Trump’s second impeachment trial, during which seven Republican senators joined every Democrat in voting to convict the former president. Thay also argued Trump cannot be put on trial in the Senate because he is no longer president. Raskin, 59, was the lead impeachment manager in Mr.
IMPEACHMENT TRIAL JAMIE RASKIN FREE
The Justice Department has suggested they could build a case for seditious conspiracy by some Trump-supporting extreme right groups in the attack.Ī number of those charged have said they were encouraged by Trump, who less than two hours before the attack told a rally of supporters at the White House to "fight like hell" to support his election victory claim.īut Trump's lawyers argued in their brief Tuesday that whatever he said to that rally was not intended to encourage violence and was constitutionally protected free speech. Prosecutors have charged some 180 people in the attacks, according to a tally by the George washington University Program on extremism, and hundreds more are under investigation. The unprecedented second impeachment trial of a US president - and the first to take place after he left office - will open just four weeks after the legislature was shut down by Trump supporters on the day Congress was to certify Biden's election victory. He proposed that Trump provide testimony, and face cross-examination on it, between February 8 and February 11, "at a mutually convenient time and place." Raskin said Trump, who now lives in his Florida Mar-a-Lago resort, had little excuse to avoid testifying, saying he could no longer claim he was too busy overseeing the country, as was the White House position when he was still president. "You have thus attempted to put critical facts at issue, notwithstanding the clear and overwhelming evidence of your constitutional offense," Raskin said in the letter. Raskin, whose official title in the case is lead impeachment manager, signalled that the prosecutors would focus on those claims in the trial, which opens on February 9. That claim drove hundreds of his supporters to invade the US legislature on January 6 and force a halt to a vote that would certify Biden's victory. The defense brief also said Trump had reason and the right to claim that he had been cheated out of victory by Democrat Joe Biden in the November presidential election - a claim that has never been supported by evidence. Raskin made the request after Trump's lawyers filed a pre-trial brief denying the allegations that he encouraged the violent assault by his supporters on the US Congress, which left five people dead. "Your letter only confirms what is known to everyone: you cannot prove you allegations" against Trump, said attorneys Bruce Castor and David Schoen in their reply.
The Democratic managers sought to use the call to demonstrate Trump's indifference to the chaos that unfolded that day.Trump's legal team responded to the request by calling it a "public relations stunt."
Jaime Herrera Beutler about a call between Trump and House Minority Leader Kevin McCarthy of California on January 6. The last-minute debate over witnesses came after a CNN report from Washington state GOP Rep. She's shaping Trump's impeachment trial and Joe Biden's agenda. Read more: Meet the little-known power player with the 'hardest job' on Capitol Hill. They were hinging it on a matter of law." "The point is that no number of witnesses demonstrating that Donald Trump continued to incite the insurrectionists even after the invasion of the Capitol would convince them. "We could have had 5,000 witnesses, and Mitch McConnell would be making the same speech, because what he's asserting is that the Senate never has jurisdiction over a former president," he said.