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Takeaways From Day three of Trump’s Impeachment Trial

Takeaways From Day 3 of Trump’s Impeachment Trial

House impeachment executives on Thursday closed their case against former President Donald J. Trump, warning Senators that it would set a dangerous standard for the country in the future if they didn’t vote for a conviction. The trial will resume Friday when Mr Trump’s defense team comes up with their case that the president did not instigate the attack on the Capitol.

Here are some takeaways from the third day of the trial.

The impeachment managers used their last day of the argument to convince the Senators that Mr Trump invited the rioters to Washington on Jan. 6. They argued that the “insurgents” who attacked the Capitol were not acting alone as its defenders said and will most likely claim if they present their case.

The managers again used video footage of Mr. Trump and his supporters to present their arguments, interspersed with clips of chaos to remind the Senators of how they felt when the Capitol was attacked. They claimed that such violence would not have happened without Mr Trump.

An impeachment manager, Representative Diana DeGette of Colorado, shared her experience during the attack and how she and others ran to safety and saw a SWAT team with weapons aimed at rioters on the ground. Ms. DeGette said she wondered, “Who sent you there?”

She shared comments from rioters, including a Texas real estate agent named Jennifer L. Ryan. “I thought I was going to follow my president,” Ms. Ryan said. “I thought I was following what we were called to do. He asked us to fly there, he asked us to be there, so I did what he asked us to do. “

The Trump impeachment ›

What you need to know

    • A court case will determine whether former President Donald J. Trump is guilty of instigating a deadly crowd of his supporters when they stormed the Capitol on January 6, violently violated security measures, and went into hiding when they met to certify President Biden’s victory.
    • Parliament voted 232 votes to 197 in favor of a single impeachment trial, accusing Mr. Trump of “inciting violence against the United States government” in order to dismiss the election results. Ten Republicans voted against him alongside the Democrats.
    • To convict Mr. Trump, the Senate would need a two-thirds majority to approve. This means that at least 17 Republican senators would have to vote with Senate Democrats to convict.
    • A conviction seems unlikely. Last month, only five Senate Republicans sided with the Democrats in repelling a Republican attempt to dismiss the charges because Mr Trump is no longer in office. Only 27 senators say they are not sure whether to convict Mr. Trump.
    • If the Senate convicts Mr. Trump and finds him guilty of “inciting violence against the United States government,” the Senators could vote on whether to expel him from office. This vote would only require a simple majority, and when it came to party lines, the Democrats would prevail if Vice President Kamala Harris casts the casting vote.
    • If the Senate doesn’t condemn Mr Trump, the former president could run for office again. Public opinion polls show he remains by far the most popular national figure in the Republican Party.

In another clip, Ms. Ryan said, “President Trump asked us to be in DC on the 6th, so that was our way of stopping the theft.”

After Joseph R. Biden Jr. denounced the attack on television and asked Mr. Trump to speak on national television and “demand an end to this siege,” one rioter asked, “He doesn’t know that President Trump called us to siege Has?” the place?”

The impeachment managers stressed that despite the five deaths and dozens of injuries among police officers alone, including broken ribs and broken spinal discs, Mr Trump never apologized for what happened on Jan. 6.

“President Trump’s lack of remorse and refusal to answer during the attack shows his state of mind,” said California representative Ted Lieu, a manager. “It shows that he intended the January 6th events to take place. And when it happened, he was happy about it. “

The managers stressed that Mr Trump’s behavior – selling false conspiracy theories and fraudulent claims, praising violence, skewing facts to fit his agenda – was not limited to the presidential fight and elections, and showed video clips of some of the most shocking and most controversial moments of his presidency. Among them was the deadly protest by white nationalists in Charlottesville, Virginia after Mr. Trump encouraged the white supremacy movement in a way that no president had done in generations.

Jamie Raskin, the chief impeachment manager, asked the Senators, “Is there a political leader in this room who believes Donald Trump would stop inciting violence in order to find his way if he ever gets back to the Oval Office from the Senate? ? “

Throughout the impeachment process, House managers have commended former Vice President Mike Pence for standing up against Mr Trump and refusing to reject the vote of the electoral college for re-election.

“Vice President Pence showed us what it means to be an American,” said Lieu on Wednesday. “What it means to show courage. He has put his country, his oath, his values ​​and his morals above the will of a man. “

It was unusual praise to hear from Democrats after Mr Pence worked with his burning boss for four years, which, according to critics, only allowed Mr Trump to do.

Managers stressed that the rioters wanted to assassinate the country’s second in command, Mr. Pence, which appeared to appeal to the Republican senators’ appeal to the sacred chain of command.

“During the attack, the vice president never left the Capitol and remained locked in the building with his family – with his family -” said representative Stacey E. Plaskett, a manager and delegate of the Virgin Islands Non-Voting House. “Remember that as you think about these images and sounds of the attack. The vice president, our deputy, was always the focus. Vice President Pence has been threatened with death by the president’s supporters for rejecting President Trump’s request to overthrow the election. “

Mr. Pence, a former congressman and governor of Indiana, has been largely out of sight since leaving office. At the end of January, he was seen on vacation with his wife in the Virgin Islands.

Earlier this month, Mr Pence announced that he had joined the Heritage Foundation, a conservative think tank.

The house’s impeachment executives closed three days of emotional footage of the attack. They showed Senators how close they were to the violent crowd of Trump supporters as they ducked and ran to safety that day. At times the videos and recordings seemed to resonate with the Republicans in the room. Some of them even praised the work of the property managers. But it wasn’t enough to change her mind.

On Thursday, before the managers closed their case, Republican Senator John Boozman of Arkansas told reporters that he would vote to acquit Mr. Trump. He predicted that the 43 other Republicans who voted with him to find that a former president’s attempt was unconstitutional would also vote for the acquittal.

To get a conviction, Senate Democrats would have to support 17 of their Republican counterparts, and that was never an expected outcome.

“Impeachment is dead on arrival,” Kentucky Republican Senator Rand Paul predicted last month.

Sabrina Tavernise, Luke Broadwater and Glenn Thrush contributed to the coverage.

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Politics

5 Takeaways From Day One among Trump’s Second Impeachment Trial

5 Takeaways From Day One of Trump’s Second Impeachment Trial

The second impeachment trial of former President Donald J. Trump began on Tuesday, 370 days after he was acquitted of high crimes and offenses in his first trial. He is accused of “instigating a riot” for sparking violence in the US Capitol on January 6th. The House impeachment managers and Mr Trump’s defense team argued over whether the Constitution would allow the Senate to hold a trial against a former president and ultimately decided he could move forward.

Here are some takeaways from day one.

In a 56-44 vote, the Senate dismissed Mr Trump’s defense team’s argument and decided, largely partisan, that he had the authority to bring an accused former president to justice. This paved the way for Wednesday’s trial.

Impeachment executives, led by Representative Jamie Raskin of Maryland, argued that the rejection of this impeachment trial would constitute a “January exception” that would set the precedent for a Lame Duck president to act inconsistently in the final weeks of his tenure .

The defense team called the prosecutor’s case a “quick impeachment” and argued that a former president does not need to stand trial because it would set the precedent for punishing a former official after leaving office at the whim of the party in power.

Only a simple majority was required on the question of jurisdiction, in contrast to the two-thirds majority required for a conviction. Six Republicans, along with all 50 Democrats, decided that the Senate could continue the process.

In a 13-minute video of scenes from the January 6 attack on the Capitol, the House’s chief impeachment manager, Mr. Raskin, showed a graphical visual record of the attack, including the explicit language of the rioters and riot shouts, as well as clips from Mr. Trumps Comments during the day – like his speech to followers before some of them stormed the Capitol and a Twitter post hours after the attacks, in which he wrote, “Remember that day forever.”

The Trump impeachment ›

What you need to know

    • A court case will determine whether former President Donald J. Trump is guilty of instigating a deadly crowd of his supporters when they stormed the Capitol on January 6, violently violated security measures, and went into hiding when they met to certify President Biden’s victory.
    • Parliament voted 232 votes to 197 in favor of a single impeachment trial, accusing Mr. Trump of “inciting violence against the United States government” in order to dismiss the election results. Ten Republicans voted against him alongside the Democrats.
    • To convict Mr. Trump, the Senate would need a two-thirds majority to approve. This means that at least 17 Republican senators would have to vote with Senate Democrats to convict.
    • A conviction seems unlikely. Last month, only five Senate Republicans sided with the Democrats in repelling a Republican attempt to dismiss the charges because Mr Trump is no longer in office. On the eve of the start of the trial, only 28 senators say they are not sure whether to convict Mr Trump.
    • If the Senate convicts Mr. Trump and finds him guilty of “inciting violence against the United States government,” the Senators could vote on whether to expel him from office. This vote would only require a simple majority, and when it came to party lines, the Democrats would prevail if Vice President Kamala Harris casts the casting vote.
    • If the Senate doesn’t condemn Mr Trump, the former president could run for office again. Public opinion polls show he remains by far the most popular national figure in the Republican Party.

The scenes of chaos in the video showed a crowd of protesters forcibly pushing past security barricades and police lines. Shots from inside the building included an officer screaming as he was knocked down by a door and another officer shot killing one of the rioters, Ashli ​​Babbitt.

For many of the Senators on Tuesday, the footage provided different angles than what they saw firsthand when they were brought out of the same Senate Chamber in shock and fear.

“They are asking what a great crime and misdemeanor our constitution is,” Raskin told the senators at the end of the video. “This is a high crime and misdemeanor. If that is not a criminal offense, there is no such thing. “

One of Mr. Trump’s defense lawyers, David I. Schoen, accused the property managers of hiring a “film company” to put together the most disturbing footage of the day. Mr Schön also offered a video account with a collection of calls by Democrats to impeach Mr Trump over the past four years, a false equivalency as none of these comments resulted in violence.

While this is a new Senate – with Democrats in the majority – and the way Mr Trump is accused is different from the allegations he faced in his first impeachment trial, there is no question that Mr Trump will ultimately is acquitted, just like a year ago.

It would take the Democrats 17 Republicans to break with and vote with the former president to have the two-thirds necessary to convict Mr Trump. If the six Republican senators who voted with Democrats Tuesday on the Senate’s right to hold the trial also voted to convict Mr. Trump, it would take Democrats 11 more Republican defectors to get a conviction.

For Democrats, a guilty verdict would be a formal, permanent waiver of Mr. Trump’s behavior. Should Mr Trump be convicted, the Senate could vote to decide whether to run again for office – something the Democrats have argued is in the best interests of the country.

An acquittal would allow Republicans to postpone the conviction of their party’s most popular member. But it would only delay the inevitable reckoning of their party faces between the moderate members and the far right wing, which not only defends Mr Trump but seeks to punish other Republicans for betraying him.

For the Democrats, an acquittal could still be some sort of political victory, as the trial was an opportunity to publicly condemn Mr Trump’s actions in his final days as president and provide a formal record of the Republican senators who refused to accept him to punish.

Senator Mike Lee, Republican of Utah, has already been criticized for proposing that Mr. Trump be given a passport for the January 6th events.

“Look, everyone makes mistakes, everyone is entitled to a mulligan every now and then,” Lee said on Fox News after the property managers argued, using a golf term for a do-over.

As the longest-serving Democrat in the Senate, 80-year-old Leahy is the chairman of the Senate trial against Mr Trump.

Last year, Chief Justice John G. Roberts Jr. held that role, an appointment set out in the Constitution. This time, however, Chief Justice Roberts was not interested in the job. And because the constitution does not provide who should oversee the trial of a former president, it fell to Mr Leahy and gave him the power to rule on key issues such as admissible evidence.

On January 6th, Mr. Leahy was among the lawmakers who had to move away from the violent crowd, making him one of the hundreds of witnesses who were at the Capitol that day. And as one of 100 Senators, he will also vote on whether to convict Mr Trump of inciting violence against the United States.

Mr Leahy’s three hats were a reminder, among other things, that while these trials in the Senate are referred to as trials, they are not comparable to those in courtrooms across the country.

Mr Trump’s defense team unsuccessfully argued that Mr Leahy’s conflict of interest is one reason the trial is unconstitutional.

Bruce L. Castor Jr., the attorney who began the Trump defense team’s arguments Tuesday, led Senators down a tortuous path of generalizations about the Senate, Mr. Trump’s right to freedom of expression, and the difference between murder and manslaughter in criminal justice.

“I have no idea what he’s doing,” said Alan M. Dershowitz, who served on Mr. Trump’s defense team during his first impeachment last year, on conservative television station Newsmax. “Maybe he’ll bring it home, but at the moment it doesn’t seem like an effective advocacy.”

While Mr. Castor was speaking, other senators looked restless and began to talk to each other.

“The president’s attorney kept moving,” Republican Senator John Cornyn told reporters after the trial ended. “I’ve seen a lot of lawyers and a lot of arguments and that wasn’t the best I’ve ever seen.”

Mr Schön, another of Mr Trump’s attorneys, seemed to regain attention in the room when he argued that the Constitution does not allow the impeachment of a former president.

“This process will tear this country apart, perhaps as we have seen it only once in our history,” said Mr Schön, an obvious reference to the civil war. “For political reasons,” he added, “it is wrong, how wrong it can be for all of us as a nation.”

Glenn Thrush contributed to the coverage.

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Politics

Rivals Mock Andrew Yang: 5 Takeaways From the Mayor’s Race

Rivals Mock Andrew Yang: 5 Takeaways From the Mayor’s Race

Andrew Yang made a splash last week when he entered the mayor’s race and injected energy into what had been a relatively calm and polite campaign season.

Other campaigns pounced on Mr. Yang, questioning his authenticity as a New Yorker and his commitment to the city. While their excavations highlighted some of his weaknesses, they also revealed how the candidates view Mr. Yang as a threat.

The campaigns also released their fundraising numbers last week, showing which candidates are in the strongest financial position while a former Wall Street executive, known for a #MeToo complaint, stepped into the lesser-known Republican field.

Here are some key developments in the race:

Even before Mr. Yang even entered the race, he had made fun of a comment on social media to the New York Times explaining his decision to leave New York City for his Hudson Valley weekend home at the start of the pandemic.

That was before the bodega incident.

The day after Mr. Yang ran a personal campaign launch in Morningside Heights, he posted a video on Twitter about his love for bodegas – a safe stance few would question. But Mr. Yang recorded the video in a spacious, glitzy shop that few New Yorkers would consider a bodega.

The video got Mr. Yang more ridiculed – and 3.7 million views by Sunday afternoon.

Rival campaigns took other blows on him. After Mr. Yang finished a tour of the Brownsville neighborhood of Brooklyn, the campaign by Eric Adams, president of the Brooklyn borough, said, “Eric doesn’t need a tour of Brownsville. He was born there. “

The campaign manager of Maya Wiley, a former attorney for Mayor Bill de Blasio, threw Mr. Yang’s evasive maneuver from the presidential campaign to the New York Mayor’s race: “Maya is running – not as a backup plan – but because she has devoted everything to life to improve, empower, and uplift the New Yorkers. “

Mr. Stringer’s campaign spokesman, Tyrone Stevens, also dug: “We welcome Andrew Yang to the Mayor’s Race – and to New York City.”

The choice of music for an official launch or acceptance speech for a candidate is usually a calculated decision. Fleetwood Mac’s “Don’t Stop” was Bill Clinton’s 1992 campaign theme song; Lordes “Royals” preceded Mr de Blasio’s 2013 victory speech.

Mr. Yang came to his kick-off event in Morningside Park in Manhattan and danced to the Drake song “God’s Plan,” which includes the lyrics, “They Wish Me / Bad Things.”

Indeed, Mr. Yang was faced with a flurry of questions from journalists about why he had left town during the pandemic and why he had not voted in local elections. An important question is whether Mr. Yang sees the job as a stepping stone to running for national office again – like Mr. de Blasio, who received criticism for his poor offer for president in 2019 and several trips to Iowa.

When asked by the New York Times whether he would pledge not to run for president during his tenure as mayor, Mr. Yang declined. But he said being Mayor of New York would be the job of a lifetime.

“New Yorkers have nothing to fear,” he said.

Mr. Yang made a suggestion that the city should take control of the subway away from the state. There is only one obstacle: Governor Andrew M. Cuomo, who has taken near complete control of the transit agency and is not known to relinquish power.

“Who knows? Maybe he’ll be happy when the city takes it out of his hands,” Yang said to reporters who had gathered on a subway platform and laughed in disbelief at the thought.

He spent his first day campaigning through four of the city’s five counties (sorry, Staten Island). At NY1’s Inside City Hall that evening, Mr. Yang disappointed some by saying the city may not close the Rikers Island prison by 2027.

“Rikers Island should be closed but we need to be flexible on the timeline,” he said.

Mr. Yang pointed to an important confirmation when he came on the trail: Representative Ritchie Torres of the Bronx, a rising star in the Democratic Party who helped counter criticism that Mr. Yang had no contact with the city.

Mr. Torres and Mondaire Jones are the first openly gay black men to serve in Congress, and Mr. Torres has been campaigned for. He had met or had conversations with Ms. Wiley, Mr. Adams, Mr. Stringer, Raymond J. McGuire, and Shaun Donovan, a former housing secretary under President Barack Obama.

Mr Torres said he gave the lost campaigns a heads up on his decision, despite being intrigued by the vote on the indictment against President Trump.

“No mayoral candidate supported me in my race,” said Torres. “I didn’t owe anyone anything.”

Mr. Torres said Mr. Yang’s endorsement of a universal basic income would be a victory for the South Bronx county, which he represents, one of the poorest in the nation. He said that he also likes the fact that Mr. Yang is not part of the city’s political establishment.

The confirmation enables Mr. Torres to coordinate with a moderate progressive colleague. If Mr. Yang wins, it would strengthen Mr. Torres’ standing and give him a powerful ally in the town hall.

When asked about the response to his decision, Torres said, “Eric Adams was friendly, most were disappointed, and one campaign was particularly hostile.”

Several people familiar with the discussions said the McGuire campaign responded with hostility. Mr. Torres met with Mr. McGuire, a former Wall Street executive, at an event in the Hamptons this summer, and his campaign believed they had the inside track.

Mr. McGuire’s campaigning denied being upset about the nudge.

“Ray is not a politician and has no grudge,” said his spokeswoman Lupé Todd-Medina. “He looks forward to working with the congressman when he’s mayor.”

Many officials who have worked in and around the city government appreciate Kathryn Garcia, the city’s former sanitation commissioner who, as a trusted manager, is able to help drive the city’s recovery from the pandemic. But she falls behind in the money race.

Ms. Garcia raised approximately $ 300,000 and did not qualify for any public matching funds.

However, recent records showed that Ms. Garcia received campaign contributions from a number of high-ranking New Yorkers, including Joseph J. Lhota, the former head of the Metropolitan Transportation Authority, who ran as Republican against Mr. de Blasio in 2013. Polly Trottenberg, the city’s former traffic commissioner; and Kathryn Wylde, the head of a prominent group of companies. Ms. Wylde also donated to Mr. McGuire, who is popular among Wall Street donors.

Monika Hansen, Ms. Garcia’s campaign manager, said that many city employees support her offer.

“Kathryn has the support of the makers of the New York government at every rank,” she said.

A lesser-known candidate, Zachary Iscol, a nonprofit leader and former Marine, has raised nearly $ 750,000 and expects to soon qualify for the relevant funds.

Another candidate who worked in Mr de Blasio’s administration is struggling: Loree Sutton, a former veterans affairs commissioner who has $ 398 on hand and $ 6,000 in outstanding debt. She said her campaign has had some problems but is reorganizing and “is in this race and in to win it”.

The democratic primary in June is expected to decide the mayor’s race. The registered Democrats in New York City are far more numerous than the Republicans. But there’s also a Republican primary in June, and a new candidate entered the race last week: Sara Tirschwell, a former Wall Street executive who once filed a #MeToo complaint against her boss.

In an interview, Ms. Tirschwell referred to her experience as a single mother and moderate Republican with liberal social views. She highlighted her “leadership skills” as a rare woman who held high positions in financial companies.

“I think there is a need for a moderate in this race, and it’s not clear that a moderate will survive a Democratic elementary school in New York City,” she said.

Ms. Tirschwell, who grew up in Texas, echoed the complaints of many Republicans – and some Democrats – that “Bill de Blasio is probably the worst mayor in our lives.” But she didn’t want to talk about the recent violence in Washington or the impeachment of Mr Trump.

“This race is about New York, and it’s about New Yorkers and the crisis this city is facing, and that’s what my campaign is focusing on,” she said.

Other names that have popped up in Republican Elementary School: John Catsimatidis, the billionaire of the Gristedes grocery chain; Fernando Mateo, a taxi driver attorney linked to a scandal surrounding Mr de Blasio’s fundraiser; and Curtis Sliwa, the founder of the Guardian Angels.