Live impeachment updates: Managers detail case that Trump for weeks laid groundwork for Capitol attack
that Trump pressured Republicans in Wayne County, Michigan, in November to change their votes on certification of the election results, and how he then contacted the GOP leaders of the Michigan legislature to overturn their states results, and invited them to the White House to personally lobby them.
“Let me be clear, Donald Trump was calling officials, hosting them at the White House, urging them to defy the voters in their state and instead award votes to Trump,” Dean said.
Dean turned to Georgia where Trump waged “a relentless attack” against election officials, most notably Georgia Secretary of State Brad Raffensperger, with tweets that were followed by death threats from Trump supporters.
“Donald Trump was savagely attacking a secretary of state because the official did his job and certified the state according to how the people in that state voted,” she said.
– Savannah Behrmann and Ledyard King
President Donald Trump’s failed efforts to overturn the election
“Donald Trump told his supporters they are stealing the election: ‘They took away your vote. It’s rigged’,” Dean said. “That was not true.”
In fact, she said, “according to judge after judge, the truth was exactly the opposite. Trump was not suing to ensure election integrity. He was pursuing lawsuits that were in effect stripping away Americans’ votes. In other words, Donald Trump was asking the judiciary to take away votes from America so that he could steal the election himself.”
– Ledyard King
Swalwell reads Trump messages naming GOP Senators, calling them a ‘RINO’s’
Rep. Eric Swalwell, D-Calif., tried to appeal to some Republican senators by reading aloud belittling messages from President Donald Trump.
One tweet from Trump the day before the insurrection read “I hope the Democrats, and even more importantly, the weak and ineffective RINO section of the Republican Party, are looking at the thousands of people pouring into D.C.”
“RINO” is a derisive term that stands for “Republican in name only.”
The tweet tagged Sens. Mitch McConnell, John Cornyn and John Thune. Swalwell read their names aloud while looking at each of them. By tagging the senators in his tweet, Swalwell said, Trump “pressured you to stop this.”
House Democrats showed another tweet from Trump’s now-banned account that called out McConnell, reading, “If a Democrat Presidential Candidate had an Election Rigged Stolen, with proof of such acts at a level never seen before, the Democrat Senators would consider it an act of war and fight to the death.”
“Mitch the Republicans do NOTHING, just want to let it pass. NO FIGHT!” the tweet concluded.
McConnell did not react the first time Swalwell named him. The second time, the Republican leader shifted in his chair, hands still clasped in his lap and remained stone-faced.
– Savannah Behrmann and Christal Hayes
Swalwell: After election. Trump exhorted supporters to act on Jan. 6
After the election was called, Democratic prosecutor Eric Swalwell said President Donald Trump began to galvanize his supporters to show up in Washington on Jan. 6 – the day when Congress would ceremoniously tabulate the Electoral College results in favor of Joe Biden.
It would also be the last opportunity for Trump and his supporters to register their opposition to an election he had convinced them was rigged, they said.
Swalwell, D-Calif., said the by the middle of December, the Trump campaign began spending $50 million in ads to drum home the message that they had to “stop the steal.”
Trump amplified that message with his own appeals in numerous tweets that mentioned Jan. 6. In a Dec. 26 tweet he showed on a video screen, Swalwell said Trump implored his followers to act: “History will remember Never give up. See everyone in D.C. on January 6.”
– Ledyard King
Swalwell recites Trump’s own words against him
Rep. Eric Swalwell quoted several of hundreds of former President Donald Trump’s tweets and statements groundlessly claiming the election was stolen, as part of the House Democratic strategy to convict Trump with his own words in the Senate impeachment trial.
Swalwell, D-Calif., cited a Nov. 15 tweet from Trump that said, “I concede nothing.” On Nov. 17, Trump tweeted: “DEAD PEOPLE VOTED” without elaboration. On Nov. 28, Trump tweeted: “We have found many illegal votes. Stay tuned!”
Among Trump’s speeches, Swalwell played a recording of Trump saying that “dead people were requesting ballots and they were dead for years.” Trump said Biden’s margins of victory in some states were the result of “extraordinarily large midnight vote dumps.”
But Trump never documented the claims. State election officials certified President Joe Biden’s victory. And then-Attorney General William Barr said the Justice Department found no widespread election fraud.
House prosecutors, who are called managers, charge that Trump incited the riot Jan. 6 at the Capitol by questioning the legitimacy of the election for months.
“Donald Trump for months and months assembled the tinder, the kindling, threw on fuel to have his supporters believe that the only way their victory would be lose was if it was stolen,” Swalwell said. “Instead of accepting the results, he told his base more lies. He doused the flames with kerosene.”
– Bart Jansen
Castro: ‘Big Lie’ started in spring when he started to see he could lose election
Democratic prosecutors said the seeds of the Jan. 6 assault on the Capitol by a pro-Trump mob were planted in the comments and tweets from the then-president months before the election when he saw his poll numbers sagging.
Rep. Joaquin Castro, D-Texas, one of the nine Democratic impeachment managers, told senators that around the late spring in 2020, Trump began spinning “his big lie” after he began to believe he might not win reelection.
“And so, he did something entirely unpresented in the history of our nation,” Castro said. “He refused to commit to a peaceful transition of power.”
Castro played a series of video clips showing Trump raising doubts about the integrity of the election.
Trump impeachment:Impeachment trial puts Trump back in the spotlight. That might not be a good thing for him.
“The only way we’re gonna lose this election is that the election is rigged. Remember that,” Trump said in one clip Castro played for senators.
Then the impeachment manager played several other clips quoting supporters as saying they could not imagine any way Trump could be defeated unless the other side cheated.
“There’s no way in hell our president’s going to lose,” one man said in a video clip.
“This is clearly a man who refused to accept the possibility – or the reality – of losing an election,” Castro said. “His supporters got the point as well.”
– Ledyard King
‘Stop the count’: Castro highlights protests at election centers following election
Rep. Joaquin Castro, D-Texas, highlighted that beyond former President Donald Trump’s “stop the steal” rhetoric was his repeated demand to “stop the count.”
Castro argued that Trump was being literal by tweeting “STOP THE COUNT” and subsequently, pro-Trump rioters “showed up at election centers across the country to do just that” under his direction.
Election workers counted ballots in several states for days after the Nov. 3 election, as an unprecedented amount of Americans voted by mail due to the coronavirus pandemic. The mail-in ballots were one of the key targets of Trump’s erroneous claims of fraudulent voting.
After Trump’s crusade against mail voting, his supporters largely voted in person, while Biden supporters embraced mail voting. Biden supporters dominated mail voting by a 2-to-1 margin nationally. So Trump appeared ahead in several battleground states where in-person voting was counted first on election night. But the race shifted to Biden as mail-in ballots were counted.
In the days following Nov. 3, supporters of Trump gathered outside of election centers in Georgia, Michigan, Arizona and other states as votes were being counted inside.
“They bought into his big lie,” Castro said.
– Savannah Behrmann
Managers show videos and affidavits of rioters saying Trump invited them to breach Capitol
House managers showed videos of several people saying they were “following” President Donald Trump’s orders by breaching the Capitol Jan. 6.
A montage played by House Democrats during the second day of the former president’s impeachment trial showed several Trump supporters, during and after the insurrection, saying Trump had “invited” them there.
One woman in the video, Jennifer Ryan, who’d taken a private jet to DC for the riot, said afterwards she was “following my president.”
Rep. Joe Neguse, D-Colo., also displayed a few criminal complaints from those arrested after the breach, where some of those in the mob said “‘they would have killed (vice president) Mike Pence if given the chance.’”
Another affidavit read: “ ‘We broke into the Capitol … We got inside, we did our part.’”
“‘We were looking for (Speaker of the House) Nancy (Pelosi) to shoot her in the friggin’ brain but we didn’t find her,’” the statement continued.
The rioters “wouldn’t have listened to you, to me, to the vice president of the United States…” Neguse said. “They were following the president. He alone, the Commander in Chief, had the power to stop them, and he didn’t.”
– Savannah Behrmann
Neguse quotes former Trump chief of staff: ‘No surprise’ Trump spurred mob
Rep. Joe Neguse, D-Colo., quoted former President Donald Trump’s former chief of staff, four-star Marine Gen. John Kelly, as evidence that Trump knew he could enflame a crowd to attack the Capitol on Jan. 6.
“No surprise what happened yesterday,” Kelly said in a recording Neguse played.
Kelly said the day after the riot that “the president knows who he’s talking to when he tweets or he makes statements.” Trump had been raising baseless claims about the election being stolen for months before the attack.
“He knows who he is talking to and knows what he wants them to do,” Kelly said.
– Bart Jansen
Neguse: Capitol mob thought Trump wanted them to act
Rep. Joe Neguse, one of the prosecutors in the Senate impeachment trial of Donald Trump, said the former president provoked the Capitol riot on Jan. 6.
Neguse, D-Colo., cited how Trump for months told followers he couldn’t lose the election unless there was massive fraud. Neguse argued that Trump threatened Georgia state election officials, who warned that his unfounded claims could lead to violence.
Democrats on Wednesday showed a collage of videos of Trump refusing to back down. “We’re in a fight for the survival of our nation,” Trump said in one. “We’re going to fight like hell,” he said in another.
For the attack on the Capitol, Neguse argued the mob thought Trump wanted them to take action.
“Their conduct was intentional,” Neguse said.
Neguse said Trump used his Jan. 6 speech before the riot as a call to arms, reminding senators that rioters scaled the Capitol’s walls, broke windows and killed a Capitol police officer.
“This was not just a speech,” Neguse said. “It didn’t just happen.”
Neguse said Trump must be convicted to prevent future attacks on the country’s peaceful transfer of power.
– Bart Jansen
Raskin: Trump ‘reveled’ in assault on Capitol
Democratic prosecutors at Donald Trump’s impeachment trial are hoping to prove the former president’s guilt by showing how little remorse he showed after the Jan. 6 attack on the Capitol.
Not only did he incite the assault, he enjoyed the moment as he watched it unfold, lead House Democratic prosecutor Rep. Jamie Raskin, D-Md., told senators.
“He watched it on TV like a reality show,” Raskin said, citing news reports quoting senior aides to Trump. “He reveled in it.”
Raskin pointed out that Trump tweeted after the assault, continuing to spread “the big lie” about Joe Biden’s win that incited rioters in the first place.
“These are the things and events that happen when a sacred landslide election victory is so ceremoniously viciously stripped away from great patriots who have been badly unfairly treated for so long.” Trump said in the tweet Raskin highlighted.
“If anyone ever had a doubt as to this focus that day, it was not to defend us, it was not to console us, it was to praise and sympathize and commiserate with the rampaging mob,” Raskin said. “It was to continue to act as inciter in chief, not commander in chief, by telling the mob that their election had been stolen from them. Even then, after that vicious attack, he continued to spread the big lie.”
– Ledyard King and Will Cummings
Raskin: Trump no ‘innocent bystander’
Rep. Jamie Raskin opened Democrats’ arguments Wednesday in the Senate impeachment trial by saying former President Donald Trump was “no innocent bystander” to the violence at the Capitol on Jan. 6, but someone who enflamed his supporters to riot and was warned they could become violent.
Raskin said Trump, who baselessly claimed the election was stolen by President Joe Biden, said evidence Democrats present will show Trump was warned by media reports, law enforcement reports and arrests that his supporters could become violent.
“In short, we will prove that the impeached president was no innocent bystander, whose conduct was ‘totally appropriate,’” said Raskin, D-Md. “He incited this attack and he saw it coming.”
Trump’s defense team, including Bruce Castor Jr., compared the riot to a bad accident or natural disaster for which society sought someone to blame. Trump gave a speech to the crowd that later laid siege to the Capitol, but his defenders contend he sought a peaceful protest.
The House impeached Trump by charging him with inciting the insurrection. Raskin said the violence was planned to disrupt the counting of Electoral College votes that certified Biden’s victory and aimed even at Vice President Mike Pence, who oversaw the count.
“To us, it may have felt like chaos and madness,” Raskin said. “But there was method in the madness that day.”
– Bart Jansen
Second day of Trump’s impeachment trial begins
The second day of former President Donald Trump’s historic second impeachment trial has begun, with the House Democratic prosecutors beginning their total of 16 hours of arguments.
The House prosecutors, known as managers, will present up to eight of these hours Wednesday. Lead manager, Rep. Jamie Raskin, told senators Tuesday that he wouldn’t lecture them, and would present them with “cold, hard facts” to prove Trump incited the deadly insurrection at the Capitol last month.
The managers are also expected to show security camera footage from the Capitol on Jan. 6 that has never been seen before.
Sen. Ben Cardin, D-Md., told reporters on Capitol Hill he “expects” the managers to “spend a lot of their time” examining the intent behind Trump’s words leading up to the riot.
“There’s no question that there was an insurrection. There’s no question that the president’s words motivated the crowd. Question is the president, did he really intend for something like this to happen?”
– Savannah Behrmann
Trump attorney Castor says ex-president happy with opening arguments
Bruce Castor, a member of Donald Trump’s legal team whose opening argument in the former president’s second impeachment trial Tuesday was widely derided, told reporters that despite reports to the contrary, his client was happy with his performance.
Pundits and politicians from across the political spectrum criticized Castor’s arguments as unpersuasive and unclear, and his sometimes meandering language drew social media scorn. Citing unnamed sources, multiple news organizations described Trump as “furious” with Castor as he watched the proceedings from his Mar-a-Lago estate in Florida.
But when asked Wednesday if Trump had expressed displeasure with his argument before the Senate, Castor said, “Far from it.”
And when asked what he thought of the onslaught of criticism that followed his performance, Castor said, “Only one person’s opinion matters.”
– William Cummings
Democrats to show previously unseen security video of riots
WASHINGTON – House Democrats will show security footage from the Capitol that has never been seen before as they prosecute the Senate impeachment trial against former President Donald Trump, according to senior aides.
A 13-minute highlight reel of the riot Jan. 6, which weaved scenes of violence at the Capitol with Trump’s statements, was the centerpiece of arguments Tuesday over whether the trial is constitutional. The Senate voted 56-44, with six Republicans joining 50 Democrats, to declare it constitutional.
House prosecutors, who are called managers, contend they have a chance to persuade more Republicans because the evidence is compelling.
Five Republicans – Sens. Susan Collins of Maine, Lisa Murkowski of Alaska, Mitt Romney of Utah, Ben Sasse of Nebraska and Pat Toomey of Pennsylvania – had joined Democrats in an earlier vote upholding the constitutionality of the trial. They were joined Tuesday by GOP Sen. Bill Cassidy, who praised the managers’ arguments.
In a Senate split 50-50, at least 17 Republicans would have to join Democrats for the required two-thirds majority to convict Trump.
House managers will present up to eight hours of arguments Wednesday that seek to illustrate how Jan. 6 was the culmination of Trump’s attacks on the election rather than the beginning, according to aides.
The managers will also have eight hours Thursday to chronicle months of statements they contend enflamed his supporters with lies about the election being stolen, creating a mob that rampaged through the Capitol. The evidence will show that Trump attracted violent supporters so that the result was foreseeable, according to aides.
Trump’s defense team has argued that his speech near the White House on Jan. 6 before the riots was protected by the First Amendment and that he can’t be blamed for what his supporters did. Trump’s defense lawyers will have up to 16 hours to make their arguments after the House managers complete two days of presentations.
‘I’ll have to do better next time’:Trump’s attorneys take Republican criticism on first day of trial
The vast majority of the nine managers led by Rep. Jamie Raskin, D-Md., are expected to speak Wednesday, according to aides.
The aides described how the trial would unfold under condition of anonymity.
– Bart Jansen
Top takeaways from Day 1 of former President Donald Trump’s impeachment trial
Sen. Roy Blunt, R-Mo., said while senators were witnesses, they “were pretty clustered witnesses” and the video allowed him to fully take in the events.
“That’s probably the longest time I’ve spent actually watching video on that topic,” he said. “It was a horrible day.”
Sen. Chris Murphy, D-Conn., said while it’s difficult, senators and the public should be forced to listen and face details of the attack.
“It’s powerful,” he said. “This is what the trial is about – the trial is about an insurrection against the federal government so not sure how you can have a trial without showing what happened that day.”
He acknowledged it’s going to be hard for many to relive that day, noting more footage and details are going to be presented.
“It’s gonna be a tough couple days,” Murphy said. “You’re gonna see more of that more pretty disturbing video, but I think it’s important for the Senate and for the public to see it.”
– Christal Hayes and Nicholas Wu
‘Dad, I don’t want to come back’:Rep. Jamie Raskin, in tears at trial, recounts daughter’s fear during Capitol riot
House Democrats open Trump impeachment trial with chilling video of Capitol riot
Impeachment managers hope to convince Senate Republicans to convict Trump on a charge of inciting the insurrection at the Capitol last month. Democrats allege Trump’s words and actions directly caused the violence that left multiple people dead.
The video played Tuesday summarized the violence by showing rioters smashing their way into the building while police were crushed and bludgeoned. The footage was spliced with Trump’s statements praising members of the crowd while baselessly saying he won the election.
Wednesday’s proceedings begin at noon after the trial withstood a challenge from Trump’s legal team Tuesday. The Senate voted 56-44 to uphold the constitutionality of the trial after Trump’s lawyers said it should be dismissed because Trump no longer holds office. Six Republicans joined the 50 Democrats in voting to move the case forward.
But the vote suggested Trump will likely be acquitted because at least 67 senators is required for conviction and more than a third of the chamber – all Republicans – objected to moving forward with the trial Tuesday.
Trump’s defense team led by Bruce Castor Jr. and David Schoen had argued that Trump couldn’t be tried as a private citizen after leaving office. They also said Trump’s speech to the mob before it stormed the Capitol was protected by the First Amendment.
Trump’s defense team will have up to 16 hours for arguments over two days after the House managers finish.
– Bart Jansen