WSJ: House Democrats Make Case for Convicting Trump
WASHINGTON—House impeachment managers said that they were on solid constitutional ground in seeking to convict Donald Trump of incitement of insurrection ahead of the Jan. 6 Capitol riot, as the former president prepared to argue that it was unconstitutional for the Senate to use the impeachment process to convict an official who has left office.
In a trial brief submitted to the Senate Tuesday morning, the managers wrote that “it is unthinkable that those same Framers 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. There is no ‘January Exception’ to impeachment or any other provision of the Constitution.”
Mr. Trump had until noon to respond to a summons, while the House Democrats prosecuting the case had until 10 a.m. to submit a trial brief. Under the rough rules sketched out for the trial, the parties are charged with answering two main questions: whether Mr. Trump can be tried in the Senate for acts committed when he was president, and how they respond to the charge of “incitement of insurrection.”
Forty-five of the Senate’s 50 Republicans last week sided on a procedural vote with the argument that the impeachment trial is unconstitutional because Mr. Trump is now a private citizen, and Mr. Trump’s legal team plans to emphasize that point. The key premise of Tuesday’s filing will be the argument that convicting Mr. Trump would be unconstitutional, adviser Jason Miller said. The defense team also plans to argue that the impeachment proceedings were conducted inappropriately, pointing to the fact that Democrats introduced no witnesses or evidence and didn’t allow Mr. Trump to have a lawyer present.
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