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House Democrats prosecuting Donald Trump's impeachment said Thursday the Capitol invaders believed they were acting on "the president's orders” and reflected his violent rhetoric when they stormed the building aiming to stop Congress from certifying Democrat Joe Biden's election.
The prosecutors described in stark, personal terms the horror they faced that day and showed the many public and explicit instructions Trump gave his supporters — both in the weeks before the Jan. 6 attack and at his midday rally that unleashed the mob on the Capitol. Rioters in videos, some posted to social media by themselves, talked about how they were doing it all for Trump.
“We were invited here,” said one. "Trump sent us,” said another. “He’ll be happy. We’re fighting for Trump.” Five people died.
“They truly believed that the whole intrusion was at the president’s orders,” said Rep. Diana DeGette of Colorado. “The president told them to be there.”
Prosecutors were wrapping up their two days of opening arguments on Thursday, with Trump's defense taking the floor on Friday. The entire process could wind up with a vote by this weekend. The Democrats, with little hope of conviction by two-thirds of the Senate, are making their most graphic case to the American public, while Trump's lawyers are focused on legal rather than emotional or historic questions, hoping to get it all behind him as quickly as possible.
At the White House, President Joe Biden said he believed “some minds may be changed” after senators saw chilling security video Wednesday of the deadly insurrection at the Capitol, including of rioters searching menacingly for House Speaker Nancy Pelosi and Vice President Mike Pence.
Biden said he didn’t watch any of the previous day’s proceedings live but later saw news coverage.
This second impeachment trial, on the charge of incitement of insurrection, has echoes of last year's impeachment over the Ukraine matter, as prosecutors warn senators that left unchecked Trump poses a danger to the civic order. Even out of office, the former president holds influence over large swaths of voters.
The prosecutors on Thursday drew a direct line from his repeated comments condoning and even celebrating violence — praising “both sides” after the 2017 outbreak at the white supremacist rally in Charlottesville, Virginia, and urging his rally crowd last month to go to the Capitol and fight for his presidency.
“There’s a pattern staring us in the face,” said Rep. Jamie Raskin, D-Md., the lead prosecutor.
“When Donald Trump tells the crowd as he did on January 6 to fight like hell, or you won’t have a country anymore. He meant for them to fight like hell.”
Trump lawyers will argue later this week that his words were protected by the Constitution’s First Amendment and just a figure of speech.
Though most of the Senate jurors seem to have made up their minds, making Trump’s acquittal likely, the never-before-seen audio and video released Wednesday is now a key exhibit in Trump’s impeachment trial as lawmakers prosecuting the case argue Trump should be convicted of inciting the siege.
Senators sat riveted as the jarring video played in the chamber. Senators shook their heads, folded their arms and furrowed their brows. Screams from the audio and video filled the Senate chamber. Republican Sen. James Lankford of Oklahoma bent his head at one point, another GOP colleague putting his hand on his arm in comfort.
Videos of the siege have been circulating since the day of the riot, but the graphic compilation shown to senators Wednesday amounted to a more complete narrative, a moment-by-moment retelling of one of the nation’s most alarming days. In addition to the evident chaos and danger, it offered fresh details on the attackers, scenes of police heroism and cries of distress. And it underscored how dangerously close the rioters came to the nation’s leaders, shifting the focus of the trial from an academic debate about the Constitution to a raw retelling of...