- Trump’s lawyers submitted a pretrial brief Monday ahead of his impeachment trial.
- They argued that Trump’s words at his January 6 rally are protected free speech.
- “The real truth is that the people who criminally breached the Capitol did so of their own accord and for their own reasons,” the brief said in part.
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Lawyers representing former President Donald Trump filed a pretrial brief Monday reiterating their claim that his impeachment trial is unconstitutional and that his words at a rally preceding the January 6 Capitol siege are protected free speech.
They also argued that the House managers who will act as prosecutors in Trump’s trial “cherry-picked” the former president’s statements when they accused him of inciting the violent insurrection by urging supporters to march to the Capitol and “fight like hell” against the 2020 election results.
In their pretrial brief, Trump’s defense lawyers said he had only “used the word ‘fight’ a little more than a handful of times and each time in the figurative sense.”
“It was not and could not be construed to encourage acts of violence,” they wrote. The brief went on to say that “the real truth is that the people who criminally breached the Capitol did so of their own accord and for their own reasons, and they are being criminally prosecuted.”
Lawyers representing the insurrectionists, meanwhile, have argued that their clients were acting specifically on Trump’s orders.
"Let's roll the tape," Al Watkins, the defense attorney representing Jacob Chansley or the "QAnon Shaman," told a local NBC affiliate in Missouri last month. Chansley was arrested and charged with multiple felony counts, including unlawfully entering the Capitol and engaging in disorderly conduct on Capitol grounds.
"Let's roll the months of lies and misrepresentations and horrific innuendo and hyperbolic speech by our president designed to inflame, enrage, motivate," Watkins added. Chansley later offered to testify against Trump at his impeachment trial.