House Democrats began two days of arguments in Donald Trump’s second impeachment trial Wednesday, trying to convince skeptical Republicans that the former president alone was responsible for inciting his mob of supporters who broke into the U.S. Capitol on Jan. 6 in a deadly riot that interrupted the presidential electoral vote count.
House impeachment managers laid out their case, accusing Trump of engaging in a “deliberate, planned and premeditated” effort to incite a mob to attack Congress.
The prosecutors capped their arguments with previously unseen footage from Capitol security cameras and police body cameras, showing how close the mob came to catching members of Congress during the attack.
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The arguments from the nine Democratic impeachment managers for the House, which impeached Trump last month, come a day after the Senate voted to move ahead with the trial even though Republicans and Trump’s lawyers argued that it was unconstitutional because Trump had already left office. All Democrats and six Republicans disagreed, concluding that there is legal precedent for the trial and that there should be no exceptions for impeachable behavior in a president’s last months in office.
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