Political Science: What happens if a president loses an election but won't leave the White House? (Trump)

[playahaitian]

How the Christian Right Helped Foment Insurrection

Trump administration loyalists launched their own Christian organization to “stop the steal,” an act of loyalty to their divine leader.

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How the Christian Right Helped Foment Insurrection

Christian-right activists inside and outside of government promoted the election fraud lie and claimed God told them to “let the church roar”

By
SARAH POSNER

Pro-Trump protesters gather in front of the U.S. Capitol Building on January 6, 2021 in Washington, D.C.
Brent Stirton/Getty Images

This story was produced by Reveal from the Center for Investigative Reporting, a nonprofit news organization. Get their investigations emailed to you directly by signing up at RevealNews.org/newsletter.

The January 6th Save America March, where then-President Donald Trump incited a crowd to attack the U.S. Capitol, opened with a prayer. Trump’s longtime spiritual adviser and White House adviser, the Florida televangelist Paula White, called on God to “give us a holy boldness in this hour.” Standing at the same podium where, an hour later, Trump would exhort the crowd to “fight like hell,” White called the election results into question, asking God to let the people “have the assurance of a fair and a just election.” Flanked by a row of American flags, White implored God to “let every adversary against democracy, against freedom, against life, against liberty, against justice, against peace, against righteousness be overturned right now in the name of Jesus.”

Within hours, insurrectionists had surrounded the Capitol, beaten police, battered down barricades and doors, smashed windows and rampaged through the halls of the Capitol, breaching the Senate chamber. In video captured by The New Yorker, men ransacked the room, rifling through senators’ binders and papers, searching for evidence of what they claimed was treason. Then, standing on the rostrum where the president of the Senate presides, the group paused to pray “in Christ’s holy name.” Men raised their arms in the air as millions of evangelical and charismatic parishioners do every Sunday and thanked God for allowing them “to send a message to all the tyrants, the communists and the globalists, that this is our nation, not theirs.” They thanked God “for allowing the United States of America to be reborn.”


White evangelicals have been Trump’s most dedicated, unwavering base, standing by him through the cavalcade of abuses, failures and scandals that engulfed his campaigns and his presidency — from the Access Hollywood tape to his first impeachment to his efforts to overturn the election and incite the Capitol Riot. This fervent relationship, which has survived the events of January 6th, is based on far more than a transactional handshake over judicial appointments and a crackdown on abortion and LGBTQ rights. Trump’s white evangelical base has come to believe that God anointed him and that Trump’s placement of Christian-right ideologues in critical positions at federal agencies and in federal courts was the fulfillment of a long-sought goal of restoring the United States as a Christian nation. Throughout Trump’s presidency, his political appointees implemented policies that stripped away reproductive and LGBTQ rights and tore down the separation of church and state in the name of protecting unfettered religious freedom for conservative Christians. After Joe Biden won the presidency, Trump administration loyalists launched their own Christian organization to “stop the steal,” in the ultimate act of loyalty to their divine leader.

Since even before Trump took office, his cry of “fake news” was embraced by GOP leaders and leaders on the Christian right, who reinforced their followers’ fealty by seeking to sequester them from reality and training them to dismiss any criticism of Trump as a witch hunt or a hoax. At the 2019 Faith & Freedom Coalition conference, held just months after special counsel Robert Mueller released his report on the Russia investigation, then-Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell accused the president’s critics of “Trump derangement syndrome,” and Sen. Marsha Blackburn, a Republican from Tennessee, urged the audience to disregard mainstream news and turn instead to the “most important name in news” — “you and your circle of friends.” A few months later, amid Trump’s first impeachment hearings, then-Rep. Mark Meadows, who would go on to become Trump’s chief of staff, encouraged Christian-right activists at a luncheon at the Trump International Hotel in Washington to counteract news reports by retweeting him and other Trump loyalists in Congress. He underlined the power of this alternative information system, claiming that recent tweets from himself and Rep. Jim Jordan of Ohio — who would later vote to overturn the results of November’s election — had received 163 million impressions, “more than the viewership of all the networks combined.”



Over the course of 2020, those circles of disinformation became infested with QAnon conspiracy theories about a satanic, child-sex-trafficking “deep state,” priming Trump’s White evangelical shock troops for his ultimate conspiratorial lie: that the election was stolen from him and that Biden’s victory was the result of fraud. As Trump and his legal team fanned out across the country’s courthouses and right-wing airwaves, insisting that they would prove voter fraud and reverse the results of the presidential election, Christian-right leaders and media picked up the rhetoric and ran with it. By Thanksgiving, the lie that the election had been stolen from Trump had become an article of faith.
Coverage of the Capitol insurrection has focused on such far-right instigators as the white supremacist Proud Boys and the Three Percenters, a militia group. But a reconstruction of the weeks leading up January 6th shows how a Christian-right group formed to “stop the steal” worked to foment a bellicose Christian narrative in defense of Trump’s coup attempt and justify a holy war against an illegitimate state. In late November, two federal workers, Arina Grossu — who had previously worked for the Christian-right advocacy group Family Research Council — and Rob Weaver, formed a new Christian right group, the Jericho March. The new group’s goal, according to a news release announcing its launch, was to “prayerfully protest and call on government officials to cast light on voter fraud, corruption, and suppression of the will of the American people in this election.” In fact, the Jericho March would help lay the groundwork for the insurrection.
The group held its first rally in the nation’s capital December 12th, the same day other protests against the democratic process took place there. That night in Washington, the protests devolved into violence as armed members of the Proud Boys roamed the city’s streets looking to fight, stole a Black Lives Matter banner from a historic Black church and set it on fire. The Jericho March rally, which had run most of the afternoon on the National Mall, featured a lineup of some the right’s most incendiary figures, blending conspiracies and battle cries with appeals to Christianity. Eric Metaxas, a popular author, radio host and unrelenting promoter of the false claim that the election was fraudulent, was the emcee.



In an interview from the rally posted on the influential disinformation site The Epoch Times, Weaver compared the marchers he enlisted to the capital to the story of Joshua’s army in the Bible, which encircled the city of Jericho as priests blew trumpets, causing the walls to tumble down so the army could invade. Grossu told an interviewer that the election had been “stolen” from Trump, citing Trump lawyer Sidney Powell’s baseless claims about voting irregularities. Grossu promised, “God can reveal all the election fraud and corruption that stole the election from him.”
Other Jericho March speakers linked to the Trump administration pressed themes of biblical war and Christian redemption. Michael Flynn, Trump’s former national security adviser who pleaded guilty to lying to federal investigators, described the walls of Jericho as a metaphor for the walls around the “deep state” and pledged, “We’re going to knock those walls down.” Trump campaign adviser Roger Stone, who claimed to have been born again since his conviction for obstructing the Mueller investigation, told the crowd in a recorded message: “It was Jesus Christ who gave our president, Donald Trump, the courage and the compassion to save my life when I was unfairly and illegally targeted in the Mueller witch hunt. … My faith is in Jesus Christ, and we will make America great again and we will stop the steal.” These testimonies were punctuated with the blowing of shofars, traditionally Jewish ritual objects, to echo the trumpets sounding outside Jericho that summoned an invasion.
Gallery: Attack on the U.S. Capitol
Among the speakers were leading figures in the subsequent insurrection. Weaver and Grossu, the rally’s organizers, sang “God Bless America” with Ali Alexander, founder of Stop the Steal and a prominent organizer of the January 6th rally. Alexander had previously attracted attention in Trump circles – he was invited to a 2019 social media summit at the White House and appeared with GOP figures such as Rep. Paul Gosar at previous Stop the Steal rallies — and has said he worked with Gosar and Republican House members Andy Biggs and Mo Brooks to plan the January 6th rally. He rallied the December 12th Jericho March crowd, declaring that the event “is only the beginning.” He urged them to return to Washington on January 20th — Inauguration Day — to “occupy D.C.” According to an archived page from the Jericho March website, organizers took up the call, planning several subsequent rallies and marches, including mobilizing for Stop the Steal’s “Wild Protest” on January 6th.



Stewart Rhodes, founder of the militia group Oath Keepers, also appeared, vowing that if Trump did not “show the world who the traitors are and then use the Insurrection Act to drop the hammer on them,” then “we’re going to have to do it ourselves later in a much more desperate, much more bloody war.” Oath Keepers have since been arrested and charged with conspiracy for allegedly helping to coordinate movement inside the Capitol siege.
Alex Jones, the far-right conspiracist radio host and Trump booster, electrified the Jericho Marchers with his invocation of the Book of Revelation, thought to prophesy Christ’s return. “Christ’s crucifixion was not our defeat, it was our greatest victory,” he shouted. “The state has no jurisdiction over any of us. Our relationship with God is sacred and is eternal.” He vowed that Biden “will be removed, one way or another.
Grossu and Weaver, though, were more than just Trump fellow travelers. They were on the payroll of the federal government, which constrains employees from engaging in certain partisan political activities. Grossu was a contractor in the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services’ Office of Civil Rights, on a contract from November 6th, 2017, through January 30th, 2021, according to an agency spokesperson. For his part, Weaver was named an adviser in the department’s Center for Faith-Based and Neighborhood Partnerships in July 2020 and served, according to the spokesperson, through January 8th, 2021. Earlier, in 2017, Trump had nominated Weaver to serve as director of the agency’s Indian Health Service. But the nomination was withdrawn after The Wall Street Journal reported that Weaver had misrepresented his experience on his resume. Weaver leveraged his new health department role at the Jericho March, saying in the live interview that day that he worked for the federal government and claiming, without providing any details, to have “seen a lot of really hidden things that I just can’t stand.” The country, Weaver said in the interview, “stands on the shoulders of Jesus. He’s the real government.”

Weaver went on, “God told me to let the church roar.”

Grossu did not respond to a request for comment, and Weaver’s email at the Department of Health and Human Services was no longer functioning; the public relations firm that handled Jericho March media relations also did not respond to requests for comment.

Speakers at the December 12th Jericho March continued to show up at protests decrying the election as fraudulent. Jones, for example, returned to Washington on January 5th for a rally at Freedom Plaza, near the White House. That rally, according to the permit, was hosted by a group called the Eighty Percent Coalition, an apparent reference to a Gallup poll that showed more than 80 percent of Republicans did not trust the results of the election. That evening, Jones reprised his Christian nationalist bombast. Employing apocalyptic language about a coming “new world order,” he called Biden a “slave of Satan” and warned that “things are going to be rough, things are going to get bad in the future.” He added that “not everybody is going to make it, but that’s OK, because in the end, God will fulfill his destiny and will reward the righteous.”

Then he turned to the next day’s events. “Tomorrow is a great day,” he shouted. “We don’t quietly take the election fraud, we don’t quietly take the scam and believe their BS. We’ve seen the evidence. The system has had to desperately engage in this gambit to maintain control, but this will be their Waterloo, this will be their destruction.”


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Trump supporters demonstrating against the election results march to the Supreme Court to protest against the Court’s decision not to overturn the election, on December 12, 2020 in Washington, D.C.
Andrew Lichtenstein/Corbis/Getty Images

The next day, Trump goaded protesters to march to the Capitol. Jones is seen in video footage of the insurrection scraped from Parler and other social media giving directions to rioters through a bullhorn. The day after the insurrection, Jones claimed the White House had asked him to lead the march to the Capitol.

The events of January 6th shook the nation, but they appear to have done little to weaken Trump’s White evangelical support. A Marist College/PBS/NPR poll, conducted after January 6th, found that 63 percent of White evangelicals did not trust the election results were accurate, and a similar number, 65 percent, did not believe Trump was to blame for the violence at the Capitol. A poll conducted by the Public Religion Research Institute found that while Trump left office with his lowest overall favorability rating since his 2016 campaign — 31 percent — his approval rate was twice as high among White evangelicals.

The Sunday after the insurrection, Trump’s spiritual adviser Paula White was back in the pulpit at City of Destiny, the church she pastors in Apopka, Florida. Trump and White have been friends since the mid-2000s, when he invited her for a meeting after he spotted the blond televangelist while channel surfing. White briefly condemned “lawlessness,” but then mounted a strong defense of free speech rights and assured her congregation that “God is still at work.” She recounted the story in the first Book of Samuel, in which the Philistines stole the Ark of the Covenant. In the biblical story, the ark is considered too holy for the apostate Philistines, “the eternal enemies of God,” as White described them, to handle, and God returns it to the Israelites — evidence that, in White’s view, God will restore America to its rightful inheritors, too.
Other evangelical leaders sought to deny reality, blaming the violence of that day on antifa or Black Lives Matter protesters who they falsely claimed had posed as Trump supporters. Michele Bachmann, the former Republican congresswoman who is now a dean at Regent University, had been inside the Capitol during the January 6th siege. Speaking to a prayer call with other Christian-right leaders that evening, she said: “You know the kind of people that we were with. The nicest, friendliest, happiest — it was like a family reunion out there. It was incredible, it was wonderful, and then all of a sudden, this happens.” Of the rioters at the Capitol, Bachmann insisted that “this wasn’t the Trump crowd, this didn’t look anything like the Trump crowd or the prayer warriors.”



Lance Wallnau, a popular evangelical author, speaker and Trump loyalist who attended the January 6th protest, echoed that same theme. “This is not your typical evangelical, I’m telling you right now,” he told Metaxas on his radio program the day after the insurrection, “and they’re banging on the hoods of the police and they’re creating a scene, I said, ‘This is the local antifa mob and this is like from the playbook 101.’ ”
By January 8th, the Jericho March had posted a statement denouncing violence and scrubbed any reference to Stop the Steal’s January 6th protest.
Accountability for the former president was not on the table. Pastor Robert Jeffress of First Baptist Church of Dallas has been close to Trump for years, as one of the first evangelical leaders to endorse his candidacy in 2016. He condemned the violence but stopped short of blaming it on Trump, telling Reveal from The Center for Investigative Reporting that while he accepts the election results, Trump “has a right to believe” that it was stolen.

Another influential Trump ally, Franklin Graham, head of the Billy Graham Evangelistic Association, sent an unmistakable signal to Republican lawmakers that their White evangelical base would not tolerate a second impeachment. In a Facebook post, Graham compared the 10 House Republicans who voted to impeach Trump to Judas, whose betrayal of Jesus led to his crucifixion. “It makes you wonder,” he wrote, “what the thirty pieces of silver were that Speaker [Nancy] Pelosi promised for this betrayal.”

Meanwhile, the Christian right is readying its troops for an escalation of the culture war: a campaign to delegitimize not only Biden’s presidency, but any Democratic election victory. Bachmann, during the prayer call just hours after the insurrection, claimed that Democrats also “stole” control of the Senate when Jon Ossoff and Raphael Warnock won their seats in Georgia — a development Bachmann repeatedly called a “coup.”
That narrative means that Republican lawmakers can rest assured that their most loyal base will have their back as they reject Trump’s second impeachment, obstruct the Democratic legislative agenda and refuse to accept the legitimacy of the Democratic president and Democratic leadership of Congress. The movement’s new jeremiad, a battle against the democratic process itself, is just getting started.



On Wednesday, the Department of Homeland Security issued a terrorism advisory bulletin that warned of the potential costs of the false claims at the heart of that battle: “Information suggests that some ideologically-motivated violent extremists with objections to the exercise of governmental authority and the presidential transition, as well as other perceived grievances fueled by false narratives, could continue to mobilize to incite or commit violence.”

 

[dbluesun]

he'a an anti-christ

 

[playahaitian]

 

[playahaitian]

I posted articles and research on how ALL these sports owners across the board

from their teams their businesses their private lives...

All fund the most right wing racist candidates and organizations

No matter what lip service and table scraps they BARELY give the other side to keep them quiet and in check

They don't care about black folk poor folk gay etc etc

These rich people FINANCIALLY support the oppression machine.

They just don't want boycotts protests marches bad press LAWSUITS and headaches.

And THAT is what Trump brought them

Yeah the judges and tax breaks are WONDERFUL

but not at the cost of galvanizing the opposition increasing voter turn out empowering the lower and middle class, exposing their own fuckery etc etc.

They trying to figure out how to keep oppressing but continue to be loved...

That's the racist conundrum

They HATE US

but cannot live without our love and acceptance

They worst thing to call a racist?

Is a racist

That was the true long lasting damage of trump and the alt right

Making overt systematic racism and classism Socially ACCEPTABLE.

And Trump being Trump he f*cked it up

Man we lucky Jeb bush type ain't win last time, we would have been screwed.

Trump out her airing it out calling audibles forgetting plays, getting sacked, making bets against his own team, yelling at teammates...

But if the Republicans had got a nice system quarterback to come in there just hand off, check downs, keep the turnovers and mistakes to a minimum?

We would have been in full fascist super bowl dynasty mode by now.

 

[playahaitian]

Trump’s “Office of the Former President” is the First Step Towards Secession and Civil War
As pathetic as it looks, we should not take Trump’s latest publicity stunt lightly.
Nicolas Carteron



In a move as pathetic as it is dangerous, Donald Trump recently announced the “Office of the Former President.” Trump so describes the newly-minted “office” and its responsibilities:

The office will be responsible for managing President Trump’s correspondence, public statements, appearances and official activities to advance the interests of the United States and to carry on the agenda of the Trump administration through advocacy, organizing and public activism.

It won’t matter to his followers that a former president has no official activities, no agenda to carry and no administration to manage, because, once again, Trump is abusing traditions and norms to further his interests.

Officially, former presidents should be addressed as “The Honourable.” In recent years, it has become a tradition to refer to them as “Mr President” or (one day soon) “Ms President” as a matter of courtesy and respect for the office and their service to the nation.

Trump knows how important words are, as inarticulate as he may seem. If he is good at something, it’s marketing and self-promotion. Calling himself “President Trump” goes beyond tradition: it reinforces the idea that he is still the President. It is another way for him not to concede and to further his Big Lie that the Democrats stole the election from him. “You don’t concede when there’s theft involved,” he told the crowd on January 6. This move is a continuation on the same line.

Not surprisingly at all, the Trump propaganda network (OANN and Newsmax) only uses “President Trump”, but they have shifted to using “Obama” or “Barack Obama” only, as shown in the screenshots below. This choice of words is a deliberate move to reinforce the idea that the “office of the former president” has an official capacity and that this capacity only belongs to “President Trump.”




The press release also states that as the former president, Mr Trump will handle official activities to advance the United States' interests and carry on the agenda of the Trump administration. Once again, the words are purposefully chosen to imbue this sham office with dignity and powers it does not have. It gives the impression to the ignorant that Mr Trump will continue representing the country, that he still has leeway to affect the legislative agenda.

This wording also doubles as a promise. Trump is signalling to his base that he will not abandon them, that he will “continue the fight.” Looking back at his four years in office, it is evident that Trump never had a plan beyond making himself rich, dividing the country, inciting a coup, and hurting minorities. Saying he will “carry on” is a symbolic way to reassure all the racists and bigots of the land that white supremacy will endure with him.

Of course, private citizens are barred from exercising any official activities that purport to represent the United States of America officially. This interdiction comes from the Logan Act of 1799. Only two people have ever been indicted under the Act, both in the 19th century; none was ever convicted. Legal scholars question the act's constitutionality; it could soon be tested in court by none other than Trump himself, should he decide to engage in discussions with, say, Mr Putin.

We will not explore the legal risks to which Mr Trump exposes himself with his “office,” it is clear that his latest move presents a clear and imminent danger to the country.

By setting himself up as a legitimate counter-power to the White House, Trump is effectively creating as a shadow administration. I wouldn’t be surprised if Trump starts appointing a shadow cabinet and security council in the days to come. Once again, the Deep State will have been nothing more than a projection.

Such a move, were it to happen, would put the U.S. on a terrible path, that of secession and potential Civil War. If the Biden’s administration legitimacy is not only questioned rhetorically but also threatened physically by a competing cabinet and an anti-president, who’s to say what will happen.

What will Cruz, Hawley, Cawthorn, Taylor-Greene, Boebert, Jordan, Tuberville, and other sedition caucus’s members do? Will they join Trump and form a shadow parliament?

House Minority Leader McCarthy has already made the Mar-a-Lago pilgrimage. The message here is clear: Congress Republicans have sought Trump’s seal of approval, increasing the perceived legitimacy of his “office.” Republican senators have already indicated they will not vote to convict Trump. Everything is falling into place.

Make no mistake. This joke will not end up funny at all if the Department of Justice does nothing to bar Trump from claiming powers he doesn’t have and titles he is not allowed to bear. It already happened once in American history. A rich lunatic declared himself emperor of America and protector of Mexico under the name “Emperor Norton.” It made for good laughs.

The Emperor has found a new groove, though. This time, he comes imbued with the legitimacy of a term in office and propped up by the Big Lie that he didn’t lose reelection: it was merely stolen from him.

Emperor Donald isn’t a laughing stock. He is the first step towards secession and Civil War, and he must be stopped.

 

[playahaitian]

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[playahaitian]

Proud Boys suspects plead not guilty in Capitol riot charges despite video
BY CAMERON JENKINS - 02/09/21 03:26 PM EST 244





Two Proud Boys members who have been named as suspects affiliated with the Capitol riot that took place on Jan. 6 pleaded not guilty to the charges against them, despite the wide circulation of a video on social media that placed both men at the scene.

Dominic Pezzola, 43, and William Pepe, 31, who are both members of the far-right extremist group, pleaded not guilty to charges of conspiracy and interfering with officers who were protecting the Capitol, USA Today reported.

Both Pezzola and Pepe reportedly led a group of rioters supporting former President Trump into the Capitol and removed metal barricades to allow more people to enter.

Court documents also state that Pezzola "ripped away the officer’s riot shield, while the officer was physically engaging with individuals who had gathered unlawfully in the west plaza of the Capitol," according to USA Today.

• Judge permits release of Proud Boys leader charged in Capitol riot
• Man charged in Capitol riot says he worked for FBI, holds top secret...

"Pezzola can be seen on video that has been widely distributed, using that riot shield to smash a window at the U.S. Capitol," prosecutors said.
Both men are among the Proud Boys members and multiple others to be charged after storming the Capitol last month.

On Monday, a federal judge released Proud Boys leader Ethan Nordean, who faces charges relating to the Capitol riot, pending trial.

 

[playahaitian]

House Impeachment Managers' Video Compilation of January 6 Attack on the U.S. Capitol​

 

[playahaitian]

Battered Trump lawyer Bruce Castor claims his 'stupid' performance was on purpose: report
Bob Brigham
February 10, 2021

Battered Trump lawyer Bruce Castor claims his 'stupid' performance was on purpose: report
Impeachment lawyer Bruce Castor. (Screengrab)

Trump impeachment lawyer Bruce Castor is defending his widely panned opening arguments in a new interview with Fox News.



Before Castor even finished speaking, former Trump impeachment lawyer Alan Dershowitz was ripping the argument on Newsmax and Trump was reportedly "borderline screaming" at the television.

Castor, however, disputes the reports.


"My reaction is you need to check those sources because that has not been communicated to me by the president or anybody associated with the president," Castor said. "Including Mark Meadows, who specifically came to the Capitol yesterday to tell me don't read news coverage."



Castor said his performance on Tuesday was an intentional response to House impeachment manager Jamie Raskin.



"That was by design," Castor said. "I don't like reading bad stuff about me in the newspaper any more than anyone else does, or my legal colleagues around the country saying I'm stupid, but the reason I made the change was precisely so that in lowering the temperature in the room, the public coverage would be more about what I said than about what the House Managers said."

 

[playahaitian]

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[playahaitian]

Impeachment Trial Day 3 Highlights: Prosecutors Rest Their Case, Warning Trump ‘Can Do This Again’ if He Is Not Convicted
Last Updated
Feb. 11, 2021, 8:32 p.m. ET
Feb. 11, 2021, 8:32 p.m. ET
House managers used the words and video of the rioters at the Capitol to argue that the attack was carried out at the behest of former President Donald J. Trump. The Senate will reconvene at noon on Friday.
Here’s what you need to know:

• Prosecution rests, saying if Trump is not convicted, it sets ‘a new terrible standard for presidential misconduct.’
• ‘We’re fighting for Trump!’: Impeachment managers leverage rioters’ own words, and videos, to make their case.
• House impeachment managers rebut Trump’s expected First Amendment defense.
• One thing Biden and his staff refuse to discuss: Trump’s impeachment trial.
• Analysis: ‘Remember this day forever!’ Trump said. Democrats are heeding his advice.
• Trump’s second impeachment trial draws a larger TV audience than the first.

Prosecution rests, saying if Trump is not convicted, it sets ‘a new terrible standard for presidential misconduct.’

Highlights From Day 3 of Trump’s Impeachment Trial
Prosecutors wrapped up their arguments by asserting that President Donald J. Trump incited rioters to storm the Capitol, part of a pattern of provoking violence that would not end unless the Senate voted to convict him.
“I want to step back from the horrors of the attack itself, and look at Jan. 6 from a totally different perspective, the perspective of the insurrectionists themselves — their own statements before, during and after the attack make clear the attack was done for Donald Trump at his instructions, and to fulfill his wishes.” “During the rally, President Trump led the crowd in a ‘Stop the steal’ chant. Here’s what that chant sounded like from the crowd’s perspective.” Trump: “We will stop the steal.” Crowd: “Stop the steal. Stop the steal. Stop the steal!” “The president basked as the crowd chanted, ‘Fight for Trump,’ and when he incited the crowd to show strength, people responded, ‘Storm the Capitol,’ ‘Invade the Capitol.’ As the crowd chanted at the rally, the crowd at the Capitol made clear who they were doing this for.” “Fight for Trump! Fight for Trump! Fight for Trump!” “All of these people who have been arrested and charged, they’re being accountable, held accountable for their actions. Their leader, the man who incited them, must be held accountable as well.” “Jan. 6 was a culmination of the president’s actions, not an aberration from them. The insurrection was the most violent and dangerous episode, so far, in Donald Trump’s continuing pattern and practice of inciting violence.” “So if you see somebody getting ready to throw a tomato, knock the crap out of him, would you seriously — OK, just knock the hell — I promise you, I will pay for the legal fees. I promise.” “The president praised a Republican candidate who assaulted a journalist, as ‘my kind of guy.’ He said there were, quote, ‘very fine people on both sides’ when the neo-Nazis, the Klansmen and Proud Boys invaded the city, the great city of Charlottesville, and killed Heather Heyer. And he said that an attack on a Black protester at one of his rallies was ‘very, very appropriate.’ Does that sound familiar? Listen to how President Trump responded when asked about his own conduct on January the 6th.” “So if you read my speech, and many people have done it, it’s been analyzed, and people thought that what I said was totally appropriate.” “My dear colleagues, is there any political leader in this room who believes that if he is ever allowed by the Senate to get back into the Oval Office, Donald Trump would stop inciting violence to get his way? Would you bet the lives of more police officers on that? Would you bet the safety of your family on that? Would you bet the future of your democracy on that?” “President Trump’s lack of remorse and refusal to take accountability after the attack poses its own unique and continuing danger. It sends the message that it is acceptable to incite a violent insurrection, to overthrow the will of the people, and that a president of the United States can do that. And get away with it. His impeachment, conviction and disqualification is not just about the past. It’s about the future. It’s making sure that no future official, no future president does the same exact thing President Trump does.” “If you don’t find this a high crime and misdemeanor today, you have set a new terrible standard for presidential misconduct in the United States of America. The only real question here is the factual one. Did we prove that Donald Trump, while president of the United States, incited a violent insurrection against the government? We believe that we have shown you overwhelming evidence in this case, that would convince anyone using their common sense that this was indeed incitement.” “We humbly, humbly ask you to convict President Trump for the crime for which he is overwhelmingly guilty of. Because if you don’t, if we pretend this didn’t happen, or worse. if we let it go unanswered, who’s to say it won’t happen again?”



Prosecutors wrapped up their arguments by asserting that President Donald J. Trump incited rioters to storm the Capitol, part of a pattern of provoking violence that would not end unless the Senate voted to convict him.CreditCredit...Anna Moneymaker for The New York Times
The House Democrats prosecuting former President Donald J. Trump rested their case on Thursday, branding him a clear and present danger to United States democracy who could sow new violence like the deadly assault on the Capitol last month if he was not barred from holding office again.
Calling on senators to render “impartial justice” and embrace the “common sense” of the country’s founders, the nine impeachment managers closed their case by laying out the grave damage the Jan. 6 riot had caused not just to lawmakers or police officers at the Capitol, but to the democratic system and America’s standing around the world. None of it, they argued, would have happened without Mr. Trump.
“Senators, America, we need to exercise our common sense about what happened,” said Representative Jamie Raskin of Mayland, the lead manager, reading from Thomas Paine. “Let’s not get caught up in a lot of outlandish lawyers theories here. Exercise your common sense about what just took place in our country.”
Mr. Raskin said the evidence that Mr. Trump cultivated, incited and then showed no remorse for the attack warranted making him the first impeached president ever to be convicted and the first former president to be disqualified from holding future office.
“If you don’t find this a high crime and misdemeanor today, you have set a new terrible standard for presidential misconduct in the United States of America,” he said.
Image

Representative Jamie Raskin of Maryland, the lead impeachment manager, wrote updates to his remarks with an aide during a break on Thursday.Credit...Erin Schaff/The New York Times
A day after delivering the Senate a harrowing account of the deadly violence, replete with chilling, previously unseen security footage, the prosecutors returned for the trial’s third day with new video clips, court documents and interviews in which the rioters defended their actions by citing Mr. Trump’s directives and desires.
“We were invited here,” one of them screamed, the clip echoing through the Senate chamber.
“Their own statements before, during and after the attack made clear the attack was done for Donald Trump — at his instructions and to fulfill his wishes,” said Representative Diana DeGette of Colorado.
They also argued that Mr. Trump had encouraged and celebrated violence before Jan. 6 — such as a white supremacist rally in Charlottesville, Va., in 2017 and scuffles during his campaign rallies — and shown no remorse for whipping up thousands of his loyal supporters by telling them to “fight like hell” that day. Afterward, they noted, Mr. Trump called his speech “totally appropriate.”
“I’m not afraid of Donald Trump running again in four years,” said Representative Ted Lieu of California. “I’m afraid he’s going to run again and lose, because he can do this again.”
Their task to convict remains a daunting one as they aim to persuade Republican senators who have shown no appetite for breaking with Mr. Trump to do so.
By turn, the managers sought to appeal to Republicans’ sense of patriotism and decency. They read the words of Republicans who voted in the House to impeach Mr. Trump and from the former president’s own cabinet secretaries,who resigned in protest after the deadly riot. They played audio of traumatized aides who had contemplated leaving government after the attack. And they recounted the humiliating taunts of foreign adversaries who looked on in glee.
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Trump Has a ‘Pattern and Practice of Inciting Violence,’ Raskin Says
Representative Jamie Raskin, the lead impeachment manager, outlined a history of former President Donald J. Trump’s incitement and support of violence among his supporters leading up to the Jan. 6 Capitol riot.
Jan. 6 was a culmination of the president’s actions, not an aberration from them. The insurrection was the most violent and dangerous episode, so far, in Donald Trump’s continuing pattern and practice of inciting violence. The president praised a Republican candidate who assaulted a journalist, as ‘my kind of guy.’ He said there were, quote, ‘very fine people on both sides’ when the neo-Nazis, the Klansmen and Proud Boys invaded the city, the great city, of Charlottesville, and killed Heather Heyer. And he said that an attack on a Black protester at one of his rallies was ‘very, very appropriate.’ When responding to extremist plots in Michigan, Trump showed he knew how to use the power of a mob to advance his political objectives. Beginning in March, Trump leveled attacks on Michigan Gov. Gretchen Whitmer for the coronavirus policies in her state. On Oct. 8, the precise consequences of the president’s incitement to violence were revealed to the whole world. Look at this, 13 men were arrested by the F.B.I. for plotting to storm the Michigan State Capitol building, launch a civil war, kidnap Governor Whitmer, transport her to Wisconsin and then try and execute her. And what did Donald Trump do do as president of the United States to defend one of our nation’s governors against a plotted kidnapping by violent insurrectionists? Did he publicly condemn violent domestic extremists who hoped and planned to launch a civil war in America? No, not at all. He further inflamed them by continuing to attack the governor who was the object of their hatred. My dear colleagues, is there any political leader in this room who believes that if he is ever allowed by the Senate to get back into the Oval Office, Donald Trump would stop inciting violence to get his way? Would you bet the lives of more police officers on that? Would you bet the safety of your family on that? Would you bet the future of your democracy on that? President Trump declared his conduct totally appropriate. So he gets back into office, and it happens again, we’ll have no one to blame but ourselves.



Representative Jamie Raskin, the lead impeachment manager, outlined a history of former President Donald J. Trump’s incitement and support of violence among his supporters leading up to the Jan. 6 Capitol riot.CreditCredit...Erin Schaff/The New York Times
But already on Wednesday, Republican senators who sat through a vivid retelling of an assault they had lived through appeared unmoved from their determination to acquit Mr. Trump.
Seventeen Republicans would have to join every Democrat to achieve the two-thirds majority needed for conviction.
Mr. Trump’s lawyers are expected to present his defense beginning at noon on Friday. They intend to deny that he was responsible for the attack or meant to interfere with the electoral process underway at the Capitol, despite his repeated exhortations to supporters to “fight like hell” to “stop the steal.”
One of the lawyers, David I. Schoen, derided the Democrats’ presentation as a thinly sourced “entertainment package” and “offensive” during an appearance on Fox News during the trial on Thursday.
“In no setting in this country where someone’s guilt or innocence is being adjudicated would this kind of approach be permitted,” he said.
The trial is moving quickly, and senators could reach a verdict by the end of the holiday weekend. But first, they will have a chance to question the prosecution and the defense, and the managers may force a debate and vote on calling witnesses.
Aishvarya Kavi contributed reporting.
— Nicholas Fandos


‘We’re fighting for Trump!’: Impeachment managers leverage rioters’ own words, and videos, to make their case.

Impeachment Managers Pursue Case Against Trump With Rioters’ Words
On Thursday, Representative Diana DeGette, used crowd chants and online speech from rioters to demonstrate how they followed orders from former President Trump and acted on his behalf.
“The crowd at Donald Trump’s speech echoed and chanted his words. And when people in the crowd followed his direction and marched to the Capitol, they chanted the same words as they breached this building. Now, let’s return to the speech for a moment. During the rally, President Trump led the crowd in a ‘Stop the Steal’ chant. Here’s what that chant sounded like from the crowd’s perspective.” “Here’s a term all of you people really came up with we will ‘stop the steal.’” [cheering] “Stop the steal! Stop the steal!” “And when he incited the crowd to show strength, people responded, ‘Storm the Capitol,’ ‘Invade the Capitol.’ Here are both of those moments, but from the crowd’s perspective. “Fight for Trump! Fight for Trump! Fight for Trump!” “As President Trump said, ‘show strength,’ a person posted to Parler saying, quote, ‘Time to fight Civil War is upon us.’ Another user said, quote, ‘We are going to have a Civil War. Get ready.’ An analysis found that members of Civil War quadrupled on Parler in the hour after Donald Trump said, ‘show strength.’ Insurrectionists holding Confederate flags and brandishing weapons cheered the president’s very words.” “Stop the steal! Stop the steal! Stop the steal! Stop the steal!” “When the insurrectionists first got into the building and confronted police, the mob screamed at the officers that they were listening to President Trump.”



On Thursday, Representative Diana DeGette, used crowd chants and online speech from rioters to demonstrate how they followed orders from former President Trump and acted on his behalf.CreditCredit...Erin Schaff/The New York Times
The House Democrats leading the impeachment prosecution used the words of rioters supporting Donald J. Trump against the former president on Thursday, as they sought to show that the sacking of the Capitol was done by people who believed they were following Mr. Trump’s wishes.
“They truly believed that the whole intrusion was at the president’s orders — and we know that because they said so,” said Representative Diana DeGette, Democrat of Colorado, and one of the House managers.
In one clip, she showed rioters chanting “Stop the steal! Stop the steal!” as they tried to enter the Capitol — not long after Mr. Trump had led that chant at a rally. In another, she showed a rioter, identified as Baked Alaska, the nickname of the far-right personality Anthime J. Gionet, talking about calling up Mr. Trump while in the Capitol: “He’ll be happy. What do you mean? We’re fighting for Trump!” In a third, a rioter was heard shouting at police in the Capitol, “We are listening to Trump — your boss.”
Ms. DeGette’s presentation spliced together footage of the rioters themselves as well as subsequent claims from their lawyers about why they were at the Capitol. She quoted an attorney for Jacob Anthony Chansley, who stormed the Capitol wearing a fur headdress with horns and his face painted red, white and blue, saying that Mr. Chansley was there “at the invitation of our president.” Mr. Chansley, who is known as Q Shaman for his propagation of baseless QAnon conspiracy theories, also left a note in the Capitol for former Vice President Mike Pence that read, “Only a matter of time. Justice is Coming!”
The Democrats’ case — and their repeated use of gripping and wrenching videos from the day of the riot, including some shot by the rioters themselves — is aimed not just at the Republican jurors in the Senate, who seem increasingly unlikely to convict Mr. Trump, but a nationwide television audience.
“This was not a hidden crime,” Ms. DeGette said. “The president told them to be there.”
In one last video, Ms. DeGette showed a rioter shouting clearly about who had brought them to the Capitol building. “We were invited here!” he shouted. “We were invited by the president of the United States!”
— Shane Goldmacher


House impeachment managers rebut Trump’s expected First Amendment defense.


Two House impeachment managers, Representatives Joe Neguse of Colorado, left, and Jamie Raskin of Maryland, the team’s leader, embraced after wrapping up the prosecution’s case on Thursday.Credit...Erin Schaff/The New York Times
The House prosecution team on Thursday sought to preemptively rebut a legal argument that former President Donald J. Trump’s lawyers are expected to make in his defense: that his remarks to a crowd of supporters on Jan. 6 were protected under the First Amendment.
Representative Jamie Raskin, Democrat of Maryland and the lead impeachment manager, said the idea of a First Amendment defense to being impeached for high crimes and misdemeanors was “absurd” and a “smoke screen.”
“The First Amendment does not create some superpower immunity from impeachment for a president who attacks the Constitution in word and deed while rejecting the outcome of an election he happened to lose,” Mr. Raskin said.
In a brief on Monday, Mr. Trump’s lawyers relied in part on the First Amendment to defend the former president. They asserted that his remarks on Jan. 6 “fell well within the norms of political speech that is protected by the First Amendment, and to try him for that would be to do a grave injustice to the freedom of speech in this country.”
Mr. Raskin tried to flip the argument on its head as he addressed senators on Thursday.
“If anything,” he said, “President Trump’s conduct was an assault on the First Amendment and equal protection rights that millions of Americans exercised when they voted last year, often under extraordinarily difficult and arduous circumstances.”
— Thomas Kaplan


One thing Biden and his staff refuse to discuss: Trump’s impeachment trial.


“I’m focused on my job,” said President Biden at the National Institutes of Health in Maryland on Thursday.Credit...Pete Marovich for The New York Times
For weeks, President Biden and his aides have tried to frame the second impeachment of his predecessor, Donald J. Trump, as a distraction from his efforts to fulfill the promises he made to the American people.
“I’m focused on my job,” the president told reporters on Thursday, “to deal with the promises I made. And we all know we have to move on.”
That focus, he said, meant that on Wednesday he had not watched the gruesome retelling of the events on Jan. 6 that the Democratic House impeachment managers had shown in a series of stunning video clips because he had been “going straight through last night, until a little after 9.”
Mr. Biden did concede that “my guess is some minds may be changed” as a result of the trial. But his press secretary, Jen Psaki, said later that “he was not intending to give a projection or prediction.”
Despite the emotional and harrowing scenes that Democratic lawmakers hope will define Mr. Trump’s legacy, even if he is not convicted, White House officials have refused to engage in anything even tangentially related to the trial and have insisted they spend no time thinking or talking about the former president who relentlessly attacked Mr. Biden.
“It reminds people of why they so definitively wanted to turn the page on Donald Trump’s daily fever pitch versus the calm, cool, controlled Joe Biden at 97.1 degrees,” said Rahm Emanuel, a White House chief of staff under President Barack Obama and a former mayor of Chicago.
Mike DuHaime, a Republican strategist, put it another way. “The longer Donald Trump stays central to the news, the better it is for Biden,” he said. “The constant reminder of Trump’s worst actions makes Biden look great by comparison, simply by acting sane.”
And exhibiting a level of top-down message discipline that was rarely on display during the Trump presidency, Ms. Psaki has worked to reinforce the message that the president’s thoughts are not on the behavior of his predecessor and its consequences. “His view is that his role is — should be — currently focused on addressing the needs of the American people, putting people back to work, addressing the pandemic.”
But the trial has also provided Mr. Biden with some cover as he faced hurdles on some of his defining policy promises.
On Tuesday, as Representative Jamie Raskin of Maryland, the lead impeachment manager, made an emotional appeal to senators, the White House backtracked on its stated goal of reopening “a majority of our schools” in the first 100 days of Mr. Biden’s presidency.
Mr. Trump’s trial dominated headlines instead of Ms. Psaki’s scaling back the president’s ambitions, saying the goal was for more than 50 percent of schools to have “some teaching” in person “at least one day a week” in the first 100 days.
In an email, Ms. Psaki disputed the fact that her comments signified a retraction of previous promises. “We gave our first definition of the specifics of a goal that had not yet been clearly defined for the public,” she said.
— Annie Karni and Maggie Haberman


Eugene Goodman and other officers will receive the Congressional Gold Medal for their actions on Jan. 6.

‘We Will Never Forget’: Pelosi Calls for Medals for Capitol Defenders
House Speaker Nancy Pelosi on Thursday introduced legislation to award Congressional Gold Medals, the highest honor of Congress, to the Capitol Police and other law enforcement personnel for their actions on Jan. 6.
“We also see the extraordinary valor of the Capitol Police, who risked and gave their lives to save our Capitol, our democracy, our lives. They are martyrs for our democracy, martyrs for our democracy, those who lost their lives. That is why I am putting forth a resolution, introducing legislation to pay tribute to the Capitol Police and other law enforcement personnel who protected the Capitol, by giving them a Congressional Gold Medal, the highest honor that Congress can bestow.” “The service of the Capitol Police force that day brings honor to our democracy. Their accepting this award brings luster to this medal. We must always remember their sacrifice and stay vigilant against what I’ve said before, about what Abraham Lincoln said: ‘The silent artillery of time.’ We will never forget.”



House Speaker Nancy Pelosi on Thursday introduced legislation to award Congressional Gold Medals, the highest honor of Congress, to the Capitol Police and other law enforcement personnel for their actions on Jan. 6.CreditCredit...Brandon Bell for The New York Times
Among the harrowing images presented during the impeachment trial of former President Donald J. Trump, one video stood out: a Capitol Police officer sprinting toward a senator to warn of the angry mob nearby.
The senator, Mitt Romney of Utah, is shown turning on his heels and fleeing to safety.
“I don’t think my family or my wife understood that I was as close as I might have been to real danger,” Mr. Romney told reporters on Thursday, one day after the video showed Officer Eugene Goodman aiding him. “They were surprised and very, very appreciative of Officer Goodman, in his being there and directing me back to safety.”
For Officer Goodman, it was the second time a video went viral displaying actions widely credited with saving members of Congress. The first, which showed him single-handedly luring the mob away from the entrance to the Senate toward an area with reinforcements, turned him into a hero. The second has added to his lore.
Both have catapulted Officer Goodman — a former Army infantryman who served in one of the most dangerous parts of Iraq during a lethal time in the war — to fame he never sought.
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“I don’t think my family or my wife understood that I was as close as I might have been to real danger,” Senator Mitt Romney of Utah told reporters on Thursday about the Capitol riot.Credit...Anna Moneymaker for The New York Times
On Wednesday, after Mr. Romney watched the videos that showed Officer Goodman directing him to safety, he could be seen talking with the officer. Senator Rob Portman, Republican of Ohio, later walked over and fist bumped the officer.
On Thursday, Speaker Nancy Pelosi singled out Officer Goodman for his courage when she introduced legislation to award the Capitol Police and other law enforcement personnel who responded on Jan. 6 with the Congressional Gold Medal, the highest honor of Congress. On Jan. 20, Officer Goodman was given the task of escorting Vice President Kamala Harris at the inauguration of President Joseph R. Biden Jr.
Veterans who served alongside Officer Goodman in the 101st Airborne Division in Iraq some 15 years ago say that the officer, known then as “Goody,” never craved accolades.
“I saw him come out in front of the vice president, and he immediately ducked to the right,” said Mark Belda, who served with Officer Goodman in Iraq. “I thought, that’s definitely Goody.”
— Zolan Kanno-Youngs and Eric Schmitt




Analysis: ‘Remember this day forever!’ Trump said. Democrats are heeding his advice.


Sarah Istel, a House lawyer, and Representative Joaquin Castro of Texas, an impeachment manager, prepared for the third day of the impeachment trial on Thursday.Credit...Erin Schaff/The New York Times
As a day of violence and mayhem at the Capitol slid into evening last month, with bloodshed, glass shattered and democracy besieged, President Donald J. Trump posted a message on Twitter that seemed to celebrate the moment. “Remember this day forever!” he urged.
The House Democrats prosecuting him at his Senate impeachment trial barely a month later hope to make sure everyone does.
With conviction in a polarized Senate seemingly out of reach, the House managers, as the prosecutors are known, are aiming their arguments at the American people and historians who will one day render judgment on him.
Through the expansive use of unsettling video footage showing both Mr. Trump’s words and the brutal rampage that followed, the managers are using their moment to ensure Mr. Trump is held accountable by those two groups, even if he is acquitted by the Senate.
“Regardless of the outcome of the trial, the first paragraph of historical accounts of the Trump presidency is likely” to be the legacy of the riot that ended it, said Ken Gormley, who has written books on impeachment, presidents and the Constitution.
Senator Lisa Murkowski of Alaska, one of Mr. Trump’s more outspoken Republican critics, touched on that on Wednesday after the House managers played a searing sequence of never-before-seen images of the mob he inspired ransacking the Capitol.
Given what the country has now seen, prospects for a Trump comeback campaign in 2024 were thin, she said.
“I don’t see how Donald Trump could be re-elected to the presidency again,” Ms. Murkowski told reporters. “I just don’t see that.”

“The question is how much power to dominate the G.O.P. will have been drained away by the time this is over,” said Karl Rove, the Republican strategist and former adviser to President George W. Bush.
Mr. Trump’s camp acknowledges that the prosecution has been effective, but portrays it as an illegitimate smear borne of partisan animus. Jason Miller, a longtime adviser and campaign spokesman for Mr. Trump, told Fox Business, “the president is going to be involved in making sure we win back the House and Senate in 2022.”
Mr. Trump’s legal team, which will begin its own arguments after the House managers conclude theirs, dismissed the use of the video in the Senate trial as an inflammatory tactic to blame the former president for the actions of others.
Jonathan Turley, a law professor at George Washington University who testified against impeachment the first time the House lodged charges of high crimes and misdemeanors against Mr. Trump in 2019, said the managers this time were just playing to the crowd rather than making a legal argument.
“Much of the argument seems designed to enrage rather than convict,” he said.
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Glass that was damaged during the mob attack at the Capitol was replaced on Thursday before the impeachment trial.Credit...Anna Moneymaker for The New York Times
In that regard, it was having an impact outside the chamber. Twitter reinforced on Wednesday that it will never allow its most famous former user back onto its platform after cutting him off from his 89 million followers for inciting violence. And The Wall Street Journal’s influential conservative editorial page said that Mr. Trump is permanently scarred regardless of whether he is convicted.
“History will remember,” Mr. Trump declared in another tweet about 10 days before the riot. That it will, and the trial this week will go a long way toward deciding what those memories will be.
— Peter Baker


Americans grapple for meaning in Trump’s trial. Here’s what they said about the two impeachments.


President Donald J. Trump spoke to a crowd of supporters before the riot on Jan. 6.Credit...Pete Marovich for The New York Times
It has been just over a year since former President Donald J. Trump first faced impeachment charges in the Senate, but so much has happened since then.
We asked more than two dozen voters — most of whom initially responded to a Survey Monkey poll and whom The New York Times reached out to during the first impeachment trial — to describe the impeachment in a single word.
Here are excerpts from what they said.
‘Consequential’
Oscar Gomez, 51, a business consultant in San Francisco who describes himself as “left of center.”
“You’re accountable for your actions and words up until your last day of employment. In my assessment, there is direct connection between his words that day and the violence that followed.”
‘Necessary’
Jerry Iannacci, 53, an art teacher living in a Philadelphia suburb who says he is independent.
“There’s no way to not go through with it. Is it going to divide the country? I don’t know that the gap can be any wider than it is now. If one side decided that armed insurrection was the way to go, what’s worse? They commandeer tanks next time? They find a few ex-Air Force pilots who can fly a plane and they buy a surplus F-16?”
‘Unnecessary’
Cherece Mendieta, 47, is a conservative in Houston.
“They’re impeaching a man for fighting for what he believes in. Did he tell them, ‘Go storm the Capitol; go threaten their lives’? No, he didn’t. It’s ridiculous.”
‘Fiasco’
Bill Marcy is a former law enforcement officer who traveled to Washington on Jan. 6 to hear Mr. Trump speak, but he said he was not part of the crowd that went to the Capitol.
“There’s no responsibility Donald Trump has for what happened.”
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Members of a pro-Trump mob climbed the walls of the Capitol later that afternoon.Credit...Jason Andrew for The New York Times
‘Justified’
Jimmy Welch, 54, is a Republican and former Trump supporter from Louisville, Ky.
“At my job, I couldn’t come in and spread a bunch of lies and get people riled up and have a strike without repercussions.”
‘Unjustifiable’
Ragan Fletcher, 21, is a Republican student at Belmont University in Nashville.
“I think that he just has his First Amendment rights to free speech.”
‘Merry-go-round’
Desiré Hardison, 38, is a Democrat from New York City who said she believed that Mr. Trump should be convicted.
“It’s a joke, it’s a carnival game. It doesn’t go anywhere, like walking on a treadmill. Like a merry-go-round, you’re just sitting there and you’re watching the horses going up and down. What’s really happening? Nothing.”
‘Abusive’
William Dawson, 69, is a Republican and a behavior analyst from Torrance, Calif.
“He’s not even in office. You’re going to impeach somebody who’s already gone? I believe that constitutionally, that’s a problem. And I believe it’s unfair.”
‘Cleansing’
Terry Morrison, 84, is a retiree in Wisconsin, and a former Republican who drifted toward the Democratic Party.
“Some on the right have come to understand Mr. Trump and his followers, from my perspective, more correctly than they did a year ago. Many of those were treating it as simply left-right politics. Now, I think more on the right see this as a moral illness threatening the very fiber of the United States.”
Rick Rojas, Will Wright, Giulia McDonnell Nieto del Rio, Lucy Tompkins and Jake Frankenfield contributed reporting.



Trump’s second impeachment trial draws a larger TV audience than the first.


A congressional aide watching former President Donald J. Trump’s impeachment trial, which drew more than 12 million viewers on Tuesday and Wednesday.Credit...Erin Schaff/The New York Times
More than 12 million people have watched live television coverage of the second Senate impeachment trial of former President Donald J. Trump, an audience larger than the one for the first trial a little more than a year ago, according to Nielsen.
An audience of 12.4 million tuned into the three major cable news stations and the three major broadcast networks on Tuesday afternoon, when prosecutors started making their case on the Senate floor. Eleven million watched the opening arguments in the impeachment trial on Jan. 21, 2020.
Last year, viewership fell sharply on the second day of trial coverage, to 8.8 million. That was not the case on Wednesday. With NBC’s figures not yet available, the audience for the other five broadcast and cable networks stood at 12.3 million, Nielsen reported.
Some media executives had forecast that a trial of a president no longer in office would not attract a large audience. But many Americans are working from home because of the coronavirus pandemic. And as a television spectacle, the second trial has been a sharp contrast with the first.
Last year’s deliberations centered on presidential abuse of power and obstruction of justice. This time around, prosecutors presented chilling, never-before-seen security footage of the storming of the Capitol on Jan. 6 to help them make the case that Mr. Trump pushed his supporters toward violence.
Interest in the trial was highest on MSNBC, which features a lineup of anchors and analysts who are highly critical of the former president; the network averaged an audience of three million on Tuesday and 3.5 million on Wednesday. CNN had 2.8 million viewers on Tuesday and 3.2 million on Wednesday. CNN also drew the largest audience between the ages of 25 and 54, the demographic most important to advertisers.
Fox News, with its prime-time hosts supportive of Mr. Trump, had the lowest viewership of the three major cable news networks, and its audience dropped to 1.2 million on Thursday from two million on Wednesday.
The overall audience for the trial coverage was smaller than the number of viewers who watched other recent big political events. Nearly 40 million tuned in for President Biden’s Inaugural Address, and more than 21 million watched as the networks projected that he was the election winner in November.
Audience figures for last year’s impeachment trial fluctuated day to day. The Senate vote, which resulted in an acquittal, attracted the largest audience, nearly 14 million viewers.
— John Koblin



‘If Trump asks me to come, I will,’ Oath Keepers member texted before Capitol attack, federal officials say.


Jessica Watkins, second from left, a member of the Oath Keepers militia group, was arrested in connection with the Jan. 6 attack on the Capitol.Credit...Jim Bourg/Reuters
Chilling new details emerged on Thursday in the plot by the Oath Keepers militia group to storm the Capitol as prosecutors said that an Ohio-based member of the organization was planning training sessions “for urban warfare, riot control and rescue operations” as early as one week before Election Day.
Shortly after the election, prosecutors said, the Oath Keeper member, Jessica Watkins, told an associate that she was “awaiting direction from President Trump” about what to do about the results of the vote. “POTUS has the right to activate units too,” Ms. Watkins wrote in a text message to the unnamed associate on Nov. 9. “If Trump asks me to come, I will.”
The new accounts about Ms. Watkins — one of three Oath Keeper members charged with conspiracy in connection with the Capitol attack — were contained in a striking government memo that sought her detention before trial. In the memo, prosecutors said Ms. Watkins went to Washington on Jan. 6 with as many as 40 other members of the group, and that she and one of her co-defendants, Thomas E. Caldwell, had planned to stage “a quick reaction force” of more militiamen outside the city to serve as armed reinforcements.
The federal authorities have now brought charges against more than 200 people in the attack on the Capitol last month, but the case against Ms. Watkins, Mr. Caldwell and their third co-defendant, Donovan Crowl, is one of the most serious to have so far emerged from the vast investigation. This week, Mr. Caldwell asked a judge to release him from custody, saying he was an injured Navy veteran with more than 30 years of experience with top secret matters. Ms. Watkins and Mr. Crowl are also still in jail and are likely to make similar requests to be released.
Shortly after the three militia members were arrested last month, prosecutors said that they were some of the first rioters to have planned their part in the attack on the Capitol instead of merely storming the building spontaneously. Federal agents said that Mr. Caldwell, a 66-year-old former Navy officer, had advised his fellow militia members to stay at a particular Comfort Inn in the Washington suburbs, noting that it offered a good base to “hunt at night” — an apparent reference to chasing left-wing activists. Ms. Watkins, a 38-year-old bar owner from Ohio, apparently rented a room at the hotel under an assumed name, the agents said.
The government memo filed on Thursday suggested that the investigation into the Oath Keepers, a group that largely draws its membership from former military and law enforcement personnel, has started to intensify. Prosecutors indicated that they now have access to Ms. Watkins’ personal text messages, including some in which she described the prospect of Joseph R. Biden Jr. becoming president as “an existential threat.”
“Biden may still be our president,” she wrote on Nov. 17. “If he is, our way of life as we know it is over. Our Republic would be over. Then it is our duty as Americans to fight, kill and die for our rights.”
By the end of December, prosecutors said, Ms. Watkins, a military veteran who owns a bar in rural Ohio, was making plans to go to Washington on the day of the attack on the Capitol.
“We plan on going to DC on the 6th” because “Trump wants all able bodied Patriots to come,” she wrote to Mr. Crowl on Dec. 29.
“If Trump activates the Insurrection Act,” she added, “I’d hate to miss it.”
— Alan Feuer


The graphic videos of the Capitol riot struck a chord with many G.O.P. senators, but they remain unlikely to convict Trump.


Senator Roy Blunt, Republican of Missouri, said he “didn’t see a case a prosecutor could make against the president.” Credit...Brandon Bell for The New York Times
After watching graphic video on Wednesday from the Jan. 6 attack on the Capitol, many Republican senators denounced the violence but said they were still inclined to acquit former President Donald J. Trump of the charge that he incited an insurrection.
Speaking to reporters in the hallways of the Capitol, Republican senators made a variety of arguments in Mr. Trump’s defense: that the matter should be decided by federal prosecutors, that the trial was unconstitutional since he is an ex-president, and that Mr. Trump’s words to his supporters fell short of the legal standard for incitement.
Some argued that Mr. Trump’s language was no different from passionate statements coming from Democrats in opposing the former president. And one, Senator Roy Blunt of Missouri, compared the rampage at the Capitol to protests for racial justice last year that turned violent, suggesting that the former president could not be held to account for the Jan. 6 riot any more than Democrats could for those events.
“I mean, you have a summer where people all over the country were doing similar kinds of things,” said Mr. Blunt, the fourth-ranking Republican. “I don’t know what the other side will show from Seattle and Portland and other places.”
He added that he “didn’t see a case a prosecutor could make against the president.” (The standard for conviction in impeachment is different than in a criminal trial; prosecutors must prove the official committed treason, bribery or “high crimes and misdemeanors” — typically understood as the use of power to threaten the constitutional order — not necessarily that he broke a law.)
Forty-four Republican senators — all but six in the Senate — voted on Tuesday against moving forward with the trial, arguing that it is unconstitutional since Mr. Trump is no longer in office. Seventeen Republicans would have to join every Democrat to achieve the two-thirds threshold for an impeachment conviction.
Asked if anything had changed after he viewed the video on Wednesday, Senator Tim Scott, Republican of South Carolina, said he believed House managers would “at best” get six Republicans to vote for conviction.
“Probably five, but maybe six,” Mr. Scott said.
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Senator Susan Collins of Maine was one of six Republicans who voted to move forward with the impeachment trial.Credit...Anna Moneymaker for The New York Times
The six Republican senators who voted to move forward with the trial were: Senators Susan Collins of Maine, Lisa Murkowski of Alaska, Mitt Romney of Utah, Bill Cassidy of Louisiana, Patrick J. Toomey of Pennsylvania and Ben Sasse of Nebraska.
Senator John Barrasso of Wyoming, the No. 3 Republican, said he wished Mr. Trump had “used different language,” but “I don’t think it’s constitutional” for the Senate to try him.
“For those of us that truly don’t believe that we have that constitutional authority, that becomes a pretty big obstacle for them to overcome,” he said.
Senator Thom Tillis, Republican of North Carolina, said the video made him “angry,” but that Mr. Trump had not been the only one using overheated political messaging.
“There are a number of people around here that, I’ve said before, have been placing tinder in that tinder box,” Mr. Tillis said. “And I think every one of them should reflect on their words and really think twice about what they should say.”
— Luke Broadwater

A majority of Republicans still view Biden’s election as illegitimate, a poll finds.


A Trump supporter outside the Capitol on Jan. 3.Credit...Stefani Reynolds for The New York Times
A majority of Republicans still view President Biden’s election as illegitimate — and more than half would justify the use of force to defend “the traditional American way of life,” according to a poll released on Day 3 of former President Donald J. Trump’s impeachment trial.
Two-thirds of Republicans — 66 percent — said Mr. Biden’s election was not legitimate, compared with far smaller percentages of Democrats and independents who question the outcome, according to a survey taken during the last 10 days of January by the American Enterprise Institute, a nonpartisan think-tank that promotes conservative economic policies.
Taken as a whole, two-thirds of Americans said Mr. Biden’s win was legitimate, according to the poll.
There was an educational divide embedded in the political divide: 75 percent of Republicans without college degrees still question the results, compared to 48 percent of those in the party identifying themselves as college educated.
The most eye-opening finding, however, was the response to this sentence presented to respondents: “The traditional American way of life is disappearing so fast that we may have to use force to save it.”
While 60 percent of those surveyed rejected the idea outright, 55 percent of Republicans said they agreed with assertion — roughly three times the percentage of Democrats who expressed support for the use of force, according to the survey, which polled 2,016 U.S. adults.
The report’s authors added an important caveat: Support for the use of violence, even among those who said they would consider it, was unenthusiastic, with 9 percent of Americans over all and 13 percent of Republicans saying they “completely” agree with the necessity of taking violent actions if leaders fail.
The poll also showed that many Republicans now entertain false claims promoted by the far right of the party, with half claiming that left-wing antifa activists — and not Trump supporters — instigated the attack on the Capitol.
The survey was conducted by the institute’s Survey Center on American Life. Interviews were conducted among a random sample of U.S. adults using a web-based panel designed to be representative of the U.S. general population. Its margin of error was plus or minus 3 percentage points.
The poll comes at a moment of extraordinary stress for the Republican Party as it struggles to move forward following the loss of a deeply polarizing former president who maintains a tight grip on his party’s conservative base.
Last Friday, more than 100 anti-Trump Republicans — many of them well-known dissenters active on social media and the cable networks — participated in a Zoom call to discuss creating a breakaway party group to promote “principled conservatism,” a direct rebuke of Mr. Trump, according to one of the participants.
Creation of the party, which would potentially run center-right candidates around the country, was reported earlier by Reuters.
The American Enterprise Institute’s poll offered the group a glimmer of hope: While nearly 80 percent of Republicans still support Mr. Trump, those surveyed said their loyalty lies more with the party than the former president, by a 63-to-37 percent margin.
— Glenn Thrush




Pompeo, a chief critic of Beijing, passed out party favors made with parts from China.


Former Secretary of State Mike Pompeo has been widely criticized over the possible misuse of official funds for his personal and political benefit.Credit...T.J. Kirkpatrick for The New York Times
In his more than two years as secretary of state, Mike Pompeo pulled no punches against China, regularly criticizing it for human rights abuses, military aggressions and the spread of the coronavirus.
But when it came to passing out party favors, Mr. Pompeo relied on the country to help produce the perfect pen.
Documents released on Thursday show that Mr. Pompeo used taxpayer funds to buy 400 specially embossed pens, worth more than $10,000 in total, for guests who attended private dinners at the State Department as he mulled his political future.
The pens were the topic of several weeks of correspondence in 2018 between unidentified State Department employees and a Florida-based vendor who was hired to design souvenirs for the so-called Madison Dinners that Mr. Pompeo and his wife, Susan, hosted.
Colors, etching and emblems for the pens were discussed and then reconsidered, the documents show. At one point, an eager department employee needed to know how quickly they could be delivered to Washington.
The vendor advised it would take more time because “the little emblems on the pens are made in China.”
Mr. Pompeo, who called the coronavirus “the Wuhan virus” for where it originated and constantly hammered of the Chinese Communist Party leadership, was among the most hawkish China critics among President Donald J. Trump’s advisers. Many of his concerns were broadly shared among American and foreign officials, as China violated human rights against ethnic Uighurs and protesters in Hong Kong, and sought to muscle in on Taiwan and disputed waters.
But Mr. Pompeo himself came under widespread criticism over the possible misuse of official State Department funds for his personal and political benefit, as the Madison Dinners became a focus of an inspector general’s inquiry.
The dinners were held from 2018 to 2020 and hosted about a dozen American business leaders, conservative political officials and a scattering of diplomats and foreign dignitaries. In all, the gatherings cost at least $43,000, according to earlier documents released by Citizens for Responsibility and Ethics in Washington.
The watchdog group has sued the government under the Freedom of Information Act for information about the dinners and Mr. Pompeo’s other activities that might be construed as political while he was in office. The latest tranche of documents, released on Thursday, also included receipts for a few thousand dollars for food, printed tickets and private contractors to operate the elevators at the State Department for guests as they arrived and departed.
Mr. Pompeo has previously defended the dinners as the kind of soft-diplomacy events that previous secretaries of state also held. He did not respond to a request for comment on Thursday.
— Lara Jakes

 

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Senate votes unanimously to award Capitol Police Officer Eugene Goodman the Congressional Gold Medal

Legislators on the Senate floor stood and applauded Goodman after the chamber took a break from impeachment proceedings to pass legislation awarding him the honor. During the January 6 riots at the Capitol, Goodman single-handedly led a pro-Trump mob away from the Senate chambers.

https://twitter.com/i/events/1360371352289484801

 

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US Senate acquits former president Trump over his role in the US Capitol riots

The US Senate voted 57-43 to acquit former president Donald Trump on Saturday, after he was charged with inciting the January 6 attack on the US Capitol building.

Trump released a statement welcoming the decision, saying his movement "has only just begun."

What you need to know

- The 57-43 vote was short of the two-thirds necessary for conviction -

Seven Republican senators joined Democrats in voting the former president as guilty

- Senators settled on admitting a witness statement from GOP Rep. Herrera Beutler into Trump's trial record instead of calling witnesses

- Beutler, who voted to impeach, detailed a phone call between former president Trump and House GOP leader Kevin McCarthy on January 6

 

[GAMETHEORY]

A fake judge and a fake jury hearing a fake crime with fake evidence in a fake courtroom in a fake government in a fake democracy being reported by a fake media. What could possibly go wrong?

 

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Trump’s Republican Hit List at CPAC Is a Warning Shot to His Party
In his first public appearance since leaving office, Donald Trump went through, by name, every Republican who supported his second impeachment and called for them to be ousted.

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Former President Donald J. Trump speaking on Sunday at the Conservative Political Action Conference.Credit...Erin Schaff/The New York Times
By Jonathan Martin and Maggie Haberman

• Feb. 28, 2021Updated 7:57 p.m. ET

ORLANDO, Fla. — After days of insisting they could paper over their intraparty divisions, Republican lawmakers were met with a grim reminder of the challenge ahead on Sunday when former President Donald J. Trump stood before a conservative conference and ominously listed the names of Republicans he is targeting for defeat.

As Democrats pursue a liberal agenda in Washington, the former president’s grievances over the 2020 election continue to animate much of his party, more than a month after he left office and nearly four months since he lost the election. Many G.O.P. leaders and activists are more focused on litigating false claims about voting fraud in last year’s campaign, assailing the technology companies that deplatformed Mr. Trump and punishing lawmakers who broke with him over his desperate bid to retain power.

In an address on Sunday at the Conservative Political Action Conference in Orlando, his first public appearance since he left the White House, Mr. Trump read a sort of hit list of every congressional Republican who voted to impeach him, all but vowing revenge.

“The RINOs that we’re surrounded with will destroy the Republican Party and the American worker and will destroy our country itself,” he said, a reference to the phrase “Republicans In Name Only,” adding that he would be “actively working to elect strong, tough and smart Republican leaders.”

Mr. Trump took special care to single out Representative Liz Cheney, the third-ranking House Republican, and Senator Mitch McConnell, the minority leader. He called Ms. Cheney “a warmonger” and said her “poll numbers have dropped faster than any human being I’ve ever seen.” Then he falsely claimed he had helped revive Mr. McConnell’s campaign last year in Kentucky.

Ms. Cheney and Mr. McConnell have harshly criticized Mr. Trump over his role in inciting the Capitol riot on Jan. 6, and Ms. Cheney has repeatedly said that the G.O.P. should cut ties with the former president.

With his refusal to concede defeat and his determination to isolate G.O.P. leaders who criticize him, the former president has effectively denied Republicans from engaging in the sort of reckoning that parties traditionally undertake after they lose power.

Even with Democrats controlling Congress and the White House for the first time in over a decade, many of the Republicans who spoke at the conference here said strikingly little about President Biden or the nearly $2 trillion stimulus measure the House passed early Saturday, which congressional Republicans uniformly opposed.

Mr. Trump was the exception, repeatedly taking aim at the Biden administration. “In just one short month, we have gone from America first to America last,” he said, criticizing the new president on issues ranging from immigration to the Iran nuclear deal. “We all knew that the Biden administration was going to be bad, but none of us even imagined just how bad they would be and how far left they would go.”

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Mr. Trump looked at himself in a mirror, held by an aide, before walking out to speak at CPAC.Credit...Erin Schaff/The New York Times
Yet even as he dutifully read his scripted attacks on his successor, the former president drew louder applause for pledging to purge his Republican antagonists from the party.

“Get rid of them all,” he said.

Mr. Trump’s attack, and the enthusiastic response to his call for vengeance, illustrated the dilemma Republicans find themselves in.

Mr. Biden does little to energize conservative activists. Indeed, Mr. Trump and other speakers at the event drew more applause for their criticism of Dr. Anthony S. Fauci, Mr. Biden’s chief public health adviser for the virus and a figure of enmity on the far right, than for their attacks on the president.

The attention surrounding Mr. Trump and his potential plans for the future are forestalling a focused attack on Mr. Biden and the Democratic-controlled Congress.

Senator Ted Cruz of Texas, who used his speech on Friday to hail Mr. Trump’s leadership of the party, said in a brief interview that his party’s voters would pivot to the present once Mr. Biden’s agenda became more clear.

“As the American people see the bad ideas that destroy jobs and strip away our liberties, there’s a natural pendulum to politics,” Mr. Cruz said, predicting that Republican activists would “absolutely” pay more attention to the current administration later this year.

Mr. Trump made a specific pitch for people to donate to two committees associated with him, a notable move given that he has been the Republican National Committee’s biggest draw for the last four years. He gave an explicit description of “Trumpism” as a political ideology focused on geopolitical deal-making and immigration restrictions, and painted the Republicans who voted for impeachment as decided outliers in an otherwise united party.

More consequentially for Republicans, the attention-craving Mr. Trump, denied his social media weaponry, knows he can reliably energize the G.O.P. rank-and-file and draw publicity by excoriating his intraparty critics.

In some ways, the former president’s re-emergence at CPAC represented a full-circle moment. He first tested the right’s political waters in 2011 when he appeared at the conference and used his speech to belittle other Republicans and denounce China as a growing power.

To the delight of the party’s current lawmakers, however, Mr. Trump announced on Sunday that he would not create a breakaway right-wing party.

“We’re not starting new parties,” he said of an idea he was privately musing about just last month. Less satisfying to many Republican leaders, at least those ready to move on, was the former president’s musing about a potential run in 2024. “Who knows, I may even decide to beat them for a third time,” he said, bringing attendees to their feet.

Mr. Trump, of course, lost the election last year.

But that did not stop him from repeatedly, and falsely, claiming in his speech that he had won. After mostly sticking to his prepared text for the first hour of his 90-minute speech — and listing what he said were the accomplishments of his tenure — the former president grew animated and angry as he veered off the teleprompter to vent about his loss.

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A man wore a shirt featuring Mr. Trump on Sunday at CPAC. Credit...Erin Schaff/The New York Times

“The Supreme Court didn’t have the guts or the courage to do anything about it,” Mr. Trump said of a body that includes three of his appointees. He was met with chants of “You won, you won!”

At one point, Mr. Trump did something he never did as president — expressly called on people to take the coronavirus vaccines that he had pressed for and hoped would help him in his re-election effort. But he mocked Mr. Biden for stumbling during a CNN town hall event and attacked him over comments the president made about the limited number of vaccines available when he took office.

The former president’s aides had been looking for an opportunity for him to re-emerge and debated whether to put on a rally-type event of their own or take advantage of the forum of CPAC, which relocated to Mr. Trump’s new home state from suburban Washington because Florida has more lenient coronavirus restrictions.

Mr. Trump and his aides worked with him on the speech for several days at his newly built office above the ballroom at Mar-a-Lago, his private club near the Atlantic Ocean. Without his Twitter feed, Mr. Trump has been using specific moments — the death of the radio host Rush Limbaugh and Tiger Woods’s car crash — to inject himself into the news cycle.

Outside prepared statements, though, he has said far less since Jan. 20 about the future of the G.O.P. and his own lingering ambitions.

Interviews at CPAC suggested that a number of conservatives, while still supportive of Mr. Trump, are ambivalent about whether he should run again in 2024. That was borne out in the conference’s straw poll, during which the former president enjoyed overwhelming approval — but also more uncertainty about whether he ought to lead the party in three years.

Thirty-two percent of those who participated in the straw poll — a heavily conservative and self-selecting constituency — said they did not want Mr. Trump to run again or were unsure if he should.

A number of would-be candidates, most notably Gov. Ron DeSantis of Florida and Gov. Kristi Noem of South Dakota, enjoyed rousing receptions at the conference.

Yet Mr. Trump has essentially frozen the field for the moment. And he made clear in his speech that for now, he is serious about a third bid. t
This is new territory for Republicans, who were mostly eager to move on from their losing nominees in 2008 and 2012.

For now, though, Mr. Trump and the 2020 election are far more resonant. From the start on Sunday, the crowd provided Mr. Trump with the adulation he craves, chanting, “We love you! We love you!” at one point. And he made clear that he believes that news organizations, and his supporters, still want the sugar high of his appearances.

After stepping up to the lectern, Mr. Trump, gone for just five weeks, asked the room, “Do you miss me yet?”

Jonathan Martin reported from Orlando, Fla., and Maggie Haberman f


@easy_b @Camille

 

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[kidmegaii]

Might as well start the what happens when the speaker of the house refuses to formalize an election thread.

 

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Politics: Arizona auditors say voter data is intact, walking back previous claims about Maricopa County audit,

Arizona auditors say voter data is intact, walking back previous claims about Maricopa County audit, according to fact-checkers On Tuesday, an Arizona firm commissioned by state Republicans to audit the 2020 election in Maricopa County walked back claims that a key database had been deleted...

www.bgol.us

 

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Trump and Giuliani ask judge to drop Capitol riot conspiracy case

Trump and Giuliani asked a judge to dismiss a suit accusing them of conspiring to incite the Capitol invasion, saying they are protected by the First Amendment.

www.cnbc.com

 

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