An impeachment trial is a political matter. In order to win the Republican votes necessary to judge Donald Trump guilty (they need at least seventeen), Democratic prosecutors have tried to focus their indictment on the role played by the former president in the assault on Congress , January 6, result of two months of mobilization of its base against a presidential election presented as rigged. They avoided to question the elected Republican present, who, according to them, defended the “ big lie “ concerning electoral fraud that allegedly cost the president his defeat.
The defense lawyers, who succeeded them, developed their strategy from a completely different perspective, that of keeping the united Republican camp, to obtain the acquittal. To achieve this, they therefore insisted on their partisan reflexes, during a very brief plea, Friday, February 12, of only two and a half hours.
The Democrats had detailed an infernal machine: the “Big lie” perpetuated by Donald Trump, a conspiracy theory maintained for weeks, which had resulted in the invasion of the Capitol. This assault was illustrated by several videos, some unpublished, which had struck the spirits. The first element of their indictments, slippery ground for them, disappeared from lawyers’ pleadings, as did the scenes filmed inside Congress.
Reduce the attack on the Capitol to an overflow
Their defense was articulated around three points. First, they reduced the attack on the Capitol to an outburst attributable to “A small group” radical, unrelated to Donald Trump, who has, according to them, ” taken hostage “ a peaceful demonstration. They also reduced the causal factor, as to the charge of“Incitement to insurgency”, to a few sentences uttered by Donald Trump during the speech preceding the attack. They also pieced together a timeline of events stripped of elements embarrassing the president, such as a message, posted on Twitter, which implicated his vice president, Mike Pence, as rioters huddled at the latter’s heels at the interior of the Capitol.
Lawyers tried to convince their audiences that these phrases from Donald Trump were harmless in themselves, the expression “Fight like devils” falling within the ordinary phraseology of American politics, while obscuring the political climate which then reigned. “ The January 6 speech did not cause riots. The president did not provoke the riots. He neither explicitly nor implicitly encouraged the use of violence or anarchic actions ”said Bruce Castor, who pointed out that the president once invited his supporters to demonstrate “Peacefully and patriotically”.
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