🎥 Impeachment Day 4 Highlights: Trump grievances, angry outbursts

Click here to watch a replay of Day 4 of the impeachment trial

WASHINGTON (AP) — In a whirlwind defense, Donald Trump's impeachment attorneys aired a litany of grievances Friday, arguing the former president bore no responsibility for the deadly attack on the U.S. Capitol while accusing Democrats of “hatred” and “hypocrisy.”

The defense team, which wrapped up its arguments in just over three hours, said Trump was engaged in “constitutionally protected speech” when he spoke at a rally that immediately preceded the violence on Jan. 6 that left five dead.

Echoing themes often heard in conservative media, they called the impeachment trial a “witch hunt” and accused Democrats of elevating a destructive “cancel culture” to the halls of Congress. They also suggested Democrats were hypocrites for impeaching Trump after some had previously voiced support for racial justice marches last summer, some of which turned violent.

“It has become very clear that House Democrats hate Donald Trump,” said Michael van der Veen, a Philadelphia personal injury attorney who is part of Trump's defense team. “Hatred is at the heart.”

Here are some highlights from Friday's impeachment proceedings:

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FIRST AMENDMENT

Regardless of what occurred after Trump's Jan. 6 speech, the former president was simply exercising his First Amendment right to free speech and can't be found at fault, his attorneys argued.

"The Senate cannot ignore the First Amendment," said van der Veen.

Nearly 150 constitutional scholars disagree. In a letter signed last week they wrote that “the First Amendment does not apply in impeachment proceedings, so it cannot provide a defense for President Trump."

The First Amendment has long been invoked as a powerful and compelling defense in court. But impeachment proceedings are an inherently political process that exists outside the U.S. court system in which senators sit as jurors.

Further, just because speech is protected by the Constitution doesn't mean that there aren't limits. Threats to commit a crime or “fighting words” that are likely to incite violence can be exceptions to protected speech.

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INSURRECTION OR NOT?

The articles of impeachment charge Trump with the “incitement of an insurrection,” a word that Webster's Dictionary defines as “an act or instance of revolting against civil authority or an established government.”

Trump's lawyers say that's not technically correct. And they offered some alternative facts to make their point.

“'Insurrection' is a term of art," said attorney Bruce Castor, and it "involves taking over a country” or “a shadow government taking the TV stations over and having some plan on what you’re going to do when you finally take power.”

“Clearly this is not that,” he added.

In any event, Trump still wasn't responsible for what happened after his speech, Castor said.

Trump's speech, in which he urged his supporters to “fight like hell,“ was actual a call for the "peaceful exercise of every American’s first amendment rights to peacefully assemble and petition their government for redress of grievances,” according to Castor.

And he suggested that Trump wasn't literally calling on his supporters to "fight," but rather get involved in the political process, like supporting primary challengers of elected officials they did not like.

Many of Trump's supporters who participated in the attack found far different meaning in the former president's words on Jan. 6.

They have said in media interviews, videos taken at the scene and in statements to law enforcement that they were acting on Trump's orders and aimed to overturn the outcome of the election by stopping Congress from certifying President Joe Biden's Electoral College victory — the definition of an insurrection.

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FIGHTING

Donald Trump’s defense team attempted to undermine a key Democratic argument: that the former president incited the attack on the Capitol by urging his supporters to "fight like hell" and “go by very different rules” or they “wouldn’t have a country anymore.”

To do so, they played a lengthy montage of video clips during Friday's proceedings, which featured President Joe Biden and other prominent Democrats repeatedly uttering the word "fight" during public speeches.

“There is a fight in front of us,” Vice President Kamala Harris said in one clip from November 2019. Another showed Biden talking about taking Trump “behind the gym” to “beat the hell out of him,” like in high school.

The use of the words “fight” or “fighting” is exceedingly common in political speech. The effort by Trump’s legal team amounted amounted to an effort to muddy the waters by drawing an equivalence and ignoring his false claims about voter fraud.

Trump used the word "fight" while trying to undermine the outcome of a free and fair election that he lost. And his use of the word on Jan. 6 came after weeks of baselessly claiming the election was being stolen from him.

There was no widespread fraud in the election, as has been confirmed by election officials across the country and former Attorney General William Barr. Dozens of legal challenges to the election put forth by Trump and his allies were dismissed.

Still, Trump's lawyers said they were making a valid point by highlighting Democrats' use of the word "fight."

“This is not whataboutism," said Michael van der Veen. "I am showing you this to make the point that all political speech must be protected.”

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DEMOCRATS REACT

Senate Democrats seemed mostly amused by the defense's video of prominent party leaders, including House Speaker Nancy Pelosi and Hillary Clinton, repeatedly saying the word “fight.”

Though initially stone-faced and impassionate, as the minutes ticked by some reacted, particularly after their own turn on the screen.

Some giggled, others gasped. Some raised their hands or shrugged.

Minnesota Sen. Amy Klobuchar rolled her eyes. Elizabeth Warren of Massachusetts fidgeted with a pen during a lengthy section devoted to her. But Sen. Bernie Sanders, a Vermont independent who caucuses with Democrats, was visibly annoyed.

It “feels like they are erecting straw men to then take them down rather deal with the fact the events (on Jan. 6) happened," said Sen. Michael Bennet, D-Colo.

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WASHINGTON (AP) — Lawyers for Donald Trump opened his impeachment defense Friday by accusing Democrats of waging a campaign of “hatred” against the former president and manipulating his words in the lead-up to the deadly siege of the U.S. Capitol. Their presentation included a blizzard of their own selectively edited fiery comments from Democrats.

In hours of arguments, the Trump legal team characterized the impeachment case as a politically motivated “witch hunt” — an outgrowth, they said, of years of efforts to drive him from office — and they sought to reduce the case to Trump’s use of a single word, “fight,” in a speech preceding the Jan. 6 riot. They played dozens of clips showing Democrats, some of them senators now serving as jurors, using the same word to energize supporters in speeches railing against Trump.

“You didn’t do anything wrong” in using the word, Trump attorney David Schoen told the senators. “But, please, stop the hypocrisy.”

The Trump defense team left out that what Trump was doing in telling his supporters to “fight like hell” was to undermine an election that the states and Congress declared was free and fair, basing his exhortations on false attacks on the integrity of voting systems. Instead, they said, he was simply telling his supporters to press Congress for reforms to the election process — something he was entitled to do.

The case is speeding toward a conclusion and near-certain acquittal, perhaps as soon as Saturday. The defense arguments and the quick pivot to the Democrats’ own words deflected from the central question of the trial — whether Trump incited the assault on the Capitol — and instead aimed to place impeachment managers and Trump adversaries on the defensive .

After a two-day effort by Democrats to sync up Trump’s words to the violence that followed, including through raw and emotive video footage, defense lawyers suggested that Democrats have typically engaged in the same overheated rhetoric as Trump.

But in trying to draw that equivalency, the defenders minimized Trump’s monthslong, efforts to undermine the election results and his exhortations to followers to do the same. Democrats say that long campaign, rooted in a “big lie,” laid the groundwork for the mob that assembled outside the Capitol and stormed inside. Five people died.

Without Trump, who in a speech at a rally preceding the violence told supporters to “fight like hell,” the violence would never have happened, Democrats say.

“And so they came, draped in Trump’s flag, and used our flag, the American flag, to batter and to bludgeon,” Rep. Madeleine Dean, one of the impeachment managers, said Thursday as she choked back emotion.”

Trump’s defenders told senators that Trump was entitled to dispute the 2020 election results and that his doing so did not amount to inciting the violence. They sought to turn the tables on prosecutors by likening the Democrats’ questioning of the legitimacy of Trump’s 2016 win to his challenge of his election loss. When Trump implored supporters to “fight like hell” on Jan. 6, he was speaking figuratively, they said.

“This is ordinarily political rhetoric that is virtually indistinguishable from the language that has been used by people across the political spectrum for hundreds of years,” said Michael van der Veen, another Trump lawyer. “Countless politicians have spoken of fighting for our principles.”

The defense team did not dispute the horror of the violence, painstakingly reconstructed by impeachment managers earlier in the week, but said it had been carried out by people who had “hijacked” for their own purposes what was supposed to be a peaceful event and had planned violence before Trump had spoken.

“You can’t incite what was going to happen,” he said.

Acknowledging the reality of the January day is meant to blunt the visceral impact of the House Democrats’ case and quickly pivot to what Trump’s defenders see as the core — and more winnable — issue of the trial: Whether Trump actually incited the riot. The argument is likely to appeal to Republican senators who want to be seen as condemning the violence but without convicting the president.

Anticipating defense efforts to disentangle Trump’s rhetoric from the rioters’ actions, the impeachment managers spent days trying to fuse them together through a reconstruction of never-been-seen video footage alongside clips of the president’s monthslong urging of his supporters to undo the election results.

Democrats, who concluded their case Thursday, used the rioters’ own videos and words from Jan. 6 to try to pin responsibility on Trump. “We were invited here,” said one Capitol invader. “Trump sent us,” said another. “He’ll be happy. We’re fighting for Trump.”

The prosecutors’ goal was to cast Trump not as a bystander but rather as the “inciter in chief” who spread election falsehoods, then encouraged supporters to come challenge the results in Washington and fanned the discontent with rhetoric about fighting and taking back the country.

The Democrats also are demanding that he be barred from holding future federal office.

But Trump’s lawyers say that goal only underscores the “hatred” Democrats feel for Trump. Throughout the trial, they showed clips from Democrats questioning the legitimacy of his presidency and suggesting as early as 2017 that he should be impeached.

“Hatred is at the heart of the house managers’ fruitless attempts to blame Donald Trump for the criminal acts of the rioters based on double hearsay statements of fringe right wing groups based on no real evidence other than rank speculation,” van der Veen said.

Trump’s lawyers note that in the same Jan. 6 speech he encouraged the crowd to behave “peacefully,” and they contend that his remarks — and his general distrust of the election results — are all protected under the First Amendment. Democrats strenuously resist that assertion, saying his words weren’t political speech but rather amounted to direct incitement of violence.

The defense lawyers also returned to arguments made Tuesday that the trial itself is unconstitutional because Trump is no longer in office. The Senate rejected that contention as it voted to proceed with the trial.

On Thursday, with little hope of conviction by the required two-thirds of the Senate, Democrats delivered a graphic case to the American public, describing in stark, personal terms the terror they faced that day — some of it in the very Senate chamber where senators now are sitting as jurors. They used security video of rioters searching menacingly for House Speaker Nancy Pelosi and Vice President Mike Pence, smashing into the building and engaging in bloody, hand-to-hand combat with police.

They displayed the many public and explicit instructions Trump gave his supporters — long before the White House rally that unleashed the deadly Capitol attack as Congress was certifying Democrat Joe Biden’s victory.

Several Republican senators, including Ted Cruz of Texas and Mike Lee of Utah, conferred Thursday with Trump’s lawyers. Cruz told reporters that the senators were discussing legal strategy -- something that would never be permissible in a criminal case. There’s no rule against the Senate jurors strategizing with the lawyers in an impeachment trial, though Democrats can use it to raise questions about impartiality.

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WASHINGTON (AP) — After a prosecution case rooted in emotive, violent images from the Capitol siege, Donald Trump’s impeachment trial shifts on Friday to defense lawyers prepared to make a fundamental concession: The violence was every bit as traumatic, unacceptable and illegal as Democrats say.

But, they will say, Trump did not order it.

Acknowledging the horrors of the January day is meant to blunt the visceral impact of the House Democrats’ case and quickly pivot to what Trump’s defenders see as the core — and more winnable — issue of the trial: Whether Trump can be held responsible for inciting the deadly Jan. 6 riot.

The argument is likely to appeal to Republican senators who want to be seen as condemning the violence but without convicting the president.

“They haven’t in any way tied it to Trump,” David Schoen, one of the president’s lawyers, told reporters near the end of two full days of Democrats’ arguments aimed at doing just that.

He previewed the essence of his argument Tuesday, telling the Senate jurors: “They don’t need to show you movies to show you that the riot happened here. We will stipulate that it happened, and you know all about it.”

In both legal filings and in arguments this week, Trump’s lawyers have made clear their position that the people responsible for the riot are the ones who actually stormed the building and who are now being prosecuted by the Justice Department.

Anticipating defense efforts to disentangle Trump’s rhetoric from the rioters’ actions, the impeachment managers spent days trying to fuse them together through a reconstruction of never-been-seen video footage alongside clips of the president’s monthslong urging of his supporters to undo the election results.

Democrats, who concluded their case Thursday, used the rioters’ own videos and words from Jan. 6 to try to pin responsibility on Trump. “We were invited here,” said one Capitol invader. “Trump sent us,” said another. “He’ll be happy. We’re fighting for Trump.”

The prosecutors’ goal was to cast Trump not as a bystander but rather as the “inciter in chief” who spread election falsehoods, then encouraged supporters to come challenge the results in Washington and fanned the discontent with rhetoric about fighting and taking back the country.

The Democrats also are demanding that he be barred from holding future federal office.

“This attack never would have happened but for Donald Trump,” Rep. Madeleine Dean, one of the impeachment managers, said Thursday as she choked back emotion. “And so they came, draped in Trump’s flag, and used our flag, the American flag, to batter and to bludgeon.”

For all the significance the impeachment of a president is meant to convey, this historic second trial of Trump could wrap up with a vote by this weekend, particularly since Trump’s lawyers focused on legal rather than emotional or historic questions and are hoping to get it all behind him as quickly as possible.

With little hope of conviction by the required two-thirds of the Senate, Democrats delivered a graphic case to the American public, describing in stark, personal terms the terror faced that day — some of it in the very Senate chamber where senators are sitting as jurors. They used security video of rioters searching menacingly for House Speaker Nancy Pelosi and Vice President Mike Pence, smashing into the building and engaging in bloody, hand-to-hand combat with police.

They displayed the many public and explicit instructions Trump gave his supporters — long before the White House rally that unleashed the deadly Capitol attack as Congress was certifying Democrat Joe Biden’s victory. Five people died in the chaos and its aftermath.

“What makes you think the nightmare with Donald Trump and his law-breaking and violent mobs is over?” asked Rep. Jamie Raskin, D-Md., the lead prosecutor. He said earlier, “When Donald Trump tells the crowd, as he did on Jan. 6, ‘Fight like hell, or you won’t have a country anymore,’ he meant for them to ‘fight like hell.’”

At the White House, Biden said he believed “some minds may be changed” after senators saw the security video, though he had previously acknowledged that conviction was unlikely. By Thursday, many seemed prepared to move on.

“I thought today was very repetitive, actually. I mean, not much new. I was really disappointed that they didn’t engage much with the legal standards,” said Republican Sen. Josh Hawley of Missouri.

Several Republican senators, including Ted Cruz of Texas and Mike Lee of Utah, conferred Thursday with Trump’s lawyers. Cruz told reporters that the senators were discussing legal strategy -- something that would never be permissible in a criminal case. There’s no rule against the Senate jurors strategizing with the lawyers in an impeachment trial, though Democrats can use it to raise questions about impartiality.

The presentation by Trump’s lawyers is low-risk in one sense given the likelihood of acquittal. But it is also being closely watched because of an uneven performance on Tuesday when one defense lawyer, Bruce Castor, gave such meandering arguments that Trump raged from his home in Florida.

They are expected to highlight different parts of the same speech focused on by prosecutors, when Trump told supporters assembled at the Ellipse outside the White House to “fight like hell.”

They will contend that Trump in the same speech encouraged the crowd to behave “peacefully” and that his remarks — and his general distrust of the election results — are all protected under the First Amendment. Democrats strenuously resist that assertion, saying his words weren’t political speech but rather amounted to direct incitement of violence.

The defense lawyers also were likely to return to arguments made Tuesday that the trial itself is unconstitutional because Trump is no longer in office. The Senate rejected that contention Tuesday as it voted to proceed with the trial, but Republican senators have nonetheless signaled that they remain interested in the argument.

By Thursday, senators sitting through a second full day of arguments appeared somewhat fatigued, slouching in their chairs, crossing their arms and walking around to stretch.

One Republican, Sen. Jim Inhofe of Oklahoma, said during a break: “To me, they’re losing credibility the longer they talk.”

Republican Sen. Marco Rubio said the facts of Jan. 6, though “unpatriotic” and even “treasonous,” were not his chief concern. Rather, he said Thursday, an impeachment trial for someone no longer in office “sets a very dangerous precedent.”