Trump trial ‘unconstitutional’

House impeachment managers filed their memorandum Tuesday for the Senate impeachment trial of former President Donald Trump, laying out in the clearest terms yet why they believe Trump committed impeachable offenses and must be barred from running for federal office again.

In the brief released Tuesday morning, the managers, led by Rep. Jamie Raskin, D-Md., argue that Trump was personally responsible for the riot at the U.S. Capitol on Jan. 6. They say Trump incited the attack when his efforts to overturn the presidential election failed.

“President Trump’s responsibility for the events of January 6 is unmistakable,” they write in the 80-page document, stating that his “abuse of office threatened and injured our democratic order.”

“His conduct endangered the life of every single member of Congress, jeopardized the peaceful transition of power and line of succession, and compromised our national security,” the brief says. “This is precisely the sort of constitutional offense that warrants disqualification from federal office.” 202102:22

The Senate “must establish beyond doubt” that Trump’s behavior was intolerable, it says.

The managers rebut the claims made by Trump’s lawyers and allies that the Senate has no jurisdiction because Trump is now a former official.

“That argument is wrong. It is also dangerous,” they write, saying it is unthinkable that the framers of the Constitution would have “left us virtually defenseless against a president’s treachery in his final days, allowing him to misuse power, violate his Oath, and incite insurrection against Congress and our electoral institutions simply because he is a lame duck.”

They also say Trump cannot hide behind a free speech argument, arguing that the right means little if Trump can “provoke lawless action if he loses at the polls.”

Trump’s statements at his rally Jan. 6 ahead of the attack on the Capitol turned the event into a “powder keg waiting to blow,” and it was “entirely foreseeable” that his supporters were “primed (and prepared) for violence if he lit a spark,” they write.

Trump “summoned a mob to Washington, exhorted them into a frenzy, and aimed them like a loaded cannon down Pennsylvania Avenue,” they say.

Trump’s legal team filed its trial brief Tuesday afternoon, asking that the Senate dismiss the impeachment article “because the Senate lacks jurisdiction to remove from office a man who does not hold office.”

“In the alternative, the 45th president respectfully requests the Senate to acquit him on the merits of the allegations raised in the article of impeachment,” the attorneys, Bruce Castor Jr. and David Schoen, wrote in the 14-page brief.