Donald Trump impeachment team sets out aggressive defence
Donald Trump’s legal team set out an aggressive, 78-page defence before his second impeachment trial.
Donald Trump’s legal team set out an aggressive defence strategy for the former president before the beginning of the historic second impeachment trial on Wednesday (AEDT) with a call for senators to reject “this brazen political act”.
In answer to the charge of inciting insurrection over the mob attack on the US Capitol last month, Mr Trump’s team sought to turn the tables on Democrats by accusing them of being “a danger to our democracy” for bringing the prosecution against him.
Democrats said they will show that Mr Trump summoned the large crowd of his supporters when Congress met to ratify the election, intended to trigger violence when he urged them to “fight like hell” and that his pressure on election officials to “find” votes proved his desperation to retain power.
Mr Trump, 74, is the first US president to be impeached twice and only the third who has ever faced the most serious political sanction in the constitution. If convicted by a two-thirds majority of the 100 senators he will be disqualified from future office, although just five of 50 Republicans voted against a motion declaring the trial unconstitutional, suggesting that he will be acquitted.
More than half of Americans – 56 per cent – believe Mr Trump should be convicted and disqualified, according to an ABC News/Ipsos poll. However, just 15 per cent of Republicans said he should be convicted.
Mr Trump remains at his Mar-A-Lago resort in his new home base of Palm Beach, Florida, which he has made his new legal address and where he appears to have taken up residence despite a local council planning stipulation that no one should stay there for more than three weeks a year. His eldest daughter, Ivanka, 39, has also made her new home base in Florida at Arte Surfside, 96km down the coast.
On Monday Mr Trump’s lawyers set out their case in a 78-page defence document. “Indulging House Democrats’ hunger for this political theatre is a danger to our Republic, democracy and the rights that we hold dear,” they said. They rejected the charge of incitement as unconstitutional, defective, intellectually dishonest and a “master’s class in the art of political opportunism”.
They argued that Mr Trump’s call to “fight” was figurative and referred to continuing his political struggle, not an instruction to attack the Capitol, while he also urged the crowd to “peacefully and patriotically make your voices heard”. As well as arguing that impeachment no longer applies because Mr Trump is now a private citizen, they also accused the Democrats of rushing the process while he was in office.
One of their main arguments was undercut by a prominent conservative lawyer. Writing in The Wall Street Journal, Charles Cooper said that the punishment of disqualification in the constitution can only be applied to former office holders because, in the case of a serving official, the decision follows removal. “It defies logic to suggest that the Senate is prohibited from trying and convicting former officeholders,” he concluded. “The senators who supported [the motion to dismiss the trial for being unconstitutional] should reconsider their view and judge the former president’s misconduct on the merits.”
In their five-page rebuttal, the House impeachment team rejected Trump’s arguments. They intend to use extensive video of the events of January 6 to show that Trump fomented violence and did too little to prevent or end it.
“Presidents swear a sacred oath that binds them from their first day in office through their very last,” they wrote. “There is no ‘January Exception’ to the constitution that allows presidents to abuse power in their final days without accountability. When President Trump demanded that the armed, angry crowd at his Save America Rally ‘fight like hell’ or ‘you’re not going to have a country anymore’, he wasn’t urging them to form political action committees about election security in general. And when the president demanded that Georgia secretary of state Raffensperger ‘find’ enough votes to overturn the election – or else face ‘a big risk to you’ and ‘a criminal offence’ – that was obviously a threat, one which reveals his state of mind (and his desperation to try to retain power by any means necessary).”
Each side has been allotted 16 hours to put their arguments and senators will vote afterwards on whether to issue subpoenas for more evidence or call witnesses but the trial is expected to last between one and two weeks, making it the shortest in history after the 21 days for Trump’s first hearing last year.
Asked yesterday if he thought a previous president should face an impeachment trial and disqualification, President Biden said: “He got an offer to come and testify, he decided not to. We’ll let the Senate work that out.”
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Who is Jamie Raskin?
Shortly before 2pm on the day after he buried his only son, Jamie Raskin rose to speak in the House of Representatives and urged his fellow congressmen to recognise the results of the 2020 presidential election.
Minutes later the Democrat and former constitutional law professor heard what sounded like a battering ram at the door of the chamber.
After hiding with colleagues from the violent mob that had stormed the Capitol, he set to work drafting an article to impeach the president for inciting an insurrection. At around 2.30am he was back in the House, denouncing the attack and reminding his colleagues that in the words of Thomas Paine, after whom he had named his late son: “In the monarchies, the king is the law. But in the democracies, the law will be king.”
On Tuesday Mr Raskin, 58, will lead the prosecution case in Mr Trump’s second impeachment trial, inspired by the note his son left before he took his own life on December 31 in which he implored his parents: “Please look after each other, the animals and the global poor for me.” In a legal brief released last week Mr Raskin argued that Mr Trump “created a powder keg” that primed hundreds of people for “violence at his direction”.
Mr Raskin is well liked by politicians of both parties and has a reputation as a constitutional scholar. The Harvard graduate taught at the Washington College of Law while serving in the Maryland state legislature and was then elected to Congress in 2016.
His father, Marcus, was an aide to President Kennedy and an opponent of the Vietnam war who took his son to protests from a young age.
The Times
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