House managers prepare impeachment case showing visceral evidence of insurrection
Facing highly skeptical Republican senators, House impeachment managers are preparing a case to show the visceral evidence of the Capitol insurrection and how former President Trump’s words and actions motivated the rioters to breach the Capitol, according to sources familiar with the deliberations.
The Senate’s 55 to 45 procedural vote Tuesday is not deterring the House from making what they see is a clear case against Trump for his role inciting the insurrectionists. There are still key questions for them to decide before next month’s trial: They haven’t made a final decision, for instance, on whether they will call witnesses or not. They’re preparing for the possibility they won’t have any witnesses – but they may decide to use them if they find a witness willing to voluntarily step forward, according to sources.
Even without witnesses, Democrats are preparing they’re preparing to use evidence from video and social media to help illustrate how Trump’s words, actions and tweets motivated the rioters to attack the Capitol, the sources say.
The House managers are also preparing to make the constitutional argument – they’re led by Rep. Jamie Raskin of Maryland, a former constitutional law professor – that the Senate can convict a former President, just as it’s held trials for other former officials in the past. It’s a case that’s taken on newfound importance in the wake of the Senate’s 55 to 45 vote Tuesday that Sen. Rand Paul forced as part of his argument that most of the Republicans think the trial is unconstitutional – and there simply aren’t 17 Republican votes needed for conviction.
But Senate Democrats say that the case the House managers make can still sway some Republicans, particularly if they can use witnesses who would help corroborate Trump’s mindset and actions leading up to the Jan. 6 Capitol riots.
“I think that the core of this case is Trump’s incendiary and inciting words, the words out of his own mouth,” Connecticut Democratic Sen. Richard Blumenthal told reporters. “But his intent to do harm, to cause injury and maybe even death may come from witnesses who were with him when he was watching the assault on the Capitol. So witnesses can corroborate and powerfully document what we know but they need to prove.”
One complicating factor for the House impeachment team is whether potential witnesses would be willing to be called – particularly those who were in the White House. The House impeachment managers want to avoid any kind of court fight over witnesses like the House had to deal with during the first impeachment of Trump.
Sen. Angus King, the Maine Independent who caucuses with Democrats, said Tuesday it was an open question whether executive privilege would still apply to former White House officials after Trump left office who could be called as potential witnesses. King argued that such testimony could shine light on the President’s thinking during the time of the trial.
“It will be either witnesses or documents, and what was given in the way of intelligence,” King said.
The opening day of Trump’s second impeachment trial showed just how high the bar is for House Democrats to get anywhere close to the votes needed for conviction, with just five Republicans voting with Democrats to defeat Paul’s procedural motion.
While not every Republican who voted with Paul said the trial was unconstitutional outright, the 55 to 45 vote was as clear a sign as any that the path to the 67 votes needed to convict Trump and bar him from running again was all but impossible. Paul claimed after the vote it showed the trial was already over before it started.
Even one of the Republicans who voted with Democrats and is opened to convicting Trump said the writing was on the wall.
“Do the math. I think it’s extraordinarily unlikely that the President will be convicted,” said Sen. Susan Collin of Maine, one of the five Republicans to break with Paul.
