House managers in the impeachment trial of Donald Trump built a strong case on Wednesday that showed the former president deliberately setting out about six months earlier on the path toward the 6 January riot. This is when the groundwork for the “Big Lie” began. 

The “Big Lie” refers to Trump’s charge that the election on November 3 2020 had been stolen or irregular.

The House lead impeachment manager, Representative Jamie Raskin, kicked off the Democrats’ presentations by responding to Trump’s lawyers:

“Some people think this trial is a contest of lawyers, or even worse, a competition between political parties. It’s neither; it’s a moment of truth for America… America needs the truth about ex-president Trump’s role in inciting the insurrection on January 6.”

Raskin repeated one of the opening comments he made on Tuesday: “We are having a trial on the facts.” He said he and his colleagues would set out all the evidence to show that Trump was not “an innocent bystander”, as suggested by his lawyers the previous day, but that he had planned and sent the mob to the Capitol.

“The evidence will show you that he assembled, inflamed and incited his followers to descend upon the Capitol to stop the steal, to block Vice-President Pence and Congress from finalising his opponent’s election victory over him.”

Trump had “told them to fight like hell, and they brought us hell on that day”.

Praising the actions of the police on the day, he spoke of an officer who was in tears after the riot owing to the racist slurs hurled at him by the mob, and asked: “What the f**k, man. Is this America?” Raskin closed his remarks by repeating the question:

In this screenshot taken from a congress.gov webcast, House impeachment managers show video evidence of the January 6 mob breaching the U.S. Capitol, during the second day of former President Donald Trump’s second impeachment trial on February 10, 2021 in Washington, DC. (Photo by congress.gov via Getty Images)

“That’s the question before all of you in this trial. Is this America? Can our country and our democracy ever be the same if we don’t hold accountable the person responsible for inciting the violent attack against our country, our Capitol and our democracy, and all of those who serve us so faithfully and honourably. Is this America?

Representative Joe Neguse then explained that they would show how the former president had “provoked” and “incited” the riot. The mob had operated in plain sight: “They believed, truly believed, that they were doing this for him, that this was their patriotic duty.”

Neguse added that this was the very reason Trump had had the power to stop the riot. 

He laid out a timeline showing that Trump, in the months and weeks leading up to the riot, had repeatedly used the “Big Lie” that “the election was stolen” and also told his supporters that it was their patriotic duty to “stop the steal”.

In October 2020, Trump was making comments like “we not gonna let this election be taken away from us, that’s the only way they gonna win” and “the only way we can lose, in my opinion, is massive fraud”. He ramped up in December 2020, after he had lost, with “we are going to keep on fighting… We will never surrender, we will only win”, and headed for a big finale in January 2020: “We have to go all the way, we’re gonna fight like hell, I’ll tell you now. We will not bend, we will not break… we will never, ever surrender.”

Neguse said his proudest moment in the Senate was going back after the riot to finish the formalisation of the Electoral College vote count. He was hopeful “that at this trial we can use our resolve and our resilience to again uphold our democracy… and holding president Trump accountable for his actions.”

Joaquin Castro, Representative for San Antonio, spoke about how the “Big Lie” came into play and its central role in the article of impeachment – incitement to insurrection. He started with:

“There’s a saying that a lie can travel halfway around the world before the truth has a chance to put on its shoes – and that was before the internet. The point of that saying is that a lie can do incredible damage and destruction, and that’s especially true when that lie is told by the most powerful person on Earth. Our commander-in-chief, the president of the United States.”

Castro said there was clear evidence that Trump, over many months and deliberately and with purpose, provoked his supporters, not in one speech on one day, but in a variety of tweets and comments and speeches, culminating in the riot. But he also pointed out that the starting point was the “Big Lie”, which Trump “set up” in July 2020 when he was asked in a television interview if he would accept the outcome of the election results: “I’ll have to see, look I have to see, I’m not gonna just say yes.”

Of all the things Trump had said on 6 January, not once had he asked his supporters to stop the attack, instead saying in a video message: “I feel your pain… you have to go home now… we have to have peace… ”

Trump also tweeted during the riot: “Thank you! Please support our Capitol Police Enforcement… ” To which Castro retorted: “Thank you for what? Thank you for injuring more than 140 police officers? Thank you for putting in danger all of our lives?”

(Trump’s twitter account was suspended on 8 January and the platform’s CFO announced on Wednesday that the suspension was permanent.)

Castro also detailed how Trump tried to stop votes from being counted while he was ahead, to make sure he stayed ahead, but that “President Trump knew that you can’t just stop counting votes, but he wanted to inflame his base. There was a purpose behind this. To truly make them believe that counting votes would result in a stolen, rigged election.”

In this screenshot taken from a congress.gov webcast, Impeachment Manager Rep. Joaquin Castro (D-TX) speaks on the second day of former President Donald Trump’s second impeachment trial at the U.S. Capitol on February 10, 2021 in Washington, DC. (Photo by congress.gov via Getty Images)

In closing, Castro was compelling and succinct: “On January 6, President Trump left everyone in this Capitol for dead.”

Californian Eric Swalwell was the perfect strategic follow-on from Castro, as he spoke of the months-long stoking of the frustrations of Trump’s supporters: 

“Donald Trump, for months and months, assembled the tinder, the kindling, threw on logs for fuel, to have his supporters believe that the only way their victory would be lost is if it was stolen, so that way President Trump was ready, if he lost the election, to light the match.”

Swalwell very neatly summarised the difference between Trump and an anonymous, everyman, average voter standing on a soapbox, making inflammatory statements: “And this wasn’t just some random guy at the neighbourhood bar, blowing off steam, this was our commander-in-chief.”

He showed how Trump had used $50-million in advertising to spread the word of the “Big Lie” from December until 5 January, the day before the Electoral College vote count in the Senate. Swalwell laid out how a range of tweets from December to January kept pointing supporters to the 6 January protest rally, which Trump promised would “be wild”.

Madeleine Dean showed how Trump had pressured the Justice Department and certain Republicans, through bullying and legal challenges, in an attempt to get the election results overturned or votes recounted:

“To be clear, not a single court, not a single judge, agreed that the election results were invalid or should be invalidated. Instead, court after court reviewing these challenges said these cases were, quote, not credible, without merit, based on nothing but speculation and flat-out wrong.”

Congressman Ted Lieu, a former US Air Force officer now serving in the Reserves, said Trump had run out of nonviolent options to regain office and saw his only way to take back the presidency as a violent insurrection. Lieu pointed out how Trump’s tweets in the days leading up to 6 January were directly “going after Senators and members of Congress”.

Lieu specifically mentioned Trump’s pressuring of Attorney-General Bill Barr into looking into election fraud after all his legal challenges had failed. Despite an outcry, Barr investigated but later announced that he had not found any fraud and resigned shortly thereafter.

Following Lieu, Virgin Islands Representative Stacey Plaskett spoke of Trump’s incitement of the Proud Boys (“Stand back and stand by”) and his gleeful and encouraging reaction to his supporters trying to drive a bus full of Biden supporters and campaign staff off the road.

“This was months of cultivating a base of people who were violent. Praising that violence and then leading that violence, that rage, straight at our door. The point is this: by the time he called the cavalry of his thousands of supporters… he had every reason to know that they were armed, that they were violent and that they would actually fight.”

Plaskett played never-before-heard audio of the Capitol police radioing for help and back-up on 6 January, with fear and panic in their voices:

“We’ve lost the line. We’ve lost the line. All MPD [Metro Police Department], pull back… We have been flanked and we’ve lost the line… We’re flanked. 10-33, I repeat 10-33 west front of the Capitol.”  

Swalwell, who told the Senate he comes from a law enforcement family (“My dad was a cop, my two brothers, my little brothers are cops who walk the beat today. I’m proud of them”) explained some of the situations and violence the police faced during the riot. A 10-33 was “the code for emergency, officer in need of assistance”.

The trial was presented with footage and audio not seen before. Some scenes were very traumatic, showing the violence inflicted on the police and how badly some of them were hurt. Most people have seen officer Daniel Hodges, who was trapped between two doors as rioters surged forward to get into the buildings and attacked him, also ripping at his mask. He says at one point: “I was on the ground and blinded, they started attacking me from all sides.”

Castro also pointed out that Trump’s comments on his vice-president, Mike Pence’s refusal to tamper with the certification of the Electoral Vote count, made Pence a target. Video footage showed rioters looking for Pence and House Speaker Nancy Pelosi, with the intent of killing them.

The Democrats painted a picture of a president who had incited an insurrection with deliberate, focused intent – without regard for his own party members also trapped inside the Senate, and putting his own vice-president in harm’s way simply for doing his job and confirming he did not have the power to block certification of the vote count.

The trial recessed for the evening with Republican Mike Lee unhappily calling for “statements relating to the content of conversations… were not made by me, they’re not accurate… I move pursuant to rule 16 that they be stricken from the record.”

A newspaper article had been quoted as saying that Trump, during the riot, had called Senator Tommy Tubberville but dialled Lee instead and that Lee had then handed the phone to Tubberville and been able to overhear Trump ask Tubberville to make additional objections to the vote count proceedings.

After a few minutes of confusion as to what he was trying to achieve, lead impeachment manager Raskin withdrew the remarks, saying they were not critical to their case.

Pundits lambasted Lee for making a mountain of a molehill, with some saying it was rather hypocritical to make a fuss about being quoted from newspaper comments in the Senate when he had not taken it up with the media when they first reported it.

The trial resumes at noon EST on Thursday (7pm South African time). DM