The impeachment trial of former U.S. President Donald Trump will continue this week. The U.S. Senate is expected to hold a four-hour debate on the legality of Trump’s second impeachment on Feb. 9. In response, Trump’s lawyers filed a brief Monday calling Democrats’ attempts to convict the president in an impeachment trial after he leaves office “political theater” and stressing that the trial is not within the Senate’s constitutional authority.
The briefing released by Trump’s legal team said, “Instead of acting to heal the country, or at least focusing on prosecuting the lawbreakers who stormed the Capitol, House Speaker (Pelosi) and her allies are trying to callously exploit the chaos of the moment for their own political gain.” On January 13, the U.S. House of Representatives voted to pass articles of impeachment accusing Trump of “sedition” during the storming of the Capitol on January 6. Trump thus became the first president in U.S. history to be impeached twice during his term.
The brief also echoes the argument made by Trump’s team in their initial response to the impeachment articles, that Trump’s claim of “election theft” is within his First Amendment rights. The brief also suggested that Trump’s comments at a Jan. 6 rally before Congress met to certify the presidential election results were inconsistent with Democrats’ claims that he incited the crowd to storm the Capitol.
Mr. Trump spoke for about an hour and 15 minutes,” the briefer wrote. Of the more than 10,000 words spoken, Mr. Trump used the word ‘fight’ a handful of times, and each Time in the figurative sense long accepted in public discourse when urging people to stand up and use their voices to express what is important to them; it was not and cannot be construed as encouraging violence.”
It also said, “It is worth noting that his speech did not mention or encourage rebellion, rioting, criminal behavior or any act of physical violence ……. Mr. Trump never explicitly or implicitly mentioned weapons, the need for weapons, or anything of the sort. Instead, he simply called on the people gathered to use their voices peacefully and patriotically.”
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