Democrats reveal dramatic new security footage showing MAGA mob

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Dramatic footage from the Capitol on January 6th showed Secret Service agents rushing Vice President Mike Pence out of his hiding place near the Senate chamber while Speaker Nancy Pelosi had to be taken from the complex entirely as the MAGA rioters threatened to kill them.

In the footage, taken from a security camera from inside the Capitol, a group of agents, one of whom carried the football with the nuclear codes, led the Pence family from where they had been taken after being removed from the Senate chamber.

Pence, his wife Karen and daughter Charlotte followed the agents down the stairs and were moved to another location in the Capitol.

‘You can see Vice President Pence and his family quickly moved downstairs. Then, as Pence was being evacuated, rioters started to spread throughout the Capitol,’ Democratic Rep. Stacey Plaskett said during the impeachment managers presentation.

Plaskett played several never-before-seen security camera footage from the January 6th riot as part of Democrats’ case for the impeachment of Donald Trump. She then showed the pro-Trump supporters yelling ‘Kill Mike Pence.’

At a later moment in the trial, Rep. Joaquin Castro, noted how ‘some of these insurgents were heard saying that they hope to find Vice President Mike Pence and execute him by hanging him as a traitors.’

A makeshift gallows had been erected outside the Capitol Building. Castro asked senators to look at that image for a moment. 

‘It harkens back to our nation’s worst history of lynching,’ the Texas Democrat said. 

New footage also included the moment the MAGA mob busted into the Capitol Building, with Plaskett pointing out the first man who entered the Capitol was wearing ‘full tactical body armor and carrying a baseball bat.’

‘Others are carrying riot shields. Among this group are members of the Proud Boys,’ she noted.

New footage shows Capitol Police officer Eugene Goodman running and getting Sen. Mitt Romney out of harm’s way before distracting the MAGA mob away from the Senate chamber. 

The footage, not yet seen publicly, shows Goodman running toward the Senate and its famous Ohio Clock. He then gestures to Romney, who does an immediate 180-degree turn, having been walking toward the House where another larger mob had already gathered.

‘I did not know that was Officer Goodman but I look forward to thanking him when I next see him,’ Romney said after the clip played. ‘I was very fortunate indeed that Officer Goodman was there they get me in the right direction.’  

Overall, Romney said of the playback: ‘It tears at your heart and brings tears to your eyes. That was overwhelmingly distressing and emotional.’  

The footage showed rioters searching for Pelosi in and around her office, with Plaskett revealing that Pelosi had been pulled entirely from the building for her own safety. 

‘The vice president, the speaker of the House, the first and second in line to the presidency, were performing their constitutional duties, presiding over the election certification and they were put in danger because President Trump put his own desires, his own need for power over his duty to the Constitution and our democratic process,’ Plaskett said.  

Plaskett also highlighted that Richard Barnett, the rioter who was photographed seated at Pelosi’s desk, had been carrying a 950,000 volt stun gun, a weapon the FBI had since identified. 

Democratic Rep. Eric Swalwell, one of the House impeachment managers, showed the senators just how close they came to being attacked by the pro-Trump mob that day.

The senators, who are sitting as jurors in Trump’s impeachment trial, saw, for the first time, security camera footage that showed their escape from the Senate chamber, as U.S. Capitol Police officers created a line of defense to hold the mob back long enough for the lawmakers to be ushered to safety.

‘You were just 58 steps away from where the mob,’ Swalwell told the senators.

The footage showed a hallway with senators running past the camera. In the background, police officers can be seen, holding the crowd away.

The senators sat in silence as the video presentation played, their eyes glued to the TV screens.

‘You know how close you came to the mob. Some of you, I understand, could hear them. But most of the public does not know how close these rioters came to you. As you were moving through that hallway, I paced it off. You were just 58 steps away from where the mob was amassing and where police were rushing to stop them. They were yelling. In this security video, you can see how the police created a line and blocked the hallway with their bodies to prevent rioters from reaching you and your staff,’ he said.

He then played it for them again.

‘Because this is security footage that you’ve not seen before, I want to play it again. At the top of the screen, the other end of that hallway, where the mob has amassed, and the officers are rushing to protect you,’ Swalwell told the senators.

He then showed never-before-seen footage of Senate Democratic Leader having a near miss with the rioters.

Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer’s security detail escorted the senator up a ramp and down one of the hallways. The fixed security camera shows Schumer and his detail walking toward the camera and out of view. A few seconds later, the senator and his team are seen running back from where they came.

‘They came within just yards of the rioters, and had to turn around,’ Swalwell said. ‘You see Leader Schumer walking up a ramp. Going up the ramp with his detail, he will soon go out of view. Seconds later, they return, and run back down the hallway. Officers immediately shut the door and use their bodies to keep them safe.’

Schumer called the clips ‘gut wrenching’ during Wednesday’s dinner break. ‘ 

‘I don’t think many of us feel like eating dinner,’ the New York Democrat noted. 

‘As for me, my situation, I just want to give tremendous credit to the Capitol Police officers who were in my detail, like the rest of the Capitol Police officers they are utterly amazing and great and we love them,’ the Senate majority leader added. 

He then showed the senators the footage of rioters on the Senate floor. 

‘We’re here,’ one yells. ‘Where the f**k are they?,’ another yells of the lawmakers.

‘They invaded and desecrated the Senate floor,’ Swalwell said. ‘These vandals shouted, and rifled through the desks in this room. They took pictures of documents and of themselves. Celebrating that they had taken over the floor and stopped the counting of electoral college votes.’

Swalwell noted that while it wasn’t part of his video presentation, he credited Senate staff with grabbing and protecting the Electoral College votes the mob was after. 

Democrats play footage of officers being bludgeoned 

He also played audio recordings between police officers and video from their perspective.

‘The crowd is using munitions against us,’ an officer in an audio clip said. ‘They have bear spray in the crowd. Bear spray in the crowd.’  

Swalwell talked about the ‘hand-to-hand combat’ the officers were forced to engage in, speaking of their ‘extraordinary bravery.’ 

At the top of his presentation he said, ‘I want to warn you that the following audio and video is graphic and unsettling.’   

In a second audio clip that Swalwell played senators could hear the voice of a D.C. Metropolitan Police Department officer shouting, ‘We have been flanked and we lost the line,’ yelling out the code that an officer needed assistance.  

Videos then showed officers being sprayed in the face.    

‘In this new security video, you can see the mob attacking officers with a crutch, a hockey stick, a bullhorn and a Trump flag,’ Swalwell said, before rolling footage from the same moments from two perspectives, including from an officer’s bodycam.

The California Democrat noted that this footage was taken two hours after the initial Capitol break-in. 

‘The attack on police that afternoon was constant,’ Swalwell said.    

D.C. Police Mike Fanone, Swalwell continued, was one of three police officers that the mob grabbed and dragged down the Capitol Building’s stairs. Fanone was tased, which triggered a heart attack, Swalwell revealed.

‘It was a medieval battle scene, it was some of the most brutal combat I’ve ever encountered,’ Fanone said in a video clip, recalling the experience. 

Swalwell paid homage to the three officers who died, Brian Sicknick, who perished from his injuries and officers Howard Liebengood and Jeffery Smith, who took their lives. He noted that another 140 police officers had been injured. 

The impeachment manager blasted the rioters for crushing trapping and crushing Officer Daniel Hodges between two doors.        

‘I’m sorry I have to show you the next video,’ Swalwell said at the conclusion of his presentation. 

He then rolled the footage, that had previously gone viral, of Officer Hodges being crushed in the Capitol’s door.   

Impeachment managers also played a clip of the moment Ashli Babbitt was shot. 

During recess after the video presentation a Capitol Hill pool reporter noted that the senators gathered in groups on the floor and ‘it was clear that they were reliving the experience and realizing how close the riots had been.’  

Top Trump ally, Sen. Lindsey Graham, suggested officers should have used more force.

‘Well, I just can’t believe that we could lose the Capitol like that. I got mad. I mean these police officers had every right to use deadly force, they should have used it,’ Graham told the Capitol Hill pool. ‘The people in charge of securing the Capitol left the country.’ 

Graham called Democrats legal theory ‘absurd.’ ‘That somehow that Trump’s a secret member of the Proud boys.’

Democrats argue Trump knew the Capitol protest would turn violent 

Before showing the new footage, Democratic House impeachment managers argued that Trump knew his supporters’ plans to violently attack the Capitol, yet still encouraged them to do so. 

‘Some of you have said there’s no way the president could have known how violent the mob would be. That is false – because the violence it was foreseeable,’ argued Plaskett.

She shared pieces of social media leading up to the January 6 attack. 

One meme, which showed an illuminated image of the Capitol Building, said the date – January 6 – and below it, ‘The capitol is our goal, everything else is a distraction. Every corrupt member of Congress locked in one room and surrounded by real Americans is an opportunity that will never present itself again.’ 

Chatter on pro-Trump message boards, shared by Plaskett, showed supporters plotting to overwhelm the Capitol Police. ‘There are only around 2K of them and a lot are useless fat asses or girls,’ one supporter pointed out. 

‘These are not just hidden posts in dark websites that Trump would not have seen. Quite the opposite. We know that President Trump’s team monitored these websites,’ Plaskett argued. ‘We know this because his advisers confirm it.’ 

Lead House impeachment manager Jamie Raskin said Trump was ‘a man who praised and encouraged and cultivated violence’ as he disputed Joe Biden’s victory.  

Democrats presented evidence of that Wednesday by pointing to Trump telling the right-wing group The Proud Boys, a group involved in the insurrection, to ‘stand back and stand by’ during the September presidential debate. Then Plaskett shared a video of a Proud Boys member inside the Capitol on January 6 wearing an earpiece – evidence of the coordination and planning that was made. 

‘That’s the level of planning in advance that occurred,’ the Democratic rep said.  

Plaskett also recalled how Trump had embraced supporters’ efforts to run a Biden-Harris bus off the road in Texas.

Sharing a tweet the ex-president shared of the altercation, Plaskett noted how Trump ‘put music to that video … and then added to the top, “I LOVE TEXAS.”‘   

Trump is charged on one count of impeachment – inciting the insurrection at the Capitol that left five dead.

In his opening remarks, Raskin blasted Trump for inciting the insurrection and enjoying the spectacle of his supporters disrupting the certification in the Capitol.

‘He watched it on TV like a reality show, he reveled in it,’ he charged. ‘There has never been a greater betrayal by a president of the U.S. of his office and his oath to the Constitution.’

Raskin, in his nearly 20 minute speech, painted Trump as betraying his duties as president in order to preserve his political power. 

‘He incited this attack and he saw it coming,’ Raskin argued. ‘To us it may have felt like chaos and madness but there was method and the madness that day. This was an organized attack on the counting of the electoral college votes in joint session of the United States Congress.’

House Democrats face an uphill battle in getting Trump convicted. Senate Democrats need 17 Republicans to cross over and vote for conviction and there is no indication those numbers are there.

But Democrats laid out their case that Trump, as it became apparent he could not legally win the election, sought to incite his base in order to stay in power.

‘President Donald J. Trump ran out of nonviolent options to maintain power. After his efforts in the courts and threatening officials failed, he turned to privately and publicly attacking members of his own party in the House and in the Senate,’ Democratic Rep. Ted Lieu of California said.

‘The president wasn’t just coming for one or two people or Democrats like me. He was coming for you, for Democratic and Republican senators. He was coming for all of us,’ he said. 

The prosecutors reminded Republicans how Trump treated them – calling them ‘pathetic’ and threatening to primary them – while offering example after example of how the former president tried to overthrow the election results. 

House impeachment managers have 16 hours to make their case against the former president. Then the defense will offer theirs.  

Raskin said the prosecution will show Trump violated his oath of office and abdicated his duty as commander in chief. 

‘The evidence will show you that ex-President Trump was no innocent bystander. The evidence will show that he clearly incited the January 6th insurrection. It will show that Donald Trump surrendered his role as commander in chief and became the inciter in chief,’ he said.  

The managers handed off to one another to methodically tracing Trump’s months long effort to undermine the election. And they repeatedly brought senators back to that day in the Capitol, when the Trump supporters stormed the building. 

‘That mob was summoned, assembled and incited by the former president of the United States, Donald Trump. He did that because he wanted to stop the print transfer of power so he could obtain power even though he had lost the election. And when the violence erupted, when they were here in our building with weapons, he did nothing to stop it,’ Democratic Rep. Joe Neguse said.

Trump is only the president in American history to be impeached. It’s also the first time senators have set in judgement of a president accused of putting their lives in danger while trying to overthrow a legitimate election.

Neguse focused his argument on demonstrating that Trump was ramping up his supporters long before his January 6th speech, intending to counter Trump’s defense that his speech was protected under the first amendment. Trump’s attorneys also argue that federal evidence shows the insurrection had been in the works for some time – meaning Trump’s speech that morning could not have incited it.

‘I’d respectfully ask that you remember those three phrases as you consider the evidence today. ‘Election was stolen. Stop the steal. And fight like hell’ because they did not just appear on January 6,’ Neguse said. 

He showed clips of Trump speeches and rallies where the president complained – falsely and repeatedly – that the election was stolen. 

‘He didn’t just tell them to fly like hell, he told them how, where, and when, he made sure they had advance notice, 18 days advance notice, he sent his save the date for January 6th,’ Neguse said. 

He also showed video clips of the rioters from January 6th, saying they were at the Capitol because of Trump: ‘Fight for Trump! Fight for Trump! Fight for Trump!,’ one said. ‘We were invited by the president of the United States,’ said another.

Neguse also argued Trump didn’t do enough to stop the rioters that day.

‘He alone, our commander in chief, had the power to stop it. And he didn’t. You will hear evidence tonight, tomorrow, throughout the trial about his refusal as commander in chief to respond to numerous desperate pleas on the phone, across social media, begging him to stop the attack,’ he said. 

Democratic Rep. Joaquin Castro also showed multiple examples of Trump falsely claiming the election was stolen from him.

And he appealed to the senators to remember their own election contests when listening to what Trump said. 

‘All of us in this room have run for election. It’s no fun to lose. I’m a Texas Democrat. We’ve lost a few elections over the years. But can you imagine telling your supporters that the only way you could possibly lose is if an American election was rigged and stolen from you? Ask yourself if you have ever seen anyone make the same claim about their own election. That’s exactly what President Trump did,’ he said.

He went on to say when the media, including Fox News, said when the remaining votes were counted Biden would be the victor ‘President Trump began urging his supporters to stop the count.’

‘I would imagine that if we went around this room, there are folks sitting here that started down on election night and ended up coming back up and winning their races. Perhaps that’s why some of you are seated in this room today. But imagine if you were behind and the results start coming in, and as you started pulling ahead, your opponent said, that’s not fair, stop the count while I’m still ahead. That’s what Donald Trump did. But that’s not how America works. Here every vote counts. You don’t just stop counting when one person is ahead. We count every vote,’ he added.

Trump’s goal, Castro argued, was to incite his base, ‘to make sure that his supporters were angry, like the election was being ripped away from them.’

‘This is clearly a man who refuses to accept the possibility or the reality in our democracy of losing an election,’ Castro said. 

As part of their case, House impeachment managers will show never-before-seen Capitol security footage of the January 6th riot as they start their case for impeaching Donald Trump.

The footage will demonstrate the extent of the violence that occurred and the threat the rioters posed to everyone in the Capitol, senior aides on the House impeachment team told CNN. 

They did not say what the new footage was, or whether it came from Capitol Police or Washington DC’s Metropolitan Police. 

The video will show ‘extreme violence’ and make clear what additional safety risks were posed by the insurrection, a House aide told The Washington Post, including ‘just how close Trump’s mob came to senators, members of Congress and staff.’

‘It will show the extent of what Donald Trump unleashed on our Capitol,’ said the aide. 

The House managers are not expected to use the full 16 hours they are allotted for their presentation. After they finish, the defense will make its case and also is not expected to use its full 16 hours.

Trump’s second impeachment trial could end as soon as this weekend. He is expected to be acquitted. 

The Democratic impeachment managers previewed their case against the former president with a 14-minute video on Tuesday that contained dramatic footage of Trump supporters storming the Capitol and taunting police officers with obscenities as they bashed in doors and windows.

Trump’s defense tried to counter the lingering image of the video, which visibly affected many senators in the chamber. Those lawmakers were also in the Capitol on January 6th.

But Trump wasn’t happy with his defense team after their first day making arguments, according to reports.   

Trump, viewing the proceedings from his new home at Mar-a-Lago, was aghast that one of his lawyers, Bruce Castor, acknowledged the potency of the opening argument put forward by House Democratic impeachment managers, ABC News reported. 

Castor even acknowledged that his team changed course after viewing the Democrats’ dramatic video.

‘I’ll be quite frank with you, we changed what we were going to do on account that we thought that the House managers’ presentation was well done,’ Castor admitted. ‘And I wanted you to know that we have responses to those things.’ 

One Trump advisor even told CNN getting good legal representation was a concern if he is ever charged in criminal court, which is now possible since he is out of office. 

‘Trump is f***** if anyone ever charges him. No one wants to work with him,’ said the advisor. 

Raskin compares Trump to a fire chief ‘who set the theater on fire’

Democratic impeachment manager Jamie Raskin sought to explode the First Amendment defenses put forward by Donald Trump’s lawyers in their impeachment legal brief.

Trump’s team had argued that the president’s call for his supporters to ‘fight’ where not an incitement to riot but protected political speech.

Raskin, a constitutional law professor, picked apart the claim and brought up the well-worn example of a limit on free speech – that you can’t yell ‘fire in a crowded theater,’ a concept explored by Supreme Court Justice Oliver Wendell Holmes.

‘But even that time-honored principle doesn’t begin to capture how off base the argument is,’ Raskin said. ‘This case is much worse than someone who falsely shouts fire in a crowded theater. It’s more like a case where the town fire chief who’s paid to put out fires sends a mob yet to yell fire in a crowded theater but to actually set the theater on fire,’ he said.

He continued: And who then when the fire alarms go off and the calls start flooding into the fire department asking for help, does nothing but sit back, encourage the mob to continue its rampage and watch the fire spread on TV with glee and delight.’

Raskin was alluding to Trump’s inaction during the riot, and his tweets praising rioters even when he finally asked them to go home.

‘So then we say this fire chief should never be allowed to hold this public job again and you’re fired and you’re permanently disqualified and he objects. And he says, we’re violating his free speech rights just because he’s pro-mob or pro-fire or whatever it might be,’ he added.

Then he quoted conservative Supreme Court Justice Antonin Scalia. ‘As Justice Scalia once said, memorably, you can’t ride with the cops and root for the robbers.’

Raskin acknowledged the potential attractiveness of the free speech argument – but said it didn’t apply.

‘They present president trump as merely like a guy at a rally expressing a political opinion that we disagree with, and now we’re trying to put him in jail for it. That has nothing to do with the reality of these charges where his constitutional offense,’ he said.

He said his legal team would demonstrate ‘with overwhelming evidence portraying Trump as a guy on the street being punished for his ideas is a false description of his actions, his intent, and the role that he played on January 6th when he willfully incited an insurrectionary mob to riot at the Capitol.’

Impeachment manager Rep. Joe Neguse pointed to the specifics of some of Trump’s comments in and around the riot.

‘He didn’t’ stop it. He didn’t’ condemn the violence. He incited further,’ Neguse said.

‘He didn’t’ just tell them to fight like hell. He told them how, where and when.’

‘What time was that rally scheduled for?’ Neguse told senators. ‘The exact same time that this chamber was certifying the election results in joint session,’ he said. He noted that Trump concluded his Jan. 6 speech ‘literally moments’ after Pelosi gaveled the House into session.  

Only Trump could have stopped the rioters

Democratic Rep. Joe Neguse of Colorado used his time at the trial Wednesday to parse President Trump’s statements for signals he sent to his supporters – as well as underline the things he did not do when MAGA rioters took the Capitol.

‘When the violence erupted, when they were here in our building with weapons, he did nothing to stop it. If we are to protect our republic and prevent something like this from ever happening again, he must be convicted,’ said Neguse, a lawyer and second-term lawmaker.

Neguse, 37, spoke of his own background as the child of immigrants, but also let Trump do the talking through his tweets and recorded statements.

He observed that neither he nor even a figure like former Vice President Mike Pence could have stopped the mob.

‘In his unique role as commander in chief of our country and as the one person that the mob was listening to and following orders from, he had the power to stop it. And he didn’t,’ Neguse said.

He said Trump’s Jan. 6 remarks were a deliberate effort and culmination of months of advance work through other remarks.

‘Now, some have said that President Trump’s remarks, his speech on January 6th was just a speech. Well, let me ask you this. When in our history has a speech led thousands of people to storm our nation’s capital with weapons? To scale the walls, break windows, kill a Capitol Police officer? This was not just a speech,’ he said.

He said Trump’s words were ‘carefully chosen’ and had a ‘very specific meaning to that crowd.’ The reason? Trump had used the same words ‘over and over again.’

Neguse went back repeatedly to Trump’s words, including setting the table even before the elections, saying ‘it’s only way we can lose, in my opinion, is massive fraud.’

‘He told his base that the election was stolen, as he had forecasted. and then he told them, your election has been stolen, but you cannot concede, you must stop the steal,’ Neguse continued.

The he sketched out the rest of Trump’s pressure campaign: including efforts to ‘threaten’ state election officials, have the Justice Department investigate his claims, and persuade Republicans in Congress to block certification of the vote.

‘None of it worked. so, what does he do? With his back against the wall when all else has failed, he turns back to his supporters who he’d already spent months telling them that the election was stolen,’ he continued.

‘He told them that they had to be ready not just to stop the steal but to fight like hell.’

Trump’s pressure campaign on state officials

Democratic Rep. Madeleine Dean, who represents a suburban Philadelphia district, walked the senators through Trump’s court challenges – and when those failed – his pressure campaign aimed at state officials in Michigan, Georgia and her home state of Pennsylvania.

‘Donald Trump told his supporters they are stealing the election, they took away your vote,’ Dean said. ‘That was not true. According to judge after judge the truth was exactly the opposite.’

‘Trump wasn’t suing to ensure election integrity. He was pursuing lawsuits that would, in effect, strip away American votes so he could win,’ she told her Senate audience.

She noted the calls Trump made to election officials in Michigan, inviting some top state lawmakers to Washington for a meeting.

‘Let’s be clear Donald Trump was calling officials, hosting them at the White House, urging them to defy the voters in their state,’ she said.

Dean noted how he made similar entreaties to state officials in Pennsylvania, even calling into a legislative policy meeting – attended by his lawyers Rudy Giuliani and Jenna Ellis – as a way to curry favor.

However, ‘his conduct was the most egregious,’ Dean argued, in how he treated Georgia’s Secretary of State Georgia secretary of state.

She called attention to a handful of Trump’s tweets where the president attacked the Republican official, who then received death threats.

‘Donald Trump was savagely attacking a secretary of state because the official did his job,’ Dean said. ‘Remember senators, those threats were to Mr. Raffensperger’s family.’

Dean also pointed out that instead of stopping the attacks once they resulted in death threats, Trump doubled down.

She played a clip where Trump referred to Raffensperger as an ‘enemy of the people,’ usually a term the ex-president reserved for the press.

And she replayed the audio obtained by The Washington Post where Trump asks Georgia election officials to ‘find’ the precise number of votes that would give him an edge over Biden by one.

Republicans struggle to pay attention 

Josh Hawley puts his feet up while Rand Paul doodles – Republicans struggle to pay attention

Many Republican senators struggled to pay attention during the Democrats’ prosecution of Trump. Most of these lawmakers have indicated they think the trial is unconstitutional, arguing a former president cannot be impeached.

Senator Josh Hawley of Missouri sat in the visitors’ gallery instead of at his desk on the chamber floor as his fellow senators did. He had his feet up on the chair in front of him while he read papers in unmarked manila folders.

He told reporters on Capitol Hill he sat there because the view was better than the one from his desk.

‘The gallery is, I feel had a little bit better view, kind of where I sit over in the Senate chamber is kind of in the corner. So, here you can sit head on, I can also space out a little bit more. And it’s just not quite as crowded,’ he said.

As to his reading material, he said: ‘I’ve got the trial briefs with me and I’ve also got my notes that I’m taking during the proceedings.’

Most Republicans were looking down or otherwise occupied while the impeachment managers made their case. Some were taking notes on the presentation, but some were reading and others were just staring down or worrying their hands.

But a few heads popped up when Democratic Rep. Ted Lieu said the words ‘bulls***’ and ‘p****’ on the Senate floor during his part of the presentation.

Senator Rand Paul of Kentucky was doodling on Wednesday afternoon. He had a legal pad with a watermark of the Capitol at the bottom and he appeared to be tracing that watermark in pencil – for at least three pages.

Senator Rick Scott of Florida read a magazine article.

A notable exception was Senate GOP Leader Mitch McConnell, who paid attention as the House Democrats spoke. McConnell didn’t visibly react, however, as the impeachment managers read tweets from Donald Trump threatening him.

And Senator Bill Cassidy – the only Republican to change his vote and say the impeachment trial is constitutional – spent about 30 minutes pacing at the back of the chamber during the prosecution’s talk.

Meanwhile, Democratic Senator Cory Booker brought a bag of candy with him and passed out treats to his fellow senators.

Senator Elizabeth Warren of Massachusetts told him: ‘Trick or treat! Trick or treat!’ She grabbed a yellow bag M&Ms and a small packet of Welch’s fruit snacks.

During one the breaks, Senator Kirsten Gillibrand of New York walked around with a large white Lululemon bag filled with books. She handed out at least five copies of Tim Keller’s ‘The Songs of Jesus’ to senators on both sides of the aisle including Tim Kaine, Joni Ernst, Steve Daines and Cassidy.

Of the 100 senators, only Republicans Rand Paul and Cynthia Lummis were not wearing face masks.

Day one of arguments ends in a brief burst of chaos 

The first day of arguments at President Donald Trump‘s second impeachment trial ended in chaos when Sen. Mike Lee tried to object to evidence that referenced him. 

‘Statements were attributed to me moments ago by the House impeachment managers, statements related to the content of conversations between – a phone call involving President Trump and Senator Tuberville, were not made by me, they’re not accurate and they’re contrary to fact,’ Lee said on the heels of primary impeachment manager, Rep. Jamie Raskin, saying they were done for the day. 

Lee took issue with part of Rep. David Cicilline’s presentation, which was supposed to show the senators where Trump’s mind was at during the deadly January 6 siege. 

Democratic impeachment managers pointed out, again and again, that Trump never explicitly told his supporters to stand down, as they invaded the Capitol, hunted lawmakers and participated in hand-to-hand combat with police. 

Trump was impeached by the House last month for inciting the insurrection and the Senate will decide whether he should be convicted on that charge.  

On Wednesday night, Cicilline told an anecdote that was based on a story in Deseret News that cited Lee as its source. 

During the insurrection Trump accidentally called Lee’s cell phone trying to get ahold of Alabama Republican Sen. Tommy Tuberville instead. 

‘Senator Lee describes it, he had just ended a prayer with his colleagues here in the Senate chamber and the phone rang, it was Donald Trump,’ Cicilline said. 

‘And how Senator Lee describes it is the phone call goes something like this,’ the Rhode Island Democrat continued. ‘”Hey Tommy,”‘ Trump asks. And Senator Lee says this isn’t Tommy. And he hands the phone to Sen. Tuberville.’ 

‘Senator Lee stood by as Senator Tuberville and President Trump spoke on the phone and on that call Donald Trump reportedly asked Senator Tuberville to make additional objections to the certification process,’ Cicilline explained.    

In the Deseret News story, Lee doesn’t divulge the contents of the call, though he does say that in speaking to Tuberville after the Alabama senator’s conversation with Trump that he got the impression the president didn’t know that the protesters were laying siege to the Capitol. 

Lee also told the publication that Tuberville and Trump spoke for about five to 10 minutes. He said he stood nearby to ensure he didn’t lose his phone in the commotion.

Other news organizations reported that Trump pressured Tuberville to keep objecting to states’ Electoral College vote counts. 

‘That’s why he called,’ Cicilline had said in disgust.

The Dispatch reported on a voicemail left for Tuberville by Trump lawyer Rudy Giuliani that day, but he dialed the number of a different unnamed senator. 

In the message, Giuliani is heard asking Tuberville to ‘slow it down.’ 

‘The only strategy we can follow is to object to numerous states and raise issues so that we get ourselves into tomorrow – ideally until the end of tomorrow,’ Giuliani said. 

After his initial request to get Cicilline’s statements struck from the record, Lee explained, ‘my point was not about whether it was appropriate for them to make characterizations, my point was to strike them because they were false.’ 

‘Statements were attributed to me repeatedly to which I have personal knowledge because I am the source, they are not true,’ Lee said. 

With the use of ‘reportedly’ Cicilline didn’t directly attribute the contents of the call to Lee. 

‘I never made those statements I asked that they be stricken,’ the Utah Republican said. ‘This has nothing to do with whether they are based on depositions, which they’re not, it’s simply based on the fact that I’m the witness, I’m the only witness, those statements are not true and I ask that you strike them.’ 

After a few procedural hiccups with Sen. Patrick Leahy at the gavel, Raskin, the chief impeachment manager, said the Democrats would voluntarily withdraw that piece of evidence – with the understanding they could bring it back up if needed. 

‘This is much ado about nothing, because it’s not critical in anyway to our case,’ Raskin said. 

Afterward, Tuberville was asked by reporters what had been incorrect about Cicilline’s retelling of the call, which Lee had said lasted five to 10 minutes. 

‘I don’t know, you know President Trump, you don’t get many words in but he didn’t get a chance to say a whole lot because I said, “Mr. President, they just took the vice president out, I’ve got to go,”‘ Tuberville said. ‘That’s what it was.’