🎥 Trump impeachment Day 2 highlights: Harrowing video footage

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Click here to watch the video shown by House Impeachment managers of the January 6, 2021 attack on the U.S. Capitol

WASHINGTON (AP) — House Democrats opened their first day of arguments in former President Donald Trump’s impeachment trial Wednesday with searing footage of the U.S. Capitol riot as they painted Trump as an “inciter in chief” who systematically riled up his supporters and falsely convinced them the election had been stolen, culminating in the deadly attack.

“He assembled, inflamed and incited his followers to descend upon the Capitol,” said the lead impeachment manager, Rep. Jamie Raskin, D-Md.

As she presented harrowing footage of the siege, Del. Stacey Plaskett, a Democrat representing the U.S. Virgin Islands and one of the prosecutors, said Trump had “put a target” on the backs of then-Vice President Mike Pence and House Speaker Nancy Pelosi, who were leading the certification of President Joe Biden’s election victory. “His mob broke into the Capitol to hunt them down,” Plaskett said.

Highlights from the first full day of arguments:

TRUMP’S WORDS COME BACK TO HAUNT HIM

Trump’s voice rang out in the Senate Chamber as Democrats aired video from his rallies and other remarks to supporters. Interspersed throughout were slides of Trump’s tweets contesting the election and promoting the Jan. 6 rally in Washington, which he promised would be “wild.”

The impeachment managers put Trump’s rhetoric on trial, from the months he spent laying the groundwork to contest the election results to the speech he delivered outside the White House egging his supporters to “fight” before they stormed the Capitol.

“He truly made his base believe that the only way he could lose was if the election were rigged,” said Rep. Joaquin Castro, D-Texas, another one of the prosecutors.

Trump, the House impeachment managers argued, whipped his supporters into a frenzy with the “big lie” that their votes had been stolen, and urged them to fight.

“This attack never would have happened but for Donald Trump,” said Rep. Madeleine Dean, D-Pa., choking back emotion. “And so they came, draped in Trump’s flag, and used our flag, the American flag, to batter and to bludgeon.”

There was no widespread fraud in the election, as has been confirmed by election officials across the country and former Attorney General William Barr. Dozens of legal challenges to the election put forth by Trump and his allies were dismissed.

NEW SURVEILLANCE FOOTAGE

To reconstruct the siege for senators, Democrats aired never-before-seen security footage from inside the Capitol that showed the attack unfolding. Their presentation included chilling video of the rioters rampaging into the building and audio of distressed police officers who tried in vain to keep them out. “We have been flanked and we’ve lost the line,” one frantic officer could be heard saying.

The presentation also showed the perilous moments when lawmakers and others, including Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer and Pence, were rushed to safety; body cam footage of an officer being beaten; the sounds of crunching, breaking glass; profane screams and violent threats; and cries as the rioters streamed into the building, some carrying riot shields and weapons.

“Where do they count the f—ing votes?” one member of the mob could be heard shouting. “You work for us,” one yelled at officers. “Where’s that meeting at?”

Democrats warned that many of the scenes would be hard to watch, including the horrifying screams of an officer being crushed in a doorway and video of one of the rioters, Ashli E. Babbitt, being shot to death by U.S. Capitol Police.

Also never before seen: Footage of Capitol Police officer Eugene Goodman, who has already been hailed as a hero, warning Sen. Mitt Romney, R-Utah, that the mob was headed his way. Romney turned and dashed in the other direction.

“I did not know that was Officer Goodman,” Romney told reporters after seeing it. “I look forward to thanking him when I next see him.”

Goodman also directed the mob away from the Senate Chamber and toward other officers.

PRAISE FOR PENCE

While the Democrats excoriated Trump, they lavished praise on an unlike figure: former Vice President Pence, outlining in exacting detail how his life had been put in physical danger and hailing him as a “patriot” for defying Trump’s pressure campaign to overturn the election results.

“Vice President Pence had the courage to stand against the president, tell the American public the truth and uphold our Constitution. That is patriotism,” said Plaskett, whose presentation included previously unseen footage of Pence and his family being evacuated from the Senate chamber as rioters spread through the Capitol.

Other footage showed the rioters chanting “Hang Mike Pence!” as others searching for him. At one point, Plaskett said, the rioters were within 100 feet of where Pence was sheltering with his family.

“They were talking about assassinating the vice president of the United States,” she said.

Many Republicans had been appalled by Trump’s treatment of his most loyal soldier during his final days in office. And the focus appeared to be a tacit acknowledgement of the Democrats’ intended audience as they try to convince Senate Republicans — many of whom are close with Pence — that Trump deservers to be punished for what happened.

“Mike Pence is not a traitor to this country. He’s a patriot,” said Castro. “And he and his family, who was with him that day, didn’t deserve this, didn’t deserve a president unleashing a mob on them, especially because he was just doing his job.”

TRUMP’S LAWYERS RETURN

They were merely observers as Democrats had the floor. But members of Trump’s legal team indicated they would stay the course despite a flood of criticism, both from Republican senators and the former president, about their performance during procedural arguments Tuesday.

“Not at all,” said attorney Bruce Castor when asked by reporters whether there would be any changes to their strategy. “No, I don’t anticipate any,” echoed David Schoen, another attorney.

Both Castor and Schoen said they had spoken to Trump on Tuesday, but Castor denied that the former president had expressed displeasure to him.

“Far from it,” he said, even as Schoen allowed there was room for improvement after Republican senators panned their performance as disjointed and unhelpful.

“To the extent they were critical of anything that I did, I just want to try to do a better job then,” he said.

“Bottom line is I think his team will do better, can do better,” said Sen. Lindsey Graham, D-S.C., a close ally of the president, after the two had spoken. While he acknowledged there was “room for improvement,” Graham said he’d tried to tell Trump that “the case is over. It’s just a matter of getting the final verdict now. ” All but six Republican senators voted Tuesday against moving forward with the trial.

MAKING IT PERSONAL

Dean described the House Chamber descending into chaos as she stood with colleagues in the gallery above the floor and made panicked calls to her husband and sons.

“Someone shouted up to us, ‘Duck!’ then ‘Lie down!’ then ’Ready your gas masks!” she remembered. “Shortly after there was a terrifying banging on the chamber doors. I will never forget that sound.”

Rep. Eric Swalwell, D-Calif., described the text he sent to his wife telling her to hug their young children.

“On Jan. 6,” said Castro, “President Trump left everyone in this Capitol for dead.”

Throughout the proceeding, the House managers served as personal witnesses of the horror and repeatedly invoked the word “us” as they appealed to fellow lawmakers targeted in the attack.

“He was coming for you, for Democratic and Republican senators. He was coming for all of us, just as the mob did at his direction,” said Rep. Ted Lieu, D-Calif., after describing Trump’s rhetoric.

REPUBLICANS HOLD FIRM

There appears little chance enough Republicans will break with Democrats to convict Trump at the end of the trial. And some of them appeared indifferent to the proceedings and unmoved by the evidence Wednesday.

Missouri Sen. Josh Hawley, who led the Senate challenge to the election along with Texas Sen. Ted Cruz, said the prosecutors’ case was “predictable” and included information that was already public.

The video evidence was “nothing new here, for me, at the end of the day,” said Hawley, who maintains the trial is unconstitutional.

Wisconsin Sen. Ron Johnson, another close ally of Trump, predicted the remainder of the trial was “going to be pretty tedious” and said the two sides would be better served if they just made their cases “in a couple hours” and be “done with this.”

And Kentucky Sen. Rand Paul, who sat with his back to the screen, writing notes on a pad, walked out in the middle of Plaskett’s description of the threats against Pence.

It was a notable contrast with Democrats like Maryland Sen. Ben Cardin, who described the prosecutors’ presentation of evidence as “painful” to watch.

While it forced them to relive a traumatic moment, “it also helps to bring closure, so I think it’s something that we have to go through,” said Cardin, who described Jan. 6 as “one of the roughest days of our life.”

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WASHINGTON (AP) — Prosecutors in Donald Trump’s impeachment trial said Wednesday they would prove that Trump was no “innocent bystander” but the “inciter in chief” of the deadly attack at the Capitol aimed at overturning his election loss to Joe Biden.

Opening the first full day of arguments, the lead House prosecutor said promised to lay out evidence that shows the president encouraged a rally crowd to head to the Capitol, then did nothing to stem the violence and watched with “glee” as a mob stormed the iconic building. Five people died.

“To us it may have felt like chaos and madness, but there was method to the madness that day,” said Rep. Jamie Raskin, D-Md.

The day’s proceedings were unfolding after an emotional start to the trial that left the former president fuming Tuesday when his attorneys delivered a meandering defense and failed to halt the trial on constitutional grounds. Some allies called for yet another shakeup to his legal team.

Trump is the first president to face an impeachment trial after leaving office and the first to be twice impeached. The Jan. 6 Capitol riot followed a rally during which Trump urged his supporters to “fight like hell,” words his lawyers say were simply a figure of speech. He is charged with “incitement of insurrection.”

Senators, many of whom fled for safety the day of the attack, watched Tuesday’s graphic videos of the Trump supporters who battled past police to storm the halls, Trump flags waving. More video is expected Wednesday, including some that hasn’t been seen before.

The prosecutors are arguing that Trump’s words weren’t just free speech but part of “the big lie” — his relentless efforts to sow doubts about the election results. Those began long before the votes were tabulated, revving up his followers to “stop the steal” though there was no evidence of substantial fraud.

Trump knew very well what would happen when he took to the microphone at the outdoor White House rally that day, almost to the hour that Congress gaveled in to certify Biden’s win, said Rep. Joe Neguse, D-Colo.

“This was not just a speech,” he said.

Trump’s supporters were prepped and armed, ready to descend on the Capitol, Neguse said. “When they heard his speech, they understood his words.”

Security remained extremely tight Wednesday at the Capitol, fenced off with razor wire and patrolled by National Guard troops.

White House press secretary Jen Psaki said Biden would not be watching the trial.

“Joe Biden is the president, he’s not a pundit, he’s not going to opine on back and forth arguments,” she said.

The difficulty facing Trump’s defense team became apparent at the start as they leaned on the process of the trial, unlike any other, rather than the substance of the case against the former president.

As the House impeachment managers described police officers maimed in the chaos and rioters parading in the very chamber where the trial was being held, Trump’s team countered that the Constitution doesn’t allow impeachment at this late date.

Even though the Senate rejected that argument in Tuesday’s vote to proceed to the trial, the legal issue could resonate with Senate Republicans eager to acquit Trump without being seen as condoning his behavior.

Defense lawyer Bruce Castor said Tuesday he shifted his planned approach after hearing the prosecutors’ emotional opening and instead spoke conversationally to the senators, saying Trump’s team would denounce the “repugnant” attack and “in the strongest possible way denounce the rioters.” He encouraged the senators to be “cool headed” as they assessed the arguments.

Trump attorney Schoen turned the trial toward starkly partisan tones, arguing the Democrats were fueled by a “base hatred” of the former president.

A frustrated Trump on Tuesday revived his demands to focus on his unsupported claims of voter fraud, repeatedly telephoning former White House aide Peter Navarro, who told The Associated Press in an interview he agrees. He is calling on Trump to fire his legal team.

“If he doesn’t make a mid-course correction here, he’s going to lose this Super Bowl,” Navarro said, a reference to public opinion, not the unlikely possibility of conviction.

Republicans made it clear that they were unhappy with Trump’s defense, many of them saying they didn’t understand where it was going — particularly Castor’s opening.

While six Republicans joined with Democrats to vote to proceed with the trial, the 56-44 vote was far from the two-thirds threshold of 67 votes that would be needed for conviction.

As the country numbs to the Trump era’s shattering of civic norms, the prosecutors sought to remind senators and the nation how extraordinary it was to have a sitting U.S. president working to discredit the election.

In hundreds of tweets, remarks and interviews as far back as spring and summer, Trump was spreading false claims about the election and refusing to commit to the peaceful transfer of power once it was over, they said.

As violence mounted in the states in the weeks and months before Trump supporters marched to the Capitol, he could have told loyalists to stand down. But he didn’t.

The mob “didn’t come out of thin air,” said Rep . Joaquin Castro, D-Texas.

The public scenes of attack were distilled in highly personal terms, first when Raskin broke down in tears Tuesday describing his family hiding in the Capitol that day. On Wednesday, Neguse, the son of immigrants, recalled telling his father how proud he was to return to Congress that night to finish the work of certifying the election. Castro said as a Democrat from Texas, he knew how hard it is to lose elections.

They also shared comments of the Capitol Police, including a Black officer who described racial epithets being hurled at him by the rioters.

“That’s the question before all of you in this trial, is this America?” Raskin told the senators.

It appears unlikely that the House prosecutors will call witnesses, and Trump has declined a request to testify. The trial is expected to continue into the weekend.

Trump’s second impeachment trial is expected to diverge from the lengthy, complicated affair of a year ago. In that case, Trump was charged with having privately pressured Ukraine to dig up dirt on Biden, then a Democratic rival for the presidency. It could be over in half the time.

The Democratic-led House impeached the president swiftly, one week after the attack. A Capitol police officer was among those who died.

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WASHINGTON (AP) — Opening arguments begin Wednesday in Donald Trump’s impeachment trial after an emotional first day that wrenched senators and the nation back to the deadly Jan. 6 attack on the U.S. Capitol.

Trump’s attorneys sought to halt the trial on constitutional grounds, but lost that bid on Tuesday. Their arguments were meandering at times, leaving Trump fuming over his lawyers’ performance and allies questioning the defense strategy. Some called for yet another shakeup to his legal team.

House Democratic prosecutors are seeking to link Trump directly to the riot that left five people dead, replaying videos of the rioters trying to stop the certification of Democrat Joe Biden’s victory and Trump’s statements urging them to fight the election results.

On Wednesday, they plan to use Capitol security footage that hasn’t been publicly released before as they argue that Trump incited the insurrection, according to Democratic aides working on the case.

Senators, many of whom fled for safety the day of the attack, watched Tuesday’s graphic videos of the Trump supporters who battled past police to storm the halls, Trump flags waving. More video is expected Wednesday, including some that hasn’t been seen before.

Trump is the first president to face an impeachment trial after leaving office and the first to be twice impeached. The riot followed a rally during which Trump urged his supporters to “fight like hell,” words his lawyers say were simply a figure of speech. He is charged with “incitement of insurrection.”

“That’s a high crime and misdemeanor,” Rep. Jamie Raskin, D-Md., declared in opening remarks. “If that’s not an impeachable offense, then there’s no such thing.”

On Wednesday and into Thursday, the managers plan to tell a “succinct” story, according to the aides, who were granted anonymity to discuss the upcoming arguments. They will start with Trump’s false claims that there was massive election fraud and build to the Jan. 6 riots as a “culmination” of his efforts to overturn his defeat.

The Democrats will argue that Trump inflamed and encouraged groups that had violent backgrounds, the aides say, and they will show how much worse it could have been. The aides said they will use the new Capitol security footage to make that case, but did not describe it.

Security remains extremely tight at the Capitol, fenced off with razor wire and patrolled by National Guard troops.

White House press secretary Jen Psaki said Biden would not be watching the trial.

“Joe Biden is the president, he’s not a pundit, he’s not going to opine on back and forth arguments,” she said.

The House impeachment managers described police officers maimed in the chaos and rioters parading in the very chamber where the trial was being held. Trump’s team countered that the Constitution doesn’t allow impeachment at this late date.

That’s a legal issue that could resonate with Senate Republicans eager to acquit Trump without being seen as condoning his behavior.

Lead defense lawyer Bruce Castor said he shifted his planned approach after hearing the prosecutors’ emotional opening and instead spoke conversationally to the senators, saying Trump’s team would denounce the “repugnant” attack and “in the strongest possible way denounce the rioters.” He appealed to the senators as “patriots first,” and encouraged them to be “cool headed” as they assessed the arguments.

Trump attorney David Schoen turned the trial toward starkly partisan tones, arguing the Democrats were fueled by a “base hatred” of the former president.

Full Coverage: Trump impeachment trial

Republicans made it clear that they were unhappy with Trump’s defense, many of them saying they didn’t understand where it was going — particularly Castor’s opening. Louisiana Sen. Bill Cassidy, who voted with Democrats to move forward with the trial, said that Trump’s team did a “terrible job.” Maine Sen. Susan Collins, who also voted with Democrats, said she was “perplexed.” Sen. Lisa Murkowki of Alaska said it was a “missed opportunity” for the defense.

Six Republicans joined with Democrats to vote to proceed with the trial, but the 56-44 vote was far from the two-thirds threshold of 67 votes that would be needed for conviction.

At one pivotal point, Raskin told his personal story of bringing his family to the Capitol that day to witness the certification of the Electoral College vote, only to have his daughter and son-in-law hiding in an office, fearing for their lives.

“Senators, this cannot be our future,” Raskin said through tears. “This cannot be the future of America.”

The House prosecutors had argued there is no “January exception” for a president to avoid impeachment on his way out the door. Rep. Joe Neguse, D-Colo., referred to the corruption case of William Belknap, a war secretary in the Grant administration, who was impeached, tried and ultimately acquitted by the Senate after leaving office.

If Congress stands by, “it would invite future presidents to use their power without any fear of accountability,” he said.

It appears unlikely that the House prosecutors will call witnesses, and Trump has declined a request to testify. The trial is expected to continue into the weekend.

Trump’s second impeachment trial is expected to diverge from the lengthy, complicated affair of a year ago. In that case, Trump was charged with having privately pressured Ukraine to dig up dirt on Biden, then a Democratic rival for the presidency.

This time, Trump’s “stop the steal” rally rhetoric and the storming of the Capitol played out for the world to see.

The Democratic-led House impeached the president swiftly, one week after the attack.