Tag: Trump second impeachment

One of Trump’s impeachment lawyers sued him last year — and accused him of making claims about fraud with ‘no evidence’

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Last year, Philadelphia lawyer Michael T. van der Veen filed a lawsuit against then-President Donald Trump accusing him of making repeated claims that mail voting is “ripe with fraud” despite having “no evidence in support of these claims.”

This week, van der Veen is adopting a different posture as part of the team of attorneys defending Trump’s efforts to overturn the 2020 presidential election result in his Senate impeachment trial.

How a longtime personal-injury lawyer found himself at the center of that trial, which opened Tuesday, may say more about his client than his own legal career. Trump struggled to find lawyers to take on his case, parting ways with several who were unwilling to claim that the 2020 election was stolen, as the president is said to have wanted them to do. Continue reading.

Trump’s lawyers say he was immediately ‘horrified’ by the Capitol attack. Here’s what his allies and aides said really happened that day.

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President Donald Trump was “horrified” when violence broke out at the U.S. Capitol on Jan. 6, as a joint session of Congress convened to confirm that he lost the election, according to his defense attorneys.

Trump tweeted calls for peace “upon hearing of the reports of violence” and took “immediate steps” to mobilize resources to counter the rioters storming the building, his lawyers argued in a brief filed Monday in advance of Trump’s impeachment trial in the Senate. It is “absolutely not true,” they wrote, that Trump failed to act swiftly to quell the riot.

But that revisionist history conflicts with the timeline of events on the day of the Capitol riot, as well as accounts of multiple people in contact with the president that day, who have said Trump was initially pleased to see a halt in the counting of the electoral college votes. Some former White House officials have acknowledged that he only belatedly and reluctantly issued calls for peace, after first ignoring public and private entreaties to do so. Continue reading.

Impeachment trial: Research spanning decades shows language can incite violence

Senators, acting in the impeachment trial of former President Donald Trump that begins on Feb. 9, will soon have to decide whether to convict the former president for inciting a deadly, violent insurrection at the Capitol building on Jan. 6. 

A majority of House members, including 10 Republicans, took the first step in the two-step impeachment process in January. They voted to impeach Trump, for “incitement of insurrection.” Their resolution states that he “willfully made statements that, in context, encourage – and foreseeably resulted in – lawless action at the Capitol, such as: ‘if you don’t fight like hell you’re not going to have a country anymore.’” 

Impeachment proceedings that consider incitement to insurrection are rare in American history. Yet dozens of legislators – including some Republicans – say that Trump’s actions leading up to the Jan. 6 attack on the Capitol contributed to an attempted insurrection against American democracy itself.  Continue reading.

Five ways Trump’s impeachment differs from a court trial

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When former President Trump’s second impeachment trial gets underway on Tuesday, the Senate proceedings will differ from what typically unfolds in a courtroom.

Court trials largely stick to a standard, uniform script. By contrast, the framers of the Constitution empowered the Senate to devise its own rules.

Historically, this has led to Senate trials diverging from courtroom protocol on issues like introducing evidence. The two venues also take vastly different approaches to punishment and the possibility of appeal. Continue reading.

144 Constitutional Lawyers Call Trump’s First Amendment Defense ‘Legally Frivolous’

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Taking aim at a key plank of the former president’s impeachment defense, the lawyers argued that the constitutional protections did not apply to an impeachment proceeding.

WASHINGTON — Claims by former President Donald J. Trump’s lawyers that his conduct around the Jan. 6 Capitol riot is shielded by the First Amendment are “legally frivolous” and should do nothing to stop the Senate from convicting him in his impeachment trial, 144 leading First Amendment lawyers and constitutional scholars from across the political spectrum wrote in a letter circulated on Friday.

Taking aim at one of the key planks of Mr. Trump’s defense, the lawyers argued that the constitutional protections do not apply to an impeachment proceeding, were never meant to protect conduct like Mr. Trump’s anyway and would most likely fail to shield him even in a criminal court.

“Although we differ from one another in our politics, disagree on many questions of constitutional law, and take different approaches to understanding the Constitution’s text, history, and context, we all agree that any First Amendment defense raised by President Trump’s attorneys would be legally frivolous,” the group wrote. “In other words, we all agree that the First Amendment does not prevent the Senate from convicting President Trump and disqualifying him from holding future office.” Continue reading.

Congress risks losing ‘bridle’ on the executive in Trump impeachment trial

An acquittal on the grounds Trump is no longer president could weaken a uniquely congressional power

Senators will determine not only the political fate of Donald Trump during the former president’s second impeachment trial next week but also whether or not to weaken their own congressional power to rein in presidential misconduct.

If that happens, it could undermine the reason the founders gave Congress the impeachment power in the first place: as one of the checks and balances in the Constitution to keep a president from becoming a tyrant, members of Congress, historians and constitutional scholars say.

“The fact that we can’t come together, both as a political body and as a nation, around the notion that an incumbent commander in chief cannot stage a coup against his own government in order to overturn the will of the people speaks to how far we have strayed from our ideals as a nation, without question,” said Mark Updegrove, a presidential historian for ABC News who is president and CEO of the LBJ Foundation. Continue reading.

Five takeaways from Trump impeachment trial briefs

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Congressional Democrats and lawyers for former President Trump released competing briefs Tuesday outlining their legal strategies for next week’s Senate impeachment trial over Trump’s role in inciting a violent mob to storm the Capitol on Jan. 6.

The 80-page brief from House Democrats lays blame for the deadly siege directly at Trump’s feet, saying he intentionally “whipped [the crowd] into a frenzy.” The former president’s new legal team, which was formed on Sunday night, filed a 14-page response arguing the trial is unconstitutional and that Trump’s rhetoric did not inspire the riot.

Here are five takeaways from the rival briefs. Continue reading.

Trump lawyers call impeachment trial unconstitutional in laying out defense

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Lawyers representing former President Trump on Tuesday detailed the defense they’ll lay out at next week’s impeachment trial, arguing that it is unconstitutional to impeach a former president and that Trump’s speech did not directly lead to the deadly siege on the U.S. Capitol building on Jan. 6.

The defense brief argues that Trump’s speech before a group of supporters, some of whom later sacked the Capitol, was protected under the First Amendment. And it accuses Democrats of depriving Trump of due process by rushing impeachment through the House.

“It is denied that the 45th president of the United States ever engaged in a violation of his oath of office,” the defense attorneys wrote. “To the contrary, at all times Donald J. Trump fully and faithfully executed his duties as the president of the United States and at all times acted to the best of his ability to preserve, protect and defend the Constitution of the United States while never engaging in any high crimes or misdemeanors.” Continue reading.

Impeachment managers say Trump conduct demands conviction

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House Democrats on Tuesday unveiled a thorough outline of their legal case against former President Trump for his role in the Jan. 6 assault on the U.S. Capitol, arguing that he incited the mob attack and bears direct responsibility for the deadly violence that followed.

The Democrats’ 80-page trial brief describes Trump as unmistakably and singularly responsible for the events at the U.S. Capitol and states that his conduct “requires” that he be convicted and barred from holding office again.

“President Trump’s conduct must be declared unacceptable in the clearest and most unequivocal terms. This is not a partisan matter. His actions directly threatened the very foundation on which all other political debates and disagreements unfold,” the brief states. “They also threatened the constitutional system that protects the fundamental freedoms we cherish.” Continue reading.

Trump’s actions described as ‘a betrayal of historic proportions’ in trial brief filed by House impeachment managers

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House Democrats made their case to convict former president Donald Trump of inciting the Jan. 6 riot at the U.S. Capitol in a sweeping impeachment brief filed with the Senate on Tuesday, accusing Trump of jeopardizing the foundations of American democracy by whipping his supporters into a “frenzy” for the sole purpose of retaining his hold on the presidency.

In the brief, the House’s nine impeachment managers made an impassioned case that Trump was “singularly responsible” for the mayhem, accusing him of “a betrayal of historic proportions.” They argued that he is guilty of high crimes and misdemeanors, the threshold for conviction laid out in the Constitution, primarily because he used the powers of his office to advance his personal political interests at the expense of the nation.

To bolster their case, the managers turned to the words and actions of the country’s founders, citing lofty passages from the Federalist Papers and contrasting Trump’s efforts to stay in office despite his electoral loss with George Washington’s insistence upon relinquishing the presidency after two terms in the interest of preserving democracy. Continue reading.