The former president’s attorneys accused Democrats of not contextualizing their footage of the Jan. 6 Capitol riots, then rolled tape on out-of-context footage.
WASHINGTON (CN) — Giving as good as they got after an emotional two-day display from Democrats leading former President Donald Trump’s impeachment, the defense team queued up impassioned video clips of their own for a compact rebuttal argument Friday.
Whereas the House impeachment managers had shown footage of last month’s attack on the U.S. Capitol, however, the defense deployed clips to paint Trump as a victim of “political vengeance.”
Taken from a range going back many years, the multiple minutes-long packages of video showed Democrats using the word “fight” in interviews or at peaceful protests and campaign events on a range of issues from health care to civil rights.
Wrapping up one such 15-minute segment, attorney Michael van der Veen claimed that any comments Trump made before his supporters stormed the seat of the nation’s government on Jan. 6 were “virtually indistinguishable from the language that has been used by people across the political spectrum for hundreds of years.”
Robert Nelon, an attorney with Hall Estill in Oklahoma who has studied First Amendment law for three decades, shredded the defense’s comparisons between the Democrats and Trump’s use of political rhetoric.
“The clips of Democratic candidates saying that they needed to fight for their cause did not show whether the assembled supporters were dressed in Kevlar vests and helmets, were armed with guns and other objects that could be used as weapons, and were members of groups identified as domestic terrorists,” he said in an email Friday.
What the president said during his “Save America” speech formed a substantial basis of the case laid out by impeachment managers this week.
“If you don’t fight like hell,” Trump said on Jan. 6, “you’re not going to have a country anymore.”
Democrats called this a clear indicator of Trump’s intent to incite, specifically when coupled with his meritless grievances about the 2020 election results and the inaccuracies he spread about the roles played by Congress and by then-Vice President Mike Pence with the respect to the Electoral College vote count.
In a bid to sever that tie, the defense on Friday pointed to the emerging evidence that the siege on the Capitol was preplanned, with bombs planted at least a day in advance at the offices of the Democratic and Republican National Committees
“No thinking person could seriously believe that the president’s Jan. 6 speech on the Ellipse was in any way an incitement to violence or insurrection,” van der Veen maintained.
To attorney Nelon, with Hall Estill, their defense wasn’t much of one at all.
"Bruce Castor, arguing for the defense, suggests that Trump could not have incited an insurrection because the attack on the Capitol was preplanned by criminal elements, many in the mob had already gone to the Capitol before Trump finished his speech, and Trump told his supporters to go to the Capitol peacefully and patriotically,” Nelon wrote.
“The argument does not directly address the House Manager’s argument that Trump ‘lit the fuse’ by his speech and insurrectionists (who were communicating by phone and otherwise) were awaiting his instructions to advance on the Capitol,” Nelon continued.
Castor focused on the First Amendment for his final argument, saying Trump should have the freedom of expression to tell thousands amassed on the National Mall to “fight like hell” to take back their country.
But this point was one that the lead House impeachment manager Jamie Raskin had dismantled earlier in the trial, evoking the words of Justice Antonin Scalia.
