Trump Begins Defense in Impeachment Trial Eyeing an Acquittal

LAGOS (Capital Markets in Africa) — Donald Trump’s lawyers begin their defense of the former president in his Senate impeachment trial on Friday after House Democrats spent two days portraying him as a lawless, unrepentant inciter of the Jan. 6 insurrection at the U.S. Capitol who shouldn’t hold public office again.

Lawyers for the former president are expected to argue that he didn’t provoke the violence and will show video footage of prominent Democrats using fiery language in political speeches to highlight what they say is a double standard being applied to him.

Trump attorney David Schoen said the defense might need only three or four hours on Friday for an opening argument. A person familiar with the strategy said the lawyers decided to slim down their presentation based on what they heard Thursday as House managers concluded their case. Schoen said the trial “could be over Saturday.”

“We’re just putting on the evidence, the evidence speaks for itself,” he said, calling the Democrats’ impeachment effort “a politically partisan process.”

After the House managers concluded their arguments, Schoen met for about an hour Thursday night with several Republican senators. He defended having a discussion with lawmakers who are also jurors in the case, saying, “That’s the practice here. There’s nothing about this thing that has any semblance to due process whatsoever.”

The trial is all but certain to end with Trump’s acquittal. A conviction would require 17 Senate Republicans to join with Democrats and independents in finding Trump guilty to reach the two-thirds majority necessary. Even the Senate’s No. 2 Democrat said he saw a little indication that many Republicans would back conviction.

“Many of them are loyal to Donald Trump even to this day, despite what he may have said about them or their families in the past,” Senator Dick Durbin of Illinois said in an interview Thursday with Bloomberg Television. “And more of them are afraid of Donald Trump’s political power.”

House managers meticulously highlighted over two days Trump’s own tweets, speeches, and comments to argue that his months-long campaign to stoke anger about the Nov. 3 election he lost to Democrat Joe Biden — including attempts to overturn the results with “the big lie” that the vote was stolen — inevitably culminated in the riot he did nothing to prevent or stop.

“Senators, America, we need to exercise our common sense about what happened,” Representative Jamie Raskin of Maryland, the lead impeachment manager, said in the Democrats’ final arguments. “Let’s not get caught up in a lot of outlandish lawyers’ theories here. Exercise your common sense about what just took place in our country.”

Democrats have portrayed the Jan. 6 rally in Washington where Trump urged supporters to “fight like hell” before they stormed the Capitol to stop the counting of Electoral College votes as the then-president’s last-gasp bid to stay in power.

Yet Trump’s defense team is expected to lean heavily on his comments during that speech urging the crowd to “peacefully and patriotically make your voices heard” to argue that he didn’t incite the riot and committed no crime, according to people familiar with the effort.

‘Double Standard’
The former president’s attorneys also intend to show footage of Democrats using words like “fight” and calling for protests that sometimes turned violent to argue that Trump is being singled out for his fiery rhetoric, according to the people, who were granted anonymity to discuss trial strategy.

“It’s a double standard all the way,” Schoen said. “If Donald Trump says something it means this and they decide what it means. And somebody else says something that’s perfectly innocuous.”

Democrats have dismissed that comparison as a false equivalence and pointed out that Trump said “peaceful” in his Jan. 6 speech only once and “fight” or “fighting” 20 times. They also said their case isn’t based solely on that one speech but the totality of Trump’s efforts to whip up his supporters that resulted in the Capitol siege and its aftermath.

While Schoen called the process partisan, Democrats have cited condemnations of Trump’s actions by Republicans, including the 10 House members, led by Representative Liz Cheney, one of the chamber’s GOP leaders, who voted to impeach him.

The defense will likely also have to contend with some of the unanswered questions posed by Raskin, including why Trump didn’t act to end the insurrection until hours after it started.

Senator Bill Cassidy, the Louisiana Republican who ripped Trump’s lawyers’ arguments against the constitutionality of the trial earlier in the week, told reporters Thursday he wants to hear the defense explain Trump’s lack of action once the mob breached the Capitol.

Besides arguing the trial is unconstitutional and that Trump didn’t incite the violence, his lawyers have said the impeachment violates his First Amendment protection and that the quick impeachment by the House disregards his due process rights. Democrats said on Thursday in advance of those arguments that they are without merit and an attempt to distract from the facts.

In his closing argument on Thursday, Raskin implored Trump’s attorneys not to dwell on the argument that the trial is unconstitutional because Trump is no longer in office. The Senate voted 56-44 on Tuesday — with six Republicans joining all Democrats and two independents — that the Senate can legally try the case after both sides presented their arguments.

Trump allies have continued to make the case in television interviews that the impeachment charge should have been dismissed, and Republicans including Senators John Cornyn of Texas, a member of GOP leadership, Mike Rounds of South Dakota, and Mike Braun of Indiana said Tuesday they can’t get past that issue.

“To me, I’m very concerned about this precedent of trying somebody who’s no longer in office and there’s no statute of limitations,” Cornyn said. “Every time a new majority comes in the House and the Senate they could go back, presumably, and find some political opponent they want to impeach. And I think that would be very bad for the country.”

In a Fox News interview earlier Thursday, Schoen described the former president as “very upbeat” as his defense team prepares to present its case.

Trump’s defense team also includes Bruce Castor, whose rambling presentation on Tuesday was panned by Republican senators, and Michael van der Veen, a colleague of Castor’s and founder of his Philadelphia law firm who has done personal injury and criminal defense work.

Will Witnesses Be Called?
The former president parted ways with his previous defense team and named Castor and Schoen only nine days before the trial began amid reports that he wanted the lawyers to argue his baseless claims that the presidential election was stolen. The new lawyers say they’re not using election fraud as a defense.

It’s not clear yet whether House managers will ask the Senate to call witnesses to testify, but if they do, the defense will also call witnesses, Schoen said. Trump rejected a request from House managers that he testify at the trial through the Senate could subpoena him.

Source: Bloomberg Business News