“The story of the President’s actions is both exciting and terrifying,” Maryland Democrat Representative Jamie Raskin said in an interview. “We believe that every American should know what happened – that the reason they have been charged by Parliament and why they should be tried and banned from running any future federal office is to make sure that such an attack occurs on our democracy and constitution never happened again. “
In making Trump the first American president to be charged twice, Democrats have essentially given themselves an unprecedented overhaul. When California Democrat Adam B. Schiff was preparing to prosecute Mr Trump for the first time for a print campaign against Ukraine, he read and posted the 605-page record of President Bill Clinton’s impeachment proceedings from 1999, from start to finish many helpers than 20 broadcasts a day when trying to modernize a procedure that had only happened twice before.
This time around, a new group of nine Democratic managers only have to go back a year to learn the lessons of Mr Schiff’s prosecution: don’t piss off the Republicans, use lots and lots of videos, and most importantly, make concise arguments to introduce To avoid lulling the legislature jury into boredom or distraction.
Trump’s attorneys have stated that they intend to re-establish a largely technical defense, claiming that the Senate “has no power” to judge a former president after he leaves office because the Constitution does not expressly do so prescribes. Although many legal scholars and a majority in the Senate disagree, Republicans have rallied on the argument to dismiss the case without incriminating Mr Trump’s behavior.
However, attorneys Bruce L. Castor Jr. and David Schoen also plan to deny that Mr. Trump instigated the violence in the first place, or intended to disrupt the formalization of Mr. Biden’s victory by Congress, claiming that his unsubstantiated claims that Choices are “stolen” are protected by the first change. And Mr Castor told Fox News that he, too, would be relying on videos of possibly rioting in Democrat-led American cities.
Managers will try to refute them with constitutional arguments as well as with an overwhelming compendium of evidence. Mr. Raskin’s team spent dozens of hours weeding out a profound amount of videos captured by the crowd, Mr. Trump’s own unvarnished words, and criminal pleas from rioters who said they were acting at the orders of the former president.
The primary source material can replace live testimony. The attempt to call new witnesses has been the subject of an extensive debate among managers, whose evidence shows several loopholes that the White House or military officials could potentially fill. During the last trial, the Democrats put unsuccessful pressure on witnesses at the center of their case, but this time around, many in the party say they are not necessary to prove the charges and would simply cost Mr Biden valuable time to set his agenda change without changing the result.
“It’s not that there shouldn’t be any witnesses; It’s just the practical reality of being with a former president, ”said Daniel S. Goldman, a former House attorney who helped out with Mr. Trump’s first impeachment trial. “This is what we learned from the last trial: this is a political animal and these witnesses will not move the needle.”
Mr. Raskin and other managers declined to discuss strategy, but current and former officials, familiar with the confidential preparations, agreed to discuss it anonymously. The near-complete silence of the prosecutors leading up to the trial was another departure from the strategy of Mr. Trump’s first impeachment, when the Democrats built a sizable communications war room in the Capitol and saturated the cable television waves in an omnipotence. Fight Mr. Trump in the Public Opinion Court.
They have left it largely to trusted allies like Mr Schiff and Spokeswoman Nancy Pelosi to publicly discuss their case and withhold criticism of why the House is pushing its case even now that Mr Trump is not in office.
“If we didn’t look into that, we might as well remove any sentence from the impeachment constitution – just take it out,” Ms. Pelosi told reporters, who asked why Democrats would spend so much time in Congress with a former president .
Important questions about the scope and form of the experiment remain unanswered. The senators spent the weekend haggling over the exact structure and rules of the procedure. For the first time in American history, a former president will be tried.
Prosecutors and Mr Trump’s lawyers are expected to have at least 12 hours each to represent their case. Mr. Raskin, a former constitutional law professor, has trained his colleagues in daily sessions to aggressively crush their arguments, stick to the narrative if possible, and incorporate them into the visual aids they want to show on television in the Senate Chamber and on screens across the country.
Behind the scenes, Democrats rely on many of the same lawyers and aides who helped put the 2020 case together, including Susanne Sachsman Grooms of the House Oversight and Reform Committee and Aaron Hiller, Arya Hariharan, Sarah Istel and Amy Rutkin of the Judiciary Committee . The House also temporarily called back Barry H. Berke, a veteran New York attorney, as chief attorney and Joshua Matz, a constitutional expert.
Mr Schiff said his team tried to produce an “HBO miniseries” with clips of testimony to bring to life the esoteric conspiracy over Mr Trump’s pressure campaign against Ukraine. Mr. Raskins is more like a blockbuster action film.
“The more you document all of the tragic events that led up to that day, and the President’s wrongdoing that day and the President’s reaction while people were attacked that day, the harder it will be for any Senator to get behind those wrong ones Constitutions to hide fig leaves, ”said Mr Schiff, who advised the managers informally.
To put the presentation together, Mr. Raskin’s team turned to the same external company that helped put together Mr. Schiff’s multimedia display. But Mr Raskin works with far richer material to tell a month-long story of how he and his colleagues believe that Mr Trump seeded, gathered, and provoked a mob to try to overcome his defeat.
There are clips and tweets from Mr. Trump last summer warning that he would only lose if the election against him were “rigged”; Clips and tweets of him gaining victory after losing; and clips and tweets from state officials who came to the White House to “stop the theft.” There is audio of a call where Mr Trump pressured Georgia’s Secretary of State to find the voices needed to reverse Mr Biden’s victory there. as well as tweets and reports from the president from sympathetic lawmakers saying that, after those efforts failed, Mr. Trump turned his attention firmly to the January 6 session of Congress for a final stand.
The center shows footage of Mr. Trump speaking outside the White House hours before the mob overtook the police and invaded the Capitol. The executives’ pre-trial mandate suggests they plan to juxtapose footage of Mr. Trump urging his supporters to “fight like hell” and march to the Capitol and confront Congress with videos showing the Posted by members of the crowd who can actually process his words in time.
“Even in this trial, in which the senators were witnesses, it’s very important to tell the full story,” said Schiff. “It’s not about a single day. It is a behavior of a president to use his office to disrupt the peaceful transfer of power. “
However, proximity can also lead to complications. Several people familiar with the preparations said the managers were cautious about saying anything that could imply Republican lawmakers repeating or entertaining the president’s baseless allegations of electoral fraud. In the opinion of the managers, in order to have effective reasoning, managers must make it clear that Mr Trump is on trial and not his party.
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