[AMV] #959 Witnesses

In the end, the darkest truth of Donald Trump's crime came to light.

As his marauders sacked the Capitol on Jan. 6 in their bloody attempt to overturn the election, House Republican leader Kevin McCarthy called the then-president and pleaded for Trump to call off the attack.

Trump refused, essentially telling McCarthy he got what he deserved. Trump was, in effect, content to let members of Congress die.

That damning account, in a statement Friday night from Rep. Jaime Herrera Beutler (Wash.), a Republican who defended Trump during his first impeachment, momentarily threw the Senate's impeachment trial into chaos on its final day.

Trump's lawyers, in their slashing, largely fictitious defense, claimed that Trump was "horrified" by the violence, hadn't known that Vice President Mike Pence was in danger and took "immediate steps" to counter the rioting.

But Herrera Beutler revealed such claims to be a lie. When McCarthy "finally reached the president on January 6 and asked him to publicly and forcefully call off the riot, the president initially repeated the falsehood that it was antifa that had breached the Capitol," she wrote. McCarthy, she continued, "refuted that and told the president that these were Trump supporters. That's when, according to McCarthy, the president said: 'Well, Kevin, I guess these people are more upset about the election than you are.' "

Her account wasn't seriously or substantively refuted. On Saturday afternoon, senators agreed that Herrera Beutler's statement would be entered into the trial record as evidence.

Even knowing this, most Republican senators, as long expected, voted to acquit Trump, a craven surrender to the political imperative not to cross the demagogue. But the impeachment trial was not in vain, for it revealed the ugly truth: Trump knew lawmakers' lives were in danger from his violent supporters, and instead of helping the people's representatives escape harm, Trump scoffed.

Republicans scrambled to limit the damage of Herrera Beutler's revelation. Senate Republican leader Mitch McConnell, who had feigned being open to conviction, abandoned the pretense and, minutes before the Senate convened Saturday, emailed his Republican colleagues that he would vote to acquit.

On the Senate floor, Trump counsel Michael van der Veen, a personal-injury lawyer by day, tried in every way to demonstrate his indignation at the late revelation. He shouted. He growled. He gesticulated madly. He pounded the lectern. He stomped. He spat out words: "Antics." "Rumor." "Report." "Innuendo." "False narrative!" He actually declared that "it doesn't matter what happened after the insurgence into the Capitol building." So what if Trump scoffed at McCarthy's desperate entreaty to save lawmakers' lives?

Sputtering like the Looney Tunes character Sylvester the Cat, van der Veen declared: "Nancy Pelosi's deposition needs to be taken. Vice President Harris's deposition absolutely needs to be taken. And not by Zoom. None of these depositions should be done by Zoom. We didn't do this hearing by Zoom! These depositions should be done -- in person, in my office, in Philly-delphia!"

Sufferin' succotash!

Laughter broke out in the chamber.

"I don't know why you're laughing," he responded. "It is civil process. ... I'll slap subpoenas on a good number of people." He seemed to think he was arguing a slip-and-fall case in the Pennsylvania Court of Common Pleas.

Republicans joined the theatrics.

On the Senate floor, Sen. Ron Johnson (Wis.), an always-Trumper, was seen pointing at Sen. Mitt Romney (Utah) and saying "blame you" in a raised voice. Romney was one of five Republicans who joined all 50 Democrats in voting to allow witness testimony.

Sen. Mike Lee (Utah), another Trump ally, interrupted a presentation to complain that the House impeachment managers "said something that's not true" -- never mind that the Senate had sat in silence during hours of falsehoods from Trump's team.

After Herrera Beutler's revelations sparked a vote for witnesses, Senate leaders brokered a compromise to keep the impeachment trial from spiraling into endless discovery. Herrera Beutler's statement would be admitted as evidence, but this would "not constitute a concession by either party as for the truth of the matters asserted by the other party."

Rep. Jamie Raskin (D-Md.), the lead impeachment manager, claimed that "this uncontradicted statement" provided "further decisive evidence of [Trump's] intent to incite the insurrection."

Van der Veen, in response, howled about due process and fairness being "violently breached" -- interesting words, given what his client did.

When the yeas and nays were counted, seven Senate Republicans joined Herrera Beutler in her courageous stand, voting along with all 50 Democrats to convict Trump. The other 43 Republicans, some of whom, like McConnell, feebly denounced Trump's conduct even as they acquitted him, now have the cowardly distinction of licking the boots of the man who left them to die.

Now Trump has apparently ditched Rudy Giuliani entirely. Trump’s handlers have released this statement to CNN: “Mayor Giuliani is not currently representing President Trump in any legal matters.”
What we find interesting here is the timing. It’s not as if Rudy Giuliani is running around falsely claiming to represent Trump. So even if Trump has parted ways with Rudy as legal counsel, why would Trump make a point of making such a public statement?“

It makes us wonder if Trump has concluded that Rudy Giuliani is finally about to get indicted and arrested, and so he wants to publicly distance himself from Rudy while he still can. It’s possible that Giuliani has been informed by the DOJ that he’s about to be indicted, which sometimes happens in an effort to get the target to cut a last minute plea deal. It’s further possible that Rudy informed Trump that Rudy is about to be indicted, and that Trump responded by hanging Rudy out to dry. 😂

Given the timing, it’s also possible that Trump is trying to insulate himself from the suit that Congressman Bennie Thompson and the NAACP filed against Trump and Giuliani this morning. Trump could be planning to argue that he had no idea Rudy would make his “trial by combat” speech. We’ll see. This announcement from Trump could have been spurred by a few different things, but we doubt it’s nothing.

Maggie HabermanMichael S. Schmidt
By Maggie Haberman and Michael S. Schmidt
Feb. 16, 2021
Last Wednesday afternoon, when former President Donald J. Trump’s legal team gathered in a conference room in a special suite at the Trump hotel in Washington, a longtime adviser to Mr. Trump, Justin Clark, had an announcement to make.

Mr. Clark told one of the lawyers, Bruce L. Castor Jr., that after his widely panned performance a day earlier, Mr. Trump did not want him appearing on television any more during the impeachment trial.

Mr. Castor rose from his chair, and began angrily shouting at Mr. Clark, arguing that Mr. Trump was wrong to demote him. The back and forth became so heated that Mr. Castor left the conference room in a huff.

He later apologized to Mr. Clark. But the tense exchange was just one example of how Mr. Trump’s hastily assembled legal team — a mash-up of political hands, a personal-injury lawyer, a former prosecutor and a longtime defense lawyer, most of whom did not particularly like or trust one another — clashed, stumbled and regrouped throughout the impeachment proceeding under the watchful and sometimes wrathful eye of its client.

The result was an airplane held together with duct tape as it tried to land.

This article is based on interviews with a half-dozen members of the legal team and others involved in the process, which ultimately led to Mr. Trump’s acquittal.

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“You have to remember that we had literally one week and one day to prepare the defense and we were all people who never had met each other before,” one of the lawyers, David I. Schoen, said in a statement after he was approached for this article.

In the days after the House impeached Mr. Trump for his role in inciting the Jan. 6 riot, Mr. Trump and his aides tried to assemble a legal team. Several lawyers who had represented him in his past impeachment made clear they would not be involved this time. Other high-end white-collar defense lawyers were afraid to work for him because of the political backlash and fears that Mr. Trump would refuse to pay his legal bills.

Two weeks before the Senate trial was scheduled to begin, Mr. Trump announced he had hired a team led by Butch Bowers, a lawyer from South Carolina who had defended many of the state’s prominent politicians. Soon after, Mr. Schoen, who is based in Atlanta, was brought on to be, as Mr. Schoen said, “co-quarterbacks” with Mr. Bowers.

But Mr. Bowers and four other lawyers working for Mr. Trump abruptly parted ways with him about 10 days before the trial. Mr. Bowers and Mr. Trump had no chemistry, and some people familiar with the events said that Mr. Trump had wanted the team to push his false claims of a stolen election, something Mr. Bowers did not want to do. Mr. Schoen disputed that account, saying Mr. Trump never pressured him on the issue.

Nonetheless, the team suddenly needed more lawyers. Stephen R. Castor, the top Republican congressional lawyer who took on Democrats during Mr. Trump’s first impeachment, recommended his cousin, Bruce L. Castor Jr., a former prosecutor in Pennsylvania.

Mr. Schoen believed he was still going to be in charge of the legal team. But, by Mr. Schoen’s account, when Mr. Castor and several other lawyers he worked with in Philadelphia — including a personal-injury lawyer named Michael T. van der Veen — showed up, they took over the defense.

“Again, the president made clear that I was to take the lead and do most of the presenting,” Mr. Schoen said. “However, when Bruce came in, he brought his partner Mike and several other lawyers to help them. He immediately began setting an agenda and assigning roles. My role was marginalized.”

Mr. Schoen said that he mistakenly declined to push back on Mr. Castor’s plan.

“My personality is such that I simply was not comfortable asserting myself and I just accepted the agenda and figured I would just do the best job I could at whatever I was assigned,” Mr. Schoen said. “That was my mistake and my shortcoming.”

Mr. Schoen, who said he was in regular contact with Mr. Trump, added that he made another mistake: He did not tell Mr. Trump that Mr. Castor was going to have such a prominent role in the public arguments.

Mr. Schoen was still scheduled to make the opening argument on the first day of the trial. House managers began the proceeding with a compelling presentation that included a chilling compilation of video clips of the Jan. 6 attack on the Capitol.

Mr. Castor then told Mr. Schoen that he wanted to address the jurors.

“I admired his courage for jumping right in,” Mr. Schoen said. “Unfortunately, he got panned by the media pretty soundly and a number of people thought perhaps the agenda should be reconsidered.”

Mr. van der Veen said in an interview that Mr. Castor had stepped up to speak because he believed it would be a way to reduce the emotion in the room.

But Mr. Trump became enraged by Mr. Castor’s meandering, low-energy performance. The former president called Mr. Clark, among others, to vent that afternoon.

“Bruce doesn’t go on TV again,” Mr. Trump said, referring to the televised presentations from the floor of the Senate. Mr. Trump also wanted Mr. Clark to join the legal team and present arguments in the chamber. Other advisers told the former president that shaking up the defense in the middle of the trial was a bad idea.

But Mr. Clark told Mr. van der Veen that he needed to inform Mr. Castor that he would not present anymore.

But on Wednesday afternoon, when Mr. Clark arrived at the Trump International Hotel and joined the group in the conference room of a private suite on the first floor called the “townhouse,” it was clear that Mr. van der Veen had not relayed the message.

So Mr. Clark did it, and Mr. Castor blew up.

Mr. Castor did not respond to an email seeking comment. But both Mr. van der Veen and Mr. Schoen said they believed that Mr. Castor was unfairly pilloried.

What happened next is the subject of debate.

Two people involved in the effort said that Mr. Clark, as well as Alex Cannon, another lawyer who had worked on the Trump campaign and for the Trump Organization, took over writing the scripts that the lawyers would use to present and told them not to deviate from them. Jason Miller, a political adviser to Mr. Trump, looked over the completed scripts, those people said. And Ory Rinat, a former White House aide, helped develop the visual presentations.

Both Mr. Schoen and Mr. van der Veen denied that the Trump aides scripted out the presentations.

“I’m not taking credit for anybody else’s work and they shouldn’t take it for mine, either,” Mr. van der Veen said.

On Thursday night, there was another snag: Mr. Schoen had a dispute with Mr. Miller over which video clips were going to be played when. He briefly quit, but then said he would not present the next day and would sit at the table in the Senate with the other lawyers. Mr. Trump’s advisers scrambled to figure out how to have Mr. Castor, whom the client did not want to see, take over a larger portion of the presentation on Friday.

Mr. Trump reached out to Mr. Schoen directly, and after they spoke, Mr. Schoen said he would give his presentation after all. While the former president had developed a rapport with Mr. Schoen, he also praised Mr. van der Veen’s performance on Friday to other members of the team.

Mr. Schoen, whose mother had died a few weeks earlier of the coronavirus and who blew a kiss toward the sky after his final presentation, said that Mr. Trump was far from a micromanager.

“He literally called me a few times a day some days just to tell me how much he appreciated me and had confidence in me and that I should have more confidence in myself,” said Mr. Schoen, who did not participate in the Senate proceedings on Saturday because of the Jewish Sabbath.
But Mr. Schoen added that he should have kept Mr. Trump more in the loop about who was going to speak at the trial.

“I think I let him down,” he said.

Szura	zaterdag 13 februari 2021 @ 16:29
	Joe Biden Kamala Harris House of Representatives: Democrat (221) Republican (211) Vacant (3) United States Senate: Republican (50) Democratic (48) Independents (2) Tiebreaker VP Harris (D) Speaker of the House: Nancy Pelosi (D) Majority Leader of the House: Steny Hoyer (D) Minority Leader of the House: Kevin McCarthy (R) President of the Senate: Kamala Harris (D) Senate Majority Leader Chuck Shumer (D) Senate Minority Leader: Mitch McConnell (R) Extra aanwijzingen voor dit topic: Helaas blijkt dit topic nogal eens te ontsporen. Het is een emotioneel onderwerp voor sommigen. Daarom de volgende afspraken: • Dit is geen linkdumptopic. Als je een tweet plaatst graag het volgende in ogenschouw nemen: Waarom deze tweet? Wat zegt het, wat vind je er zelf van? • Posts die tot doel hebben het topic te laten ontsporen, die respectloos zijn, of als linkdump aangemerkt kunnen worden, kunnen zonder overleg verwijderd worden door de moderatie. Want je post moet iets bijdragen aan de discussie en niet aan het op de kast jagen van users. • Het gaat hier over de Amerikaanse politiek. Niet over Amerika in zijn algemeen. Probeer on topic te blijven. • We gaan hier respectvol met elkaar om. Ook onderwerpen zoals kwetsbare migrantenkinderen worden met respect besproken. Ik zie er het nut niet van om bijv Michelle Obama als een kerel neer te zetten. Het enige doel om dat te doen is om users op de kast te jagen en het topic te laten ontsporen. Stop daar gewoon mee. Het voegt inhoudelijk niets toe. We gebruiken in dit topic de volgende bronnen. Zie bijvoorbeeld hier als richtlijn: https://mediabiasfactcheck.com/ Voor visueel ingestelde mensen kan dit een richtlijn zijn: Voor de liefhebber hier de officiėle livestreams van de grote Amerikaanse tv-netwerken: ABC CBS CNN FOX NBC PBS Met een eervolle vermelding voor Agenda-Free TV. Live data voor uitslagen Voor wie graag een video timeline wil zien van de gebeurtenissen op 6 januari in Washington: https://projects.propublica.org/parler-capitol-videos/
Dutch_view	zaterdag 13 februari 2021 @ 16:31
	Wat oogt het allemaal toch weer chaotisch
Hyperdude	zaterdag 13 februari 2021 @ 16:32
	quote: Op zaterdag 13 februari 2021 16:31 schreef Dutch_view het volgende: Wat oogt het allemaal toch weer chaotisch Politici en weekends werken.
Szura	zaterdag 13 februari 2021 @ 16:32
	twitter
la_perle_rouge	zaterdag 13 februari 2021 @ 16:33
	Maar genoeg stemmen om getuigen op te roepen. En iemand die nadat alles geteld was en iemand zijn stem in aye gewijzigd had, vroeg waarover ze zojuist gestemd hadden.
Dutch_view	zaterdag 13 februari 2021 @ 16:34
	quote: Op zaterdag 13 februari 2021 16:33 schreef la_perle_rouge het volgende: vroeg waarover ze zojuist gestemd hadden. lachwekkend triest
SnertMetChoco	zaterdag 13 februari 2021 @ 16:37
	quote: Op zaterdag 13 februari 2021 16:32 schreef Szura het volgende: [ twitter ] Graham? Wil hij Hunter Biden gaan oproepen ofzo?
Dutch_view	zaterdag 13 februari 2021 @ 16:41
	Was al even bang dat het circus snel zou ophouden. Maar de popcorn kan er weer langer bij
SnertMetChoco	zaterdag 13 februari 2021 @ 16:45
	Van wat ik nu hoor zag men niet aankomen dat er toch getuigen komen en/of wat dat precies betekent over wie dat dan betreft?
Hyperdude	zaterdag 13 februari 2021 @ 16:45
	quote: Op zaterdag 13 februari 2021 16:41 schreef Dutch_view het volgende: Was al even bang dat het circus snel zou ophouden. Maar de popcorn kan er weer langer bij Net op BBC hadden ze het al over mogelijke vertragingen bij de confirmation hearings. Van benoemingen kabinet Biden. [ Bericht 1% gewijzigd door Hyperdude op 13-02-2021 16:51:26 ]
Dutch_view	zaterdag 13 februari 2021 @ 16:51
	quote: Op zaterdag 13 februari 2021 16:45 schreef Hyperdude het volgende: [..] Net op BBC had nuden ze het al over mogelijke vertragingen bij de confirmation hearings. Van benoemingen kabinet Biden. Manu Raju (CNN) heeft het daar ook over. Blijkbaar is er net gestemd over het wel of niet toestaan van getuigen. Daarna moet er per getuige worden gestemd
Szura	zaterdag 13 februari 2021 @ 16:56
	twitter Dat gaat nog wel even duren dus
Dutch_view	zaterdag 13 februari 2021 @ 16:57
	Het oproepen van getuigen tijdens Impeachment gaat terug naar het tijdperk Clinton. Het is nu uitzoeken hoe dat verder procedureel verder moet. De bejaarde voorzitter die er nu zit , Patrick Leahy, was er destijds ook bij met Clinton. Toen gebeurde de getuigenverklaringen met opgenomen videobanden.
Hyperdude	zaterdag 13 februari 2021 @ 16:59
	quote: Op zaterdag 13 februari 2021 16:56 schreef Szura het volgende: [ twitter ] Dat gaat nog wel even duren dus SPOILER
klappernootopreis	zaterdag 13 februari 2021 @ 17:04
	Op het moment dat de republikeinen Nancy Pelosi op gaan roepen, zullen de Dems Trump op het matje roepen.
PaarsBeestje	zaterdag 13 februari 2021 @ 17:05
	Paniek bij de republikeinen.. Overleg tussen senator Ter Cruz en de advocaten van Trump gewoon openlijk op de senaatsvloer. twitter
klappernootopreis	zaterdag 13 februari 2021 @ 17:05
	McCarthy is ook een mogelijkheid.
PaarsBeestje	zaterdag 13 februari 2021 @ 17:06
	quote: Op zaterdag 13 februari 2021 17:04 schreef klappernootopreis het volgende: Op het moment dat de republikeinen Nancy Pelosi op gaan roepen, zullen de Dems Trump op het matje roepen. Heb je eerst een 51 man meerderheid voor nodig.
klappernootopreis	zaterdag 13 februari 2021 @ 17:09
	Sommige GOP senatoren zijn pissed off, ze hadden al vervoer geboekt om naar huis te gaan. Het was toch een gelopen zaak...
klappernootopreis	zaterdag 13 februari 2021 @ 17:11
	quote: Op zaterdag 13 februari 2021 17:06 schreef PaarsBeestje het volgende: [..] Heb je eerst een 51 man meerderheid voor nodig. Romney?