Trump lawyers say Democrats desire supporters to 'fight,' too

Lawyers for Donald Trump defended him against impeachment Fri by accusing Democrats of waging a good advertising campaign of “hatred” against the former president and manipulating his text in the lead-up to the deadly siege of the U.S. Capitol. Their presentation included a blizzard of their personal selectively edited fiery feedback 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 operate a vehicle him from office - and they sought to lessen the case to Trump's make use of an individual word, “fight,” on a speech preceding the Jan. 6 riot. They played a large number of clips showing Democrats, many of them senators now serving as jurors, employing the same word to energize supporters in speeches railing against Trump.

“You didn't conduct anything wrong" in using the term, Trump attorney David Schoen told the senators. “But, please, stop the hypocrisy.”

The Trump security team overlooked that what Trump was carrying out in telling his supporters to “fight like hell” was to undermine a national election after each state had verified its results, after the Electoral University had affirmed them and after practically every election lawsuit filed by Trump and his allies had been rejected in court. Instead, they contended, he was telling the crowd to support primary challenges against his adversaries and press for sweeping election reform - something he was eligible for do.

The case is speeding toward a conclusion and near-certain acquittal, perhaps when Saturday. The security arguments and the quick pivot to the Democrats' own phrases deflected from the central problem of the trial - whether Trump incited the assault on the Capitol - and instead aimed to put impeachment managers and Trump adversaries on the protective.

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

But in trying to pull that equivalency, the defenders minimized Trump's monthslong, work to undermine the election benefits and his urging of followers to accomplish the same. Democrats declare that long plan, rooted in a “big lie,” laid the groundwork for the mob that assembled beyond your Capitol and stormed inside. Five persons died.

Without Trump, who in a speech at a rally preceding the violence told supporters to “battle 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 bludgeon," Rep. Madeleine Dean, among the impeachment managers, explained Thursday as she choked again emotion."

On Friday, as security lawyers repeated their own video clips again and again, some Democrats chuckled and whispered among themselves as almost all of their faces flashed on the display screen. Some passed notes. Connecticut Sen. Richard Blumenthal threw up his hands, evidently amused, when his deal with came on the display. Minnesota Sen. Amy Klobuchar rolled her eyes. Just about all Republicans watched intently.

Throughout a break, some joked about the video tutorials and others said these were a distraction or perhaps a “fake equivalence” with Trump's behavior.

“Well we heard the word ‘fight' a lot,” said Maine Sen. Angus King, an unbiased who caucuses with the Democrats.

Colorado Sen. Michael Bennett explained it felt just like the legal representatives were “erecting straw guys to then take them down instead of deal with the reality."

“Show me any moment that the effect was that among our supporters pulled an individual out from the crowd, and we explained, ‘That’s great, healthy,’” said Delaware Sen. Chris Coons.

Trump's defenders told senators that Trump was eligible for dispute the 2020 election benefits and that his doing so did not total inciting the violence. They sought to turn the tables on prosecutors by likening the Democrats' questioning of the legitimacy of Trump's 2016 get to his obstacle of his election loss. When Trump implored supporters to “attack like hell” on Jan. 6, he was speaking figuratively, they said.

“That is ordinarily political rhetoric that's practically indistinguishable from the language that is used by people over the political spectrum for hundreds of years,” said Michael van der Veen, another Trump lawyer. “Many politicians have spoken of fighting for our ideas.”

The defense team didn't 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” because of their own purposes that which was said to be a tranquil event and had planned violence before Trump had spoken.

“You can't incite that which was going to happen,” he said.

Acknowledging the reality of the January moment is intended to blunt the visceral affect of the House Democrats' case and quickly pivot to what Trump's defenders check out as the key - and more winnable - issue of the trial: Whether Trump basically incited the riot. The argument will probably appeal to Republican senators who would like to be observed as condemning the violence but without convicting the president.

Anticipating defense hard work to disentangle Trump's rhetoric out of the rioters' actions, the impeachment managers spent days trying to fuse them along through a reconstruction of never-been-seen video together with clips of the president's monthslong urging of his supporters to undo the election results.

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

The prosecutors' target was to cast Trump much less a bystander but instead as the “inciter in chief” who spread election falsehoods, then encouraged supporters to come challenge the benefits in Washington and fanned the discontent with rhetoric about fighting and taking again the country.

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

But Trump's legal representatives say that aim only underscores the “hatred” Democrats look for Trump. Through the entire trial, they showed clips from Democrats questioning the legitimacy of his presidency and suggesting as soon as 2017 that he should be impeached.

“Hatred reaches the center of the home managers’ fruitless attempts at fault Donald Trump for the criminal works of the rioters predicated on double hearsay statements of fringe proper wing groups based on no true evidence apart from rank speculation," van der Veen said.

Trump's lawyers remember that in the same Jan. 6 speech he motivated the group to behave “peacefully,” plus they contend that his remarks - and his general distrust of the election outcomes - are all protected under the Initially Amendment. Democrats strenuously withstand that assertion, expressing his words and phrases weren’t political speech but instead amounted to direct incitement of violence.

The defense legal professionals also returned to arguments built Tuesday that the trial itself is unconstitutional because Trump is no longer in office. The Senate rejected that contention since it voted to proceed with the trial.

On Thursday, with little desire of conviction by the required two-thirds of the Senate, Democrats delivered a graphic circumstance to the American consumer, describing in stark, personal conditions the terror they faced that evening - some of it in the very Senate chamber where senators nowadays are sitting down as jurors. They used security video recording of rioters searching menacingly for House Loudspeaker Nancy Pelosi and Vice President Mike Pence, smashing into the building and participating 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.