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- Trump’s lawyers filed their first brief in the defense for his second impeachment trial.
- They argue that Trump being put on trial after leaving office is unconstitutional.
- The lawyers also say that Trump’s speech before the Capitol insurrection is protected.
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Former President Donald Trump’s team of lawyers argue that trying Trump after he has left office is unconstitutional and that his speech prior to the Capitol riot was not incitement and is protected under the First Amendment.
On Tuesday morning, the House impeachment managers filed their first brief arguing the case for convicting Trump on a charge of inciting the January 6 insurrection.
In the scathing filing, the impeachment managers said that “in a grievous betrayal of his Oath of Office, [Trump] incited a violent mob to attack the United States Capitol during the Joint Session, thus impeding Congress’s confirmation of Joseph R. Biden, Jr. as the winner of the presidential election.”
Trump’s lawyers, Bruce L. Castor Jr. and David Schoen argued in their 14-page brief that it is unconstitutional for the Senate to convict Trump now that he has left office, writing, “incitement of Insurrection against him as moot, and thus in violation of the Constitution, because the Senate lacks jurisdiction to remove from office a man who does not hold office.”
The House's impeachment managers directly refuted that argument in their own brief, stating that "there is no 'January Exception' to impeachment or any other provision of the Constitution."
Trump's lawyers also argue that because Trump had a right to express his opinion that the results were "suspect," the president was entitled under the First Amendment to claim, falsely, that the election was rife with fraud and stolen from him, as he did for over two months leading up to the insurrection.
"Insufficient evidence exists upon which a reasonable jurist could conclude that the 45th President's statements were accurate or not, and he therefore denies they were false. Like all Americans, the 45th President is protected by the First Amendment," the lawyers say.
Notably, courts rejected nearly 60 post-election lawsuits filed on behalf of Trump or his allies aiming to halt the counting of votes, get ballots thrown out, or invalidate the presidential election results in entire states. Many of the false claims of voter and election fraud that Trump pushed were not a matter of opinion, but were either baseless or had been definitively disproven by courts or officials.
Trump's lawyers argue that Trump's statement to the crowd gathered for the Save America Rally on the morning of January 6 that "if you don't fight like hell, you're not going to have a country anymore" was not related to any specific action he wanted the protesters gathered to take at the Capitol and was "clearly about the need to fight for election security in general."
This is a breaking news story. Check back for updates.