republican can, in fact, oppose Trump, providing Pence as a role model for any Republican senators who might think of stepping out of Trump’s fear-shadow.

But the other thing it does is point the finger straight at what might be the most chilling moment of Jan. 6—one that showcases Trump’s absolute malice and depravity. 

The complete story of that moment was split across two presentations on Wednesday. First, as Rep. Stacey Plaskett reviewed the events of that afternoon, there was the footage and diagrams showing just how close the insurrectionists came to capturing Pence. Second, a presentation from Rep. Joaquin Castro showed how Trump’s tweets about Pence came even as people were begging him to stop his supporters. When it’s all put together, it looks like this.

2:10 PM

As insurgents smash their way through the Capitol windows and doors, Donald Trump ignores the violence being seen on every network and tries to make a call to Sen. Tommy Tuberville. Instead, he dials Sen. Mike Lee. At the end of the day on Wednesday, Lee objected to this information and asked that a statement attributed to him be stricken from the record. However, these are the only statements made by Lee that were mentioned anywhere in the House presentation.

Thanks to Lee’s objection, Sen. Tuberville was questioned about the phone call on Wednesday afternoon and told reporters from Politico that he ended the phone call by saying this: “I said ‘Mr. President, they just took the vice president out, I’ve got to go.'” 

2:15 PM

Thanks to Tuberville’s statement, there’s a definitive time stamp on the call. Because Pence was quickly removed from the Senate chamber and taken to another location as the Secret Service and Capitol Police worked to secure an exit route.

2:24 PM

This means that the moment he hung up with Tuberville, Trump knew both that his supporters had entered the Capitol, and that Mike Pence was in danger. Trump’s next action may be his most incredibly depraved of the entire day. Because what he did next was to pull out his phone and enter a tweet that aimed his supporters straight at the fleeing Pence.

At the Capitol, Trump’s tweet was read in real time by the enraged mob, with one of Trump’s supporters even blasting out the tweet over a bullhorn just seconds after it appeared. In response, the crowd takes up a chant of “Hang Mike Pence! Hang Mike Pence!”

2:26 PM

Two minutes after Trump’s tweet appears, officers take advantage of the distraction provided by Capitol Police Officer Eugene Goodman to direct Pence and his family down a flight of stairs and out of the building.

No one can say that Donald Trump didn’t take action during those hours following the invasion of the Capitol. Because, on learning that Mike Pence was in peril, Trump acted instantly and decisively … to aim the threat at Pence and his family. Trump went for what he saw as both a chance of revenge at Pence for his refusal to participate in an unconstitutional scheme to “send the votes back” to states, and Trump saw an opportunity to do what he had just tried to gain from Tuberville—a delay in counting the votes. After all, what better way to delay than to have Mike Pence hanging from a gallows on the Capitol lawn?

Thanks to Lee’s objection, Tuberville nailed down the timing of Trump’s call. And thanks to Tuberville, we now know the full sequence of events. And thanks to that sequence we know this: Donald Trump acted quickly and deliberately in an attempt to harm or kill Mike Pence.

House managers provide a compelling case against Donald Trump on opening day of his Senate trial

Posted on by Mark Sumner

Wednesday brought the first day of Donald Trump’s actual second impeachment trial, and the House managers came packing a case that could not have been more complete or compelling. Over the course of the day, the managers showed how Trump prepared his followers to revolt even before the election with repetitions of the idea that he could only lose if there was fraud. When he did lose, Trump immediately jumped in to claim that massive fraud had occurred, describing it in apocalyptic terms that meant the end of America. Throughout the period from the election to January 6, Trump repeatedly called on his supporters to actively fight to “stop the steal,” constantly signaling the need to take action and never condemning acts of violence or intimidation. 

The House team also went through Trump’s own actions. That included both his increasingly flailing—and failing—attempts to find a judge that would lend credence to any part of his concocted claims. When the legal efforts proved fruitless, Trump turned to intimidation. He tried his hand at forcing state legislators, local officials, governors, and secretaries of state to overcome threats of violence and retribution. With every other option taken away, Trump prepared his final weapon—the followers he’d been lying to for years. He cultivated their anger, gathered them in numbers, and unleashed them on the Capitol in a bloody rampage resulting in five deaths and the desecration of the nation’s most revered locations.

Overall, it was a presentation that should have shocked the nation. And, if nothing else, made it absolutely clear to every Republican exactly what they’ve voting for should they vote to absolve Trump.

Throughout the day, the House team merged footage that’s become all too familiar with images taken from security cameras and police body cameras that had not previously been seen by the public. The result was the most chilling and complete view of the events on Jan. 6 that has been seen so far. Through the use of alternating shots from inside and outside the chambers of Congress, the managers revealed just how close the insurgents came to laying their hands on Mike Pence, Nancy Pelosi, and other members of Congress. 

In addition to the videos, the team used a model of the Capitol that highlighted locations of the rioters and their targets. The combination was extremely effective, and perhaps never more so than in the segment delivered by Virigin Islands Delegate Stacey Plaskett.

WATCH: Complete 40-minute presentation from @StaceyPlaskett which includes never-before-seen U.S. Capitol Security Footage https://t.co/JGhGjQq0B1#ImpeachmentTrial pic.twitter.com/cSoXCBxYFn

— CSPAN (@cspan) February 10, 2021

Also impactful in retelling the moments of that day were slides and audio recordings from the Capitol Police and Metro D.C. Police. In their statements and voices there was an awful sense of terror and a recognition that their positions had become indefensible. 

If there was any other moment that carried the same level of impact as Plaskett’s presentation of actions as the seditionists entered the Capitol, it was likely the presentation split between Rep. Rep. Joaquin Castro and Rep. David Cicilline that detailed Trump’s reaction to the invasion and violence. Not only did this include reports of Trump’s “delight” and “excitement,” it made extremely clear his inaction over a period of hours when he might have moved to help.

But no matter how many requests Trump got from insider or outside the White House, Trump was content to watch his supporters hunting Mike Pence and members of Congress. 

At the very end of the day, as the House managers were moving to close their case, Republican Sen. Mike Lee rose to object, saying that some portion of the presentation had misquoted him. The action caused a disruption. In part that’s because Senators are not allowed to object to statements of fact during this part of the presentation, but it was even more confusing because the only time Lee was mentioned during the whole day was in connection to a phone call from Trump in which Lee’s entire statement was just letting Trump know that he was not Sen. Tommy Tuberville. 

If anything, Lee’s objection only served to draw more attention to that call. And that call is a critical part of one part of the case — showing Trump’s level of depraved indifference. Because in comments that evening, Tuberville made it clear that he told Trump during the phone call that Pence had just been taken from the chamber. When Trump hung up from that call, what Trump did wasn’t to get help, but to make tweet about Pence. 

Using the model and split screen, Rep. Castro had already pointed out that Trump’s tweet about Pence came just as the crowd was chanting “Hang Mike Pence.” That crowd read the tweet in real time, with one person even blaring it out on a bullhorn. And, as Rep. Plaskett’s presentation showed, insurgents were at that moment passing within a few feet of Pence as he escaped the building.

That moment was already one of the most impactful of the day. Lee’s objection only served to underline it’s importance.

On day one, the contest between House managers and Trump’s legal team wasn’t even close

Posted on by Mark Sumner

Tuesday wasn’t officially the start of Donald Trump’s second impeachment trial—that would be today—but as a warmup round, it certainly served as a preview of what to expect. On Tuesday, both the House impeachment managers and Trump’s legal team got their chance to make a presentation to the Senate that was supposedly meant to address the question of whether the Senate could, constitutionally, proceed with Trump’s trial even though his time in office has expired. But both sides used the time to present something that was more of an abbreviated view of the case they’ll present over the next four days of trial.

For House managers, that meant a powerful presentation filled with images of the assault on the Capitol and even their own personal stories of being driven from the chambers by the hate-filled mob. In particular, Rep. Jamie Ruskin’s story of being separated from his family as the House was evacuated was extremely moving. On Trump’s team the response was … incoherent, with lead attorney Bruce Castor performing an uncanny imitation of someone in far over his head and bereft of any plan.

The House team opened with a video presentation that recounted just a few of the moments from the Jan. 6 event. Even for those who had been there on the day, or watched the events unfold on television, the video was shocking. Compiled mostly from on the ground camera and cell phone footage, the video spoke to the anger and ferocity of Trump supporters as they beat their way past the police and smashed their way into the Capitol. By interspersing the images with shots from inside the House and Senate chambers, the video also made the timeline of events clear. 

Overall, the presentation was enthralling. The Senate chamber was absolutely silent as the video unfolded, with most senators transfixed by the images. However, some Republicans—notably Ted Cruz, Marco Rubio, and Rand Paul—made a point of not looking at the screen, spending their time scribbling or pretending to read the papers on their desk.

YouTube Video

Following the video presentation, the House team went on to lay out both their case for why the Senate trial of Trump was absolutely constitutional. That included both citations going back into British Common Law and moving forward to the most well-known cases of impeachment in the 19th century. 

When the House managers sat down, it was time for Trump attorney Bruce Castor to rise and … what happened next is difficult to summarize. Castor provided the Senate with an hour of talking for which even the word “rambling” doesn’t seem to apply. At times Castor praised the House managers. On at least two occasions he insisted that the whole event was pointless because the voters had already made a new choice and selected Joe Biden. At other times, he seemed to be threatening the Senate with some vague action. This was particularly true during a puzzling sequence in which Castor addressed Nebraska Republican Sen. Ben Sasse and appeared to announce that some court in his home state was preparing to move against him. It was a sequence that left everyone, especially Sasse, completely puzzled.

Finally, after reaching nothing that appeared to be a conclusion, and not even coming close to the question of the constitutionality of the trial, Castor sat down and handed things over to Trump’s second attorney David Schoen. In what was apparently a distracted cop/angry cop paring, Schoen spent the next hour haranguing the Senate with a presentation that featured lengthy diversions into topics such as bills of attainder, that verged on Giuliani-esque while never dropping below a boiling point of mixed disdain and disgust for his audience.

The best view of how the Trump team did may be in the response of Rep. Raskin. Given thirty minutes to reply to the statements from Trump’s attorneys, Raskin simply said that he didn’t see the need. Instead, he handed back his time, allowing the Senate to move on to a vote. In that vote, six Republicans joined with all Democrats to vote in favor of continuing the trial. That meant a gain of one from the last time the Senate voted on the constitutional question. In addition to Sasse, Susan Collins, Lisa Murkowski, Mitt Romney, and Patrick Toomey, the vote on Tuesday added Sen. Bill Cassidy of Louisiana.

It’s a long way from six to the 17 Republicans necessary to actually convict Trump. But then, the trial is just starting. If it continues to be this lopsided in the performance of the two legal times … there could be surprises ahead.

Everyone would prefer no witnesses at Trump’s second impeachment, but Trump is making it hard

Posted on (Updated by Mark Sumner

Republicans are desperate to have no witness testimony at Donald Trump’s second impeachment trial. They’d much rather run on the pretense that the whole thing is unconstitutional for mumble mumble reasons, and power through the whole of the presentation from the House impeachment managers with hands clamped tightly over their ears. After all, as long as they can pretend to be voting on a technical issue about impeachment, it’s less obvious that they’re actually signing on as full participants in sedition.

On the other hand, Democrats in both the House and Senate seem content to also run the impeachment trial without witnesses. Part of that comes from a concern that if there is a trial stretching out for weeks, Republicans will be on television every day pounding the “the Senate is getting nothing done because of this trial” drum—and ignoring the fact that “getting nothing done” was the definition of almost every day that Mitch McConnell controlled the Senate. Democrats also feel like they already have a solid case against Trump without needing testimony. After all … what he’s accused of is an event that everyone in the nation saw unfold. Every member of the House and Senate was a witness.

But the one person who seems determined to force the House impeachment managers to call witnesses against Trump is … Trump. That’s because the direction he’s taking his legal defense practically screams with the need to bring in people who can explain the truth.

Over the last week, Trump’s legal team and the House impeachment managers have filed a series of letters and replies. In the latest of these, the House team walked through the response that Trump’s attorneys made to the original statement from the impeachment managers. 

The first three-fourths of that response lean heavily on the idea that trying Trump after his term in office has expired is not constitutional. It’s an argument that is based largely on quotes taken from work by Michigan State University Professor Brian Kalt, only every single instance has been taken out of context, or misquoted, to completely reverse the intention of Kalt’s readings. That alone may be enough to nudge House managers into calling a witness, because having Kalt appear to take apart the statements by Trump’s legal team has to be tempting—especially since this house of straw is the shelter where every Republican in the Senate is hiding from the big bad wolf of facts.

But there are actually two other parts of Trump’s defense that are even more tempting, both when it comes to calling witnesses and focusing the the case by the House.

First, Trump’s team has inserted into the response the claim that Trump felt “horrible” about the events on Jan. 6, and “immediately” took action to secure the Capitol. That’s pretty amazing, because the most “immediate” response that Trump seems to have taken was to focus the attack on Mike Pence. Ten minutes after the first insurgents smashed their way into the Capitol building, Trump tweeted this:

"Mike Pence didn't have the courage to do what should have been done to protect our Country and our Constitution, giving States a chance to certify a corrected set of facts, not the fraudulent or inaccurate ones which they were asked to previously certify. USA demands the truth!"

It was an hour and a half later that the announcement was made that National Guard forces were on their way to the Capitol. And that announcement cited approval by Pence. There was no mention of Trump. There were multiple phone calls and communications that afternoon between the Pentagon, local officials, police leadership, and Pence. Not one of these calls seems to have involved Trump.

As The Washington Post has reported, “Trump was initially pleased” by the assault on the Capitol and the resulting halt in the counting of electoral votes. According to Republican Sen. Ben Sasse, Trump was “walking around the White House confused about why other people on his team weren’t as excited as he was as you had rioters pushing against Capitol Police trying to get into the building.” Witnesses said that Trump “belatedly and reluctantly” called for peace only after ignoring people both inside and outside the White House trying to get him to stop his supporters. Then, when Trump finally appeared before the public—following a demand that he do so by Joe Biden—Trump told the people smearing feces along the halls of Congress, “We love you, you’re very special.” 

The claims that Trump was immediately horrified and that he acted quickly to restore order are both clearly contradicted by events and statements on that day. In making these claims, Trump’s legal team makes it more likely that witnesses will be summoned to directly counter these false statements and show that Trump is still lying to the American people.

But there’s one last thing about Trump’s final response that may make it even more necessary to call witnesses, no matter what kind of strange threat Lindsey Graham makes. That’s because Trump has apparently made it clear to his attorneys that at no point can they admit he lost the election. Instead, as The Daily Beast reports, every mention of President Biden is only as “former Vice President Joe Biden” and at no time can the attorneys admit that Trump’s lies about voting machines, dead people voting, truckloads of ballots, sharpies affecting outcomes, or any of the other conspiracy theories raised over the course of months … are lies.

Trump is insisting on running a defense that doesn’t just make false claims about his actions on Jan. 6, but one that extends his incitement to violence right into the impeachment trial itself. And that needs to be made clear enough that no flimsy shelter of “we’re only here to talk about technical issues” can protect Republicans when they give the last scrap of their party to Trump.

Rules for second impeachment trial have been set, with House managers to begin their case on Weds.

Posted on by Mark Sumner

On Monday evening, House impeachment managers, Senate leadership, and Donald Trump’s legal team reached agreement on the rules under which the impeachment trial will proceed. In many ways, the trial will look like the one that followed Trump’s first impeachment: Each side will have up to 16 hours over two days to present their case, there will be a period of debate in which senators can submit written questions to either side, then the Senate will vote on whether to hear from witnesses. That last vote will happen only if the House impeachment managers request witnesses, and at the moment it doesn’t appear this will be the case because the crimes Trump committed were done in front of the nation, and every senator and representative present bore witness to the results of those crimes.

The rules for the trial will be voted on in the Senate on Tuesday. Assuming everything goes as expected, House managers will begin presenting their case on Wednesday. But as the Senate heads into the second impeachment trial in a year, Trump is looking for more than an acquittal from Republicans. He’s looking for a vote that confirms the party is his, now and forever.

As The Washington Post reports, the stage is set for a trial over what are by far the most serious impeachment charges ever to be considered. Last year, Donald Trump was impeached for using his office in an attempt to extort the leader of a foreign government into interfering in a United States election. It appeared to be—and was—a clear case of violating the oath of office, exploiting the power of the presidency for personal gain, and threatening an allied nation to generate false claims against a political opponent.

In that Senate trial, Republicans signaled Trump that their support was absolute, and that they would not even consider the evidence against him. Bolstered by the knowledge that he was free to do as he pleased, Trump went on to spend the period before the election preparing his followers with this message: “The only way we can lose this election is if it’s rigged.” Trump delivered this statement not once but dozens of times at rallies, on Twitter, and before the media. When Trump did lose the election—by a wide margin—he doubled down on the idea that the election wasn’t valid, repeatedly attempted to overturn the results, and drove his followers with claims that ultimately generated the events on Jan. 6.

Now Trump is hoping to do it again. According to the Post, Trump’s lawyers will continue to argue that the Senate trial is somehow unconstitutional. To do so, they’ve leaned heavily on statements from Michigan State University Professor Brian Kalt, citing Kalt’s statements in both sets of replies they have provided to the House charges. However, as NPR reports, the statements aren’t just taken out of context. They’ve been turned inside out.

"The worst part is the three places where they said I said something when, in fact, I said the opposite," Kalt said in an interview with NPR.

Kalt’s argument is not that someone’s impeachment trial can’t go forward after they’re out of office, but that they can’t be impeached for actions taken while out of office. He also argues that impeachment is about more than just removal, though his work is cited by Trump’s attorneys as if he claims the reverse.

But it doesn’t matter that there’s not real support for the claim that Trump can’t be tried over crimes which he carried out in office, and for which he was impeached while still in office. What’s important is that Republicans intend to use this claim of “big constitutional issues” to simply ignore all evidence put forward against Trump. Just as with the 2020 trial, Republicans have already set up Trump’s “Get Out of Jail Free” card and are prepared to execute on that plan no matter what evidence the House managers provide.

The end result is that Donald Trump expects to emerge from this trial, as he did in 2020, with an even firmer control of the Republican Party. As Politico reports, the Republican Party has already “coalesced back behind” the “Teflon” Trump. Trump and his allies are confident that he will emerge from the trial as the only real power in the party, able to punish every Republican who doesn’t go along with his acquittal.

Trump’s not wrong. Criminals have long known that the best way to secure the loyalty of others is to involve them in a crime. It’s not just the people on the receiving end of knuckle-breaking goons who fall in line. Once you’re a goon, it’s very, very hard to ever be human again. 

In 2020, Senate Republicans went along with Trump’s crimes against an American ally and American elections. In 2021, they’re expected to sign on again, this time to the destruction of democracy and sedition.

And how do you come back from that?

Report from inside the Capitol Police rated chance of violence on Jan. 6 as ‘remote’

Posted on by Mark Sumner

When the Senate trial for Donald Trump gets underway, one of the tasks for the House impeachment managers is going to be laying out events between Election Day and Jan. 6 to show how Trump encouraged his supporters in a lie and incited them to violence. But it’s going to have to wait until later hearings before the House and Senate bring in additional testimony on security issues related to the insurgency. Which is frustrating. Because a month after the assault on the Capitol, it seems the police, the Pentagon, and intelligence agencies still can’t agree on who knew what, who asked for help, or how things got so royally mucked up.

Since the Jan. 6 insurrection, the House has heard testimony about the lack of preparations made by the Capitol Police—despite an assessment by the acting chief, who said: “We knew that militia groups and white supremacist organizations would be attending ... We knew that there was a strong potential for violence and that Congress was the target.” There has also been a continually shifting story over efforts from the police to obtain help from the National Guard.

A month after a Trump-loving mob stormed the Capitol in a deadly attempt to overthrow democracy, the truth about what police knew, and what they did to prepare, seems more muddled than ever. Because despite everything else, police labeled the potential for violence on that day as “remote.”

On Jan. 26, Capitol Police Acting Chief Yogananda Pittman told the House Appropriations Committee that two days before the event, the department knew that Trump’s rally was going to include white supremacist militias, that many of them were bringing weapons, and violence was expected. That was a big part of why then-Chief Steven Sund put in a request for National Guard assistance. 

But The New York Times is now reporting that a report issued by the intelligence division of the Capitol Police on that same day painted a very different picture. That report looked at the groups of Trump supporters expected on Jan. 6 and rated them on a scale ranging from “remote” to “highly unlikely” when it came to any probability of violence. Not only did the report not anticipate anything like the thousands who assaulted police, surged into the area around the Capitol, and eventually went hunting for congressional hostages—the prediction seemed to be that the whole thing would be a snooze.

That assessment seems starkly at odds with Pittman’s statements about what the police were expecting on Jan. 6, and with Sund’s request to the National Guard. However, it could explain why the police had only 170 officers outfitted with riot gear. If that report circulated beyond the Capitol Police, it might even partially explain why then-Acting Defense Secretary Christopher Miller placed what seemed to be unreasonable restrictions on the few National Guard forces who were allowed to direct traffic around the city.

The only way to justify the results of the police intelligence report would be if the people in charge treated each of the groups who had applied for rally permits as if they were holding completely separate events. It would also requiring ignoring the context, as well as the violence associated with those expected to attend. Even then, it would seem impossible to produce such a low threat potential, seeing that the same “Stop the Steal” events had led to violence in other locations.

The “remote” chance of violence not only conflicts with everything Sund and Pittman said earlier, but runs counter to a statement from the same intelligence division of the Capitol Police that appeared just one day earlier. That Jan. 3 statement indicated that Trump supporters were desperate about “the last opportunity to overturn the results of the presidential election” and warned there was a significant danger to both police and the public.

If the Capitol Police appear to have been confused, they were not alone. In a letter sent to congressional leaders by Sund this week, he declared that the “entire intelligence community” missed the signs of impending violence. At a Jan. 5 meeting among various agencies, the Times sources say that “no federal or local law enforcement agencies raised any specific threats of violence for the next day.” If that’s true, it happened even though these agencies knew the Proud Boys, Oath Keepers, Three-Percenters, and other white supremacists militias were on their way to town. All of this makes it unclear whether agencies missed the signs or were simply told to ignore them. 

What’s absolutely clear is that the House investigation into the security decisions that led up to paramilitary forces prowling through the Capitol—and left a small knot of Metro D.C. police fighting a desperate battle in the tunnels behind the House—need a great deal more investigation. 

  • What caused Miller’s action in restricting the use of National Guard on Jan. 6?
  • Why were limitations put in place by the Pentagon that prevented the Guard from coming in response to direct requests from the police, even though those restrictions had not been in place for earlier events?
  • Why did the Capitol Police line up so few forces with riot gear when they knew white supremacist militias were specifically targeting Congress?
  • Most of all, why was there such an the enormous delay between the time that it was clear police at the Capitol would be overrun and an adequate response being provided?

All of those things may have explanations that amount to inadequate analysis and criminally poor planning … but that seems unlikely. If any, or all, of these actions are rooted in politics that insisted on giving Trump supporters protection even in the face of expected violence, that’s not just criminally poor planning—it’s criminal.

Republicans are afraid that Trump’s second impeachment trial is going to be ’embarassing’

Posted on by Mark Sumner

Donald Trump has been impeached for his role in using lies and incendiary language, over a period of months, to subvert the 2020 election, obstruct the business of the nation, and “gravely endanger the security of the United States and its institutions.” Those articles of impeachment have been forwarded to the Senate, along with supporting documents, to show that Donald J. Trump is uniquely responsible for the Jan. 6 assault on the United States Capitol, and that his behavior on that day “was not an isolated event.”

Unsurprisingly, House impeachment managers intend to focus on exactly these issues: Trump’s words, actions, and inactions as they relate to violence on Jan. 6. That includes how Trump encouraged the presences of white nationalist militias, lied repeatedly about the outcome of the election in ways meant to inflame his supporters, drove the whole mass toward the Capitol, and stood aside in pleasure as insurgents swarmed the halls of Congress. 

Just as expected is the response from Trump’s legal team and from Republicans in the Senate. Because they want to Trump’s second impeachment trial to be about anything other than the subject of his impeachment. 

What Republicans would enjoy most, would be to spend the entire trial arguing technical points about 19th century cases to prove that Trump can’t be tried now that he’s out of office. Two or three days of debating the impeachment of Judge Mark Delahay (who resigned in 1873 in an effort to avoid being impeached for repeatedly showing up in court drunk) or Secretary of War William Belknap (resigned in 1876 to get ahead of an impeachment for selling a government appointment) would suit them right down to the ground. Republicans would sincerely love to spend a few days putting America to sleep with the inside story of the Grant administration.

That tactic has already been on display in the vote forced by Sen. Rand Paul, in which all but five Republicans voted to just skip the entire trial. It also forms three-quarters of the response to the House impeachment from Donald Trump’s legal team, which would clearly love to spend their time talking about What Would Jefferson Do?

That’s because, as Politico reports, talking about the actual events of Jan. 6, and Donald Trump’s actions that led to men in paramilitary garb searching through the House chamber for hostages could be deeply embarrassing to Republicans. As eternal Trump advisor Steve Bannon notes, “The Democrats have a very emotional and compelling case. They’re going to try to convict him in the eyes of the American people and smear him forever.”

Yes. Because showing Trump’s words next to the results is “very emotional and compelling.” And there’s absolutely no doubt that the House impeachment managers will be pitching their case directly to the public, perhaps even more than to the senators seated in the chamber. After all, barring the discovery of Donald Trump’s fingerprints on the pipe bomb left outside the RNC, it’s highly unlikely that 17 Republican senators will suddenly recover their morality. The best thing that the House team might be able to do, in the sense of preventing Trump from continuing to be a source of divisiveness and damage for the nation, is to give the public a powerful reminder of just how Trump created the insurgency.

That’s why House impeachment managers are working to assemble a video presentation that will put together words and events on Jan. 6. Rather than working with producers who have done documentaries or political ads, the team has been reportedly working with producers of videos used at criminal trials. 

As The Washington Post reports, exactly how the trial will play out remains unclear. In Trump’s first impeachment, Republican control of the Senate allowed Mitch McConnell to define most of the proceedings, that included holding a vote to cut off the possibility of hearing from any witnesses. But Sen. Chuck Schumer is not bound by any of those past decisions. House impeachment managers could well choose to call witnesses, in spite of various “threats” from Republicans that calling any witnesses could lead to a drawn-out proceeding. A drawn-out proceeding that keeps hammering at Trump’s efforts to undermine democracy doesn’t seem like something that should concern Democrats.

And, as much as Trump’s attorney’s would love to keep the Senate buried in old citations and out of context statements from the constitutional convention, their own response opens the door to exactly the kind of pounding that Senate Republicans don’t want to see—one in which every one of Donald Trump’s false statements about the election gets hauled out for review. That’s because the response to the House managers included a statement from Trump saying that not only could no one prove he had lied, but he claimed to have won the election.

When it comes to the case that the impeachment managers would like to make, Law & Crime details exactly the points they need to hit to make their case. Key among the things that the managers need to emphasize is this point from the articles of impeachment: “[Trump’s] belief that he won the election—regardless of its truth or falsity (though it is assuredly false)—is no defense at all for his abuse of office.” 

It doesn’t matter if Trump believes his own lies. That doesn’t excuse his actions in undercutting American institutions or encouraging violent action. Trump can be as upset by his defeat as he likes—many other election losers were also upset. But whether it was Andrew Jackson or Al Gore, “all of these Presidential candidates accepted the election results and acquiesced to the peaceful transfer of power required by the Constitution.”

Trump’s situation is unique. And his despicable actions deserve to be uniquely punished. If the Senate Republicans have already stopped their ears to the truth, that case will be made to the public.

If Republicans are embarrassed, it’s because they should be. 

Rep. Jamie Raskin invites Trump to speak at his own Senate trial. Trump’s attorneys quickly say no

Posted on by Mark Sumner

Ever since Democrats began talking of impeaching Donald Trump for the second time, Republicans in the Senate have been sweating the idea of having to actually confront witnesses. In the first trial, where Mitch McConnell had control over everything that happened, Republicans were happy to just vote away the possibility of any witnesses being called. In this second round, they don’t have that option. So instead their only play has been making threats. If Democrats call a single witness, the Republicans will call the FBI to testify about how the insurgency was planned in advance. If Democrats call a single witness, Republicans will something something Kamala Harris.

There are a number of reasons why these threats are laughable. First, calling the FBI to talk about the pre-planning that went into the assault on the Capitol would only reinforce how Trump radicalized his base. Second, Republicans don’t get to call anyone—it’s Trump’s legal team that gets to request witnesses, and nothing at all says they will play along with a scheme that could hurt their client. Third, the threat is coming from Lindsey Graham and that’s always laughable.

And now it seems that lead impeachment manager Rep. Jamie Raskin has already asked a witness to appear in the Senate trial. He’s issued an invite to one … Donald J. Trump.

Raskin’s letter gets started quickly by pointing out that Trump has already been impeached (for a second time), is about to be tried in the Senate (for a second time), and has sent a response to the House impeachment managers. Wisely, Raskin just skips right back the first three fourths of that response—which is the part where Trump’s attorney’s attempt to make a case that an impeachment trial after the end of a term is unconstitutional—and gets right down to the one part of the reply that Trump clearly dictated himself. The part where Trump denies that he ever lied and claims no one can actually say for sure that he didn’t win.

Two days ago, you filed an Answer in which you denied many factual allegations set forth in the articles of impeachment. You have thus attempted to put critical facts at issue notwithstanding the clear and overwhelming evidence of your constitutional offence. In light of your disputing these factual allegations, I write to invite you to provide testimony under oath, either before or during the Senate impeachment trial, concerning your conduct on Jan. 6, 2021.

Raskin goes on to point out that both Gerald Ford and Bill Clinton provided testimony under oath while they were still in office. And, for an extra tweak of Trump’s bronzer-coated nose, Raskin adds “whereas a sitting president might raise concerns about distraction from their official duties, that concern is clearly inapplicable here.” In other words, since you’re not doing anything anyway ...

It would be easy to read the entire letter as an extended joke. After all, Trump’s legal team will surely make it clear to him that sitting down to defend his actions on January 6 would be a bad thing. That would be a day when Trump started out partying down while Rudy Giuliani was calling for “trial by combat,” took the stage to once again tell his followers that the election was being stolen and that he would march with them to the Capitol, returned to the White House to wonder why no one else was getting excited about the insurgency, failed to respond to requests for military assistance, and stepped out to tell the terrorists occupying the Capitol that “we love you” and “you’re very special.” Trump raising his hand to testify would be an abysmally misguided idea. 

On the other hand, like everyone else, Raskin knows Donald Trump way too well at this point. Throwing down the gauntlet like this, complete with a few obvious digs, is exactly the kind of thing that could make Trump angry and his legal team terrified. 

If you decline this invitation, we reserve any and all rights, including the right to establish at trial that your refusal to testify supports a strong adverse inference regarding your actions (and inaction) on Jan. 6, 2021

In other words: If you’re too big a chicken to show up, we’ll know you’re a liar.

The odds against Trump taking up the challenge are astronomically high. But Raskin deserves a round of applause for throwing this out there. The proposal here is exactly the kind of ploy that a third-rate third-grade bully like Trump would understand in only one way—Democrats are calling him a coward and a liar.

That’s unlikely to lever his rear into a witness chair. But who knows, it might.

Thursday, Feb 4, 2021 · 8:56:26 PM +00:00 · Mark Sumner

Trump’s lead attorneys (at this moment) have responded to Raskin’s letter. 

“We are in receipt of your latest public relations stunt,” write Bruce Castor and David Schoen. Then they delightfully state both that there can’t be a negative inference in the trial, and that the trial is unconstitutional before finishing up with “this use of our Constitution to bring a purported impeachment proceeding is much too serious to play these games.”

What they don’t say is whether or not Trump has seen the letter.

Trump supporters were fed explicitly racist and anti-Semitic propaganda before marching on Capitol

Posted on by Mark Sumner

Republicans want to frame Donald Trump’s second impeachment trial as if it’s all about the speech he made at the “Stop the Steal” rally on Jan. 6. It’s not. The impeachment is over the incitement to violence and insurrection created by Trump over the whole span from the election to the assault on the Capitol. That includes Trump sending tweets such as “This Fake Election can no longer stand”  and, of course, “Big protest in D.C. on January 6th. Be there, will be wild!”

However, so long as Republicans are focusing on the events of that one morning, it’s worth taking a second look at that rally and the one that came before on the evening of Jan. 5. While the words of Trump’s closing speech—complete with repeated demands that his followers march to the Capitol—are the most obvious subject of the impeachment, he was far from alone. Speakers at those two rallies included Roger Stone, Michael Flynn, Rudy Giuliani, Eric Trump, and Donald Trump Jr. All of them did their share in both raising the temperature of the crowd and encouraging violent actions. 

But there was one other event at that rally that both sums up what Trump’s movement is all about, and contributed to driving insurgents into the halls of Congress. It was a film. One in which every frame is a cast study in delivering violent, anti-Semitic propaganda. 

There’s no doubt that every speaker on the agenda added to the dark energy that resulted in the deadly insurgency. In fact, as The Washington Post reports, one of the speakers at the Jan. 5 rally was actually among those who bashed their way into the Capitol the following day. Brandon Straka—a white guy who founded the “walk away” campaign that encouraged Black voters to leave the Democratic Party—described Jan. 6 as “the revolution” in his speech to the gathered Trump supporters, and encouraged them to “fight back” as “patriots.” Straka, who frequently appears on Fox News as “a former liberal,” assaulted a police officer, called on others to do the same, then broke into the Capitol. He’s now facing multiple felony charges.

That same evening Roger Stone spoke while being flanked by “guards” from the Oath Keepers. As Mother Jones noted, Stone has a long-standing relationship with terrorist group the Proud Boys. On Jan. 5, Stone was there to tell Trump supporters to “fight until the bitter end” to block Joe Biden’s victory. Stone described the following day as the central moment of an “epic struggle.”

Michael Flynn described Jan. 6 as “a crucible moment in United States history.” While his word choice was suspect, his message to the gathered mob was clear. “We should not accept this,” said Flynn.  “Some of these states had more dead voters than the battlefields of Gettysburg or the battlefields of Vicksburg or the battlefields of Normandy. … We did not have a free, fair, and transparent vote on the third of November. And the entire world knows, everyone in this country knows, who won the election on the third.” And Flynn finished by explicitly telling the crowd what was expected of them. “The members of Congress, the members of the House of Representatives, the members of the United States Senate … those of you who are feeling weak tonight; those of you who don’t have the moral fiber in your bodies, get some tonight. Because tomorrow we the people are going to be here, and we want you to know that we will not stand for a lie.” On the heels of Flynn’s speech, former Trump adviser George Papadopoulos stepped up to make it clear that Trump’s supporters would not forget the “traitors” who voted to count the electoral votes. 

Before Trump spoke on Jan. 6, Rudy Giuliani took the stage and spun a completely fantastic tale in which halting the day’s count of electoral votes would somehow generate a 10-day period in which everything about the election could be reviewed. There’s nothing in the Constitution or later law that even hints at such an event, and Giuliani was speaking after 63 days and 62 lawsuits had failed to uncover any of the evidence of fraud he assured the crowd was present. Still, “Over the next 10 days, we get to see the machines that are crooked,” said Giuliani, “the ballots that are fraudulent, and if we’re wrong, we will be made fools of. But if we’re right, a lot of them will go to jail. Let’s have trial by combat.”

Donald Trump’s sons also appeared that morning, and their speeches—particularly that of Donald Trump Jr.—did have one especially notable quality. As Politico reported, Junior’s speech was so laced with expletives that Fox News, which had been covering the event live, was forced to cut away. But as Trump’s eldest son warned Republicans that they better vote the way his father wanted spoke, he did make one clear statement between all the four letter words. “This gathering should send a message to them,” said Trump Jr. “This isn’t their Republican Party anymore! This is Donald Trump's Republican Party!” Oh, and Eric also spoke. “We will never, ever, ever stop fighting,” said Eric. 

But for all those speakers, it was a film that both set the mood of the day and serves as the best defining document of Trump and Trumpism. Just Security has done a breakdown of the imagery involved in this brief film, and the message of fascism shines through. Not just the kind of authoritarianism that everyone casually assigns to Trump as if that’s just peachy, but genuine shiny-boot and red armband fascism, complete with enough tropes of Übermensch and Untermensch to make Leni Riefenstahl jealous.

As Just Security’s analysis makes clear, the video follows a long tradition of fascist framing. That doesn’t just mean presenting Trump as a heroic figure whose powerful presence causes others to swoon, or contrasting a false paradise under Trump with an equally false wasteland without him. It also explicitly involves using images to remind supporters what Trump stands for: white nationalism.

Everything about the video is designed to help viewers see a through line that connects what’s happening in the Capitol to an elite group of Jews secretly, and not so secretly, guiding America toward a state where white Christians are under siege. The scope of the threat is expanded to include an international conspiracy that includes the U.N. and E.U. who, with Jewish-controlled Hollywood, are seeking to weaken powerful white America.

The video shifts to an image of Senator Charles Schumer, reminding the viewer of prominent Jewish leaders of the Democratic party. Schumer is wearing a Kente cloth, an image evocative of Ku Klux Klan ideology — that Jews support Black liberation movements as a way to undermine white rule and destroy the nation. The next frame shows the Speaker of the House, Nancy Pelosi, flanked by two Jewish Congressman, Representatives Nadler and Schiff. Pelosi, too, is controlled by Jews.

House minority leader Kevin McCarthy may have had a sudden memory lapse when it comes to understanding QAnon and the intrinsically anti-Semitic ideology at its core. Trump’s video team did not forget. They’ve created a video that is practically a look into Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene’s hate-filled mind.

Vimeo Video

This video was sequenced right after Rudy Giuliani told Trump’s supporters that he wanted “trial by combat” and right before Trump himself stepped up to call on his followers to march to the Capitol. What those people who murdered a police officer, trampled over a woman, injured hundreds, smashed open the doors of the Capitol, raised a gallows, and went hunting for congressional hostages received wasn’t just limited to Trump’s statements on the morning of Jan. 6. What drove them there was what Trump, his surrogates, the right-wing media, and Republicans in both the House and Senate did after—and before—the election.

They created a world where people don’t just believe the propaganda of the video above, they’re willing to act on it.