House impeachment managers reject calls to dismiss case, say Trump 'willfully incited
Last edited Mon Feb 8, 2021, 02:45 PM - Edit history (1)
Source: Washington Post
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The House managers prosecuting the case against Trump responded in kind, vowing to prove their case in the coming days. “We live in a Nation governed by the rule of law, not mob violence incited by Presidents who cannot accept their own electoral defeat,” they said. “The evidence of President Trump’s conduct is overwhelming,” the managers wrote. “He has no valid excuse or defense for his actions. And his efforts to escape accountability are entirely unavailing. As charged in the Article of Impeachment, President Trump violated his Oath of Office and betrayed the American people.”
The 78-page defense filing is the most complete legal defense of Trump’s conduct to date, and it relies heavily on a challenge to the constitutionality of impeaching a former president, as well as a First Amendment defense of Trump’s rhetoric leading up to the riot — which sought to disrupt the final congressional certification of Trump’s loss. But, mindful that they need to convince only 34 Republican senators to secure an acquittal, Trump’s lawyers also cast their defense in a political light, calling the rapid impeachment effort the culmination of a long Democratic campaign to marginalize Trump.
“The Senate must summarily reject this brazen political act,” Trump attorneys Bruce L. Castor Jr., David Schoen and Michael T. van der Veen wrote. The said the lone impeachment article was “unconstitutional for a variety of reasons, any of which alone would be grounds for immediate dismissal.” The defense team added: “Taken together, they demonstrate conclusively that indulging House Democrats hunger for this political theater is a danger to our Republic, democracy and the rights that we hold dear.”
The nine House impeachment managers filed expansive arguments in favor of Trump’s conviction last week, accusing him of “a betrayal of historic proportions” by promoting the false claim that he, not Democratic candidate Joe Biden, won the November election. Trump then stoked anger among his supporters, summoning them to Washington and finally directing them toward the Capitol as Congress met to count the electoral votes, the managers said. “If provoking an insurrectionary riot against a Joint Session of Congress after losing an election is not an impeachable offense,” they wrote, “it is hard to imagine what would be.”
Read more: https://www.washingtonpost.com/politics/trump-lawyers-impeachment-senate/2021/02/08/76d5d040-6a19-11eb-9f80-3d7646ce1bc0_story.html
Full headline: House impeachment managers reject calls to dismiss case, say Trump ‘willfully incited violent insurrection’
Original article -
“The evidence of President Trump’s conduct is overwhelming,” the managers wrote. “He has no valid excuse or defense for his actions. And his efforts to escape accountability are entirely unavailing. As charged in the Article of Impeachment, President Trump violated his Oath of Office and betrayed the American people.”
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