Democrats want Donald Trump to testify at impeachment trial
Democrats leading the impeachment trial against Donald Trump have warned their case against him could be strengthened if he refuses to testify.
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Democratic lawmakers leading the impeachment case against Donald Turmp have requested the former president to testify in his trial for allegedly inciting insurrection in the attack on the US Capitol last month.
“I write to invite you to provide testimony under oath, either before or during the Senate impeachment trial, concerning your conduct on January 6, 2021,” chief impeachment manager Jamie Raskin wrote in a letter to Mr Trump, ahead of the February 9 opening of the trial.
Raskin made the request after Mr Trump’s lawyers filed a pre-trial brief denying the allegations that he encouraged the violent assault by his supporters on the US Congress, which left five people dead.
“You have thus attempted to put critical facts at issue, notwithstanding the clear and overwhelming evidence of your constitutional offense,” Mr Raskin said.
Mr Trump will go on trial in the Senate for the second time in a year beginning next week.
Raskin proposed that Trump provide testimony, and face cross-examination on it, between February 8 and February 11, “at a mutually convenient time and place.”
Raskin said Mr Trump had little excuse to avoid testifying, saying he could no long claim that he was too busy overseeing the country, as was the White House position when he was still president.
“We therefore anticipate your availability to testify.”
If Mr Trump, who now lives in his Florida Mar-a-Lago resort, declines to testify, Raskin warned, the impeachment prosecutors could cite that as evidence supporting his guilt.
Raskin gave Trump until 5 pm Friday to respond to the letter.
AOC SLAMMED OVER RIOT ‘EXAGGERATION’
Representative Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez is facing criticism over initial claims she made about the January 6 Capitol riot, with many noting that she wasn’t even in the Capitol building when the violence unfolded.
The controversy erupted after the New York congresswoman posted a video in which she described a confrontation with Capitol Police at her office, which is not in the Capitol itself The Capitol, which includes the dome, the House, and the Senate, was where many rioters stormed in and were seen breaking windows.
According to Fox News, the office of Ms Ocasio-Cortez is located in the Cannon building, which is accessible through underground tunnels connected to the Capitol as well as via a walkway and across the street.
It was also one of the buildings where staff were told to evacuate after suspicious packages were found in the area. Police found pipe bombs and Molotov cocktails in the vicinity.
In response to the incident, the congresswoman said: “I did not know if I was going to make it to the end of that day alive.”
She also accused Republican Senator Ted Cruz of almost having her “murdered,” touching on accusations that Mr Cruz and others incited the attack through their rhetoric about the election.
“I can tell you that I had a very close encounter where I thought I was going to die,” she said in a video last month.
In her more recent video, she offered an emotional recollection of how she hid behind a bathroom door and heard the police officer break into her office.
“I thought I was going to die,” she said, noting that she didn’t initially realise the person trying to enter her office was police. “I have never been quieter in my entire life.”
She added that the situation “didn’t feel right because he was looking at me with a tremendous amount of anger and hostility — and things weren’t adding up. There was no partner there and no one was yelling, he wasn’t yelling like, ‘this is Capitol Police, this is Capitol Police.’”
.@AOC describes a Capitol Police officer bursting into her office, says his presence “didn’t feel right†and that he was looking at her “in all of this anger and hostility.†Her staffer reportedly wondered if he would have to fight the officer. pic.twitter.com/LCj2JmmFP6
— Mary Margaret Olohan (@MaryMargOlohan) February 2, 2021
On Wednesday, she faced a wave of backlash. Republican Nancy Mace also blasted media coverage, tweeting that insurrectionists never stormed the hallway that she shares with Ms Ocasio-Cortez. The hashtag #AlexandriaOcasioSmollet trended, an apparent comparison to actor Jussie Smollett, who falsely claimed to be the victim of a hate crime.
Ms Ocasio-Cortez responded to some of the criticism, suggesting that it was “the latest manipulative take on the right.”
“They are manipulating the fact that most people don’t know the layout the Capitol complex,” she said.
.@AOC made clear she didn’t know who was at her door. Breathless attempts by media to fan fictitious news flames are dangerous.
— Rep. Nancy Mace (@RepNancyMace) February 2, 2021
My office is 2 doors down. Insurrectionists never stormed our hallway. Egregious doesn’t even begin to cover it. Is there nothing MSM won’t politicize? pic.twitter.com/Tl1GiPSOft
“We were all on the Capitol complex — the attack wasn’t just on the dome.”
In another tweet, she said: “People were trying to rush and infiltrate our office buildings — that’s why we had to get evacuated in the first place. The attempts of attackers & publicly available communications show how they tried to gain access and share location info on finding members for physical harm.”
It wasn’t immediately clear what she was referring to, and her office has not commented.
She later posted about those questioning her account.
“To survivors of any trauma who worry about being believed, or that their situation wasn’t ‘bad’ enough or ‘too’ bad, or fear being branded or deemed ‘manipulative’ for telling the truth: I see you,” she tweeted.
This is the latest manipulative take on the right.
— Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez (@AOC) February 3, 2021
They are manipulating the fact that most people don’t know the layout the Capitol complex.
We were all on the Capitol complex - the attack wasn’t just on the dome.
The bombs Trump supporters planted surrounded our offices too. pic.twitter.com/jI18e0XRrd
You may not know that you know a survivor, but it’s highly likely that you do.
— Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez (@AOC) February 3, 2021
Survivors of trauma are close to you. They are people you love & you may not know.
Many decide whether their story is safe with someone by how they respond to other survivors.
Don’t push them away.
Meanwhile, US President Joe Biden’s top security adviser said on Thursday (local time) the United States will take action against Russia for interfering with US elections, for poisoning opposition figure Alexei Navalny and for other “malign” behaviour.
“Unlike the previous administration, we will be taking steps to hold Russia accountable for the range of malign activities that it has undertaken,” said White House National Security Adviser Jake Sullivan.
“We will do that at a time and a manner of our choosing,” he said.
DC AIDES WANT TRUMP CONVICTED OVER RIOT TRAUMA
Hundreds of congressional aides have written an open letter to US senators imploring them to consider the distress staffers experienced during the January 6 insurrection at the US Capitol and to convict former President Donald Trump “for our sake, and the sake of the country.”
“We are staff who work for members of the US Senate and the US House of Representatives, where it is our honour and privilege to serve our country and our fellow Americans.
“We write this letter to share our own views and experiences, not the views of our employers.
But on January 6, 2021, our workplace was attacked by a violent mob trying to stop the electoral college vote count. That mob was incited by former president Donald J. Trump and his political allies, some of whom we pass every day in the hallways at work,” more than 370 staffers, who are predominantly Democrats, wrote in the letter released on Wednesday (local time).
Mr Trump was impeached by the House of Representatives before he left office in January for inciting the insurrection at the Capitol, which left politicians and staffers scrambling for their personal safety.
Arguments in the Senate trial are set to begin next week, and House impeachment managers will argue that Mr Trump is “singularly responsible” for the riot, according to a brief they filed on Tuesday (local time).
“As Congressional employees, we don’t have a vote on whether to convict Donald J. Trump for his role in inciting the violent attack at the Capitol, but our Senators do. And for our sake, and the sake of the country, we ask that they vote to convict the former president and bar him from ever holding office again.”
Signers of the letter come from over 100 House offices, 15 Senate offices and 10 different committees, including the House Judiciary, Oversight and Foreign Affairs committees, according to the organisers.
“No one should have to experience something like this in their place of work,” a congressional aide told CNN.
“And I think it’s important to tell this part of the story, because it’s not just members of Congress who come to work at the Capitol every day. And it’s not just staffers who work at the Capitol who were traumatised by what happened. And I think that is a piece of it. The trauma is there; the trauma is very real. And anytime that new pieces of information come out, you know, you’re kind of re-traumatised.”
It comes as Democrats plan to launch an ad and PR campaign to remind voters of Republicans’ ties to the conspiracy group, QAnon.
The Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee launched a US$500,000 ($A650,000) ad campaign against eight House Republicans, including House Minority Leader Kevin McCarthy, linking the politicians’ to the conspiracy group and controversial Republican. Marjorie Taylor Greene, who has expressed support for QAnon, among other far-right conspiracy theories.
The narrator of one ad said some Republicans “stood with Q, not you,” accusing some politicians who voted against impeaching Mr Trump of being “cowards” by voting to “protect” Mr Trump and the QAnon mob.
EXPLOSIVE DETAILS EMERGE OF TRUMP MEETING
Meanwhile, explosive details about a meeting held between Mr Trump and conspiracy theorists during his final days in office has emerged.
During the meeting, held days after the electoral college certified Joe Biden’s win, a number of key Trump supporters and White House aides engaged in a heated debate as to whether or not the president should invoke emergency powers to overturn the election result, Axios reports.
“You’re quitting! You’re a quitter! You’re not fighting!” retired general and former national security adviser Michael Flynn reportedly shouted at White House adviser Eric Herschmann.
Mr Flynn, who was charged with lying to the FBI and later pardoned by Mr Trump reportedly told the President, “we need fighters”.
Herschmann reportedly responded, “Why the f*** do you keep standing up and screaming at me? If you want to come over here, come over here. If not, sit your ass down.”
Lawyer Sidney Powell is also believed to have been in attendance, and reportedly used the meeting to seek top secret security clearances and allow the US government seize Dominion’s voting machines.
TRUMP ‘SINGULARLY RESPONSIBLE’ FOR CAPITOL RIOT
Donald Trump was “singularly responsible” for the deadly US Capitol riot last month and acquitting the former president could damage American democracy, politicians leading the impeachment case said, a week before his Senate trial begins.
Mr Trump became the first US president in history to be impeached twice when the House of Representatives charged him last month with inciting the mayhem inflicted by his followers when they invaded Congress on January 6.
In a pre-trial brief, the House impeachment managers made their case for the Senate to convict, saying the American people should be protected “against a president who provokes violence to subvert our democracy.”
Mr Trump’s impeachment was triggered by a speech he delivered to a crowd on the National Mall just before the riot, telling them that Joe Biden had stolen the presidential election and that they needed to march on Congress and show “strength.”
The mob stormed the Capitol, fatally wounded one police officer, wrecked furniture and forced terrified politicians to hide, interrupting a ceremony to put the legal stamp on Biden’s victory.
The nine impeachment managers, all Democrats, argued in their sweeping 77-page document that Mr Trump’s speech had whipped the crowd into a “frenzy.”
Mr Trump, they said, “is singularly responsible for the violence and destruction” during the riot that left five people dead and threatened the lives of politicians and vice president Mike Pence.
“In a grievous betrayal of his oath of office, President Trump incited a violent mob to attack the United States Capitol,” wrote the politicians, led by congressman Jamie Raskin.
“If provoking an insurrectionary riot against a joint session of Congress after losing an election is not an impeachable offence, it is hard to imagine what would be,” the brief states.
Failure to convict Mr Trump “would embolden future leaders to attempt to retain power by any and all means — and would suggest that there is no line a president cannot cross.”
Although Mr Trump was impeached on January 13, his term ended a week later — before the beginning of the Senate trial.
“The present proceedings are moot and thus a nullity since the 45th president cannot be removed from an office he no longer occupies,” Mr Trump lawyers Bruce Castor and David Schoen wrote in their own brief outlining the case for the defence.
They also said Mr Trump’s speech in Washington, and his repeated refusal to accept the election results, amounted to protected free speech.
“The president exercised his First Amendment right under the Constitution to express his belief that the election results were suspect,” the lawyers wrote.
Democrats rejected outright the reasoning that Mr Trump cannot be tried once out of office.
“There is no ‘January Exception’ to impeachment or any other provision of the Constitution,” they wrote, adding that a president must answer for his conduct in office “from his first day in office through his last.”
They point to multiple videos — expected to be used as evidence in the trial — which they say show Mr Trump inciting the crowd to commit violence, and show rioters chanting “Hang Mike Pence!” and hunting for House Speaker Nancy Pelosi.
Trump spent much of his time after the November 3 vote claiming that the election was stolen through massive fraud.
Dozens of courts in multiple states found the argument baseless. But impeachment managers argued that Mr Trump’s constant promoting of the unfounded accusations that the election was stolen fuelled his supporters into backing efforts to overturn the election.
When those efforts failed, the Democrats wrote, Mr Trump “summoned a mob to Washington, exhorted them into a frenzy, and aimed them like a loaded cannon down Pennsylvania Avenue.”
The Senate’s 100 members take up the impeachment trial on February 9, and it is expected to last at least one week.
Democrats acknowledge that a conviction is unlikely. With the chamber evenly split 50-50, Democrats would need at least 17 Republicans to break with Mr Trump in order to surpass the two-thirds threshold necessary for conviction.
Should that occur, a subsequent vote would be held, with a simple majority required to ban Mr Trump from holding public office in the future.
TRUMP’S $70M ‘WAR CHEST’ REVEALED
Donald Trump has been left with a personal war chest of US$70 million through his post-election fundraising efforts, new reports show.
On Sunday US local time, finance reports lodged by the Republican Party showed that Mr Trump and the Party netted $175 million in November and December 2020, largely through small-time donations made by supporters of the former President.
Following the November 3 win of now President Joe Biden, Mr Trump and senior party allies began claiming the 2020 election had been “stolen” through voter fraud, vote miscounts, and corruption and encouraged supporters to donate to Mr Trump’s and the Party’s coffers to cover legal action required to overturn the election results.
While Mr Trump’s legal team mounted dozens of challenges across the country, courts have repeatedly rejected claims made by Mr Trump’s lawyers, with numerous citing insufficient evidence.
While donors were told their money would go towards legal challenges aimed at overturning the 2020 election results, finance reports show that to date just $10 million of the $175 million raised has gone to legal fees.
According to the New York Times, a further $5 million was paid to a media firm that purchased television advertisements on stations across the US, while another $4.4 million was paid towards online advertising.
Hours before President Biden’s swearing in, Mr Trump left Washington to relocate to Florida, where he has since opened an Office of the Former President, an unprecedented move in the US politics.
TRUMP’S LAST MINUTE LAWYERS
Former US president Donald Trump has picked two lawyers to head his defence team days before his historic second impeachment trial, as Republicans braced for a battle over the future of their party.
Mr Trump’s Senate trial is due to start on February 9, but he had reportedly parted ways with several members of his initial legal team just a day ago.
His lead lawyers, David Schoen and Bruce L Castor, Jr, are “highly respected trial lawyers” with backgrounds in criminal law and defence, according to a statement from Mr Trump.
Mr Schoen has represented Trump ally Roger Stone, and said he was in discussions to join the legal team for Jeffrey Epstein in 2019 days before the disgraced US financier took his own life while in jail on allegations of trafficking underage girls for sex.
Mr Castor previously served as the district attorney for Montgomery County, Pennsylvania, where he declined to push forward with a case when US comedian Bill Cosby was accused of sexual assault by Andrea Constand.
The case moved forward under Mr Castor’s successor and Mr Cosby was convicted in 2018. Mr Schoen had already been working with the defence team, and both he and Mr Castor “agree that this impeachment is unconstitutional,” Mr Trump’s statement said.
The trial of the former president for alleged “incitement of insurrection” over the storming of the Capitol by his supporters has exposed a rift between Trump loyalists who dominate the Republican Party, and its moderate wing.
“The Senate trial … is going to call all Republicans to take a position more clearly,” Arkansas Governor Asa Hutchinson told US TV.
“We’ve got to have a regard for those people that supported Donald Trump … But at the same time, we don’t want to gloss over the terrible actions that happened at the Capitol.”
Mr Trump looks increasingly likely to avoid conviction due to party support in the Senate — where all but five Republicans already backed an attempt to throw out the case on constitutional grounds.
But the trial is still sure to see battle lines drawn over who controls the party following Mr Trump’s first-term defeat.
On January 6, Mr Trump gave a fiery speech outside the White House exhorting his supporters to march on the US Capitol to overturn the election results.
BIDEN CONSIDERS MYANMAR SANCTIONS
Meanwhile, US President Joe Biden called on Myanmar’s military to relinquish power immediately and ordered a review to consider reimposing sanctions lifted during the nation’s transition to democracy.
“The international community should come together in one voice to press the Burmese military to immediately relinquish the power they have seized,” Mr Biden said in a statement.
“The United States removed sanctions on Burma over the past decade based on progress toward democracy,” he said, using Myanmar’s former name.
“The reversal of that progress will necessitate an immediate review of our sanction laws and authorities, followed by appropriate action.
“The United States will stand up for democracy wherever it is under attack.”
Myanmar’s transition had initially been seen as a major success story of the administration of former president Barack Obama, in which Mr Biden served as vice president, with the strategically placed country seen as moving toward democracy and away from China’s orbit.
But Myanmar’s once iconic democracy leader Aung San Suu Kyi drew Western criticism over her reticence to condemn mass killings of Rohingya Muslims.
On Monday (local time), the military arrested her and other politicians after her party scored another sweeping election victory.
“The United States is taking note of those who stand with the people of Burma in this difficult hour,” Mr Biden said, in what was likely a veiled reference to China
“We will work with our partners throughout the region and the world to support the restoration of democracy and the rule of law, as well as to hold accountable those responsible for overturning Burma’s democratic transition.”
Originally published as Democrats want Donald Trump to testify at impeachment trial
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