After three days of brutal evidence presented by House impeachment managers, Trump's defense is expected to wrap up Friday night in a matter of a few hours total. He doesn't need a defense of course, because his enablers are the jurors.
Former President Donald Trump's defense team expects to finish its arguments in the Senate's impeachment trial by Friday night, two sources tell CNN.
His lawyers will take the Senate floor on Friday after impeachment managers wrap up on Thursday, but they are not currently expected to use all of their allotted time. Each side gets 16 hours for presentations.
Attorneys David Schoen, Bruce Castor, Michael van der Veen and William Brennan are all expected to speak during Friday's arguments, according to a person familiar with the latest plan. Using videos of Democratic lawmakers, they plan to argue that Democrats glorified violence by recreating the January 6 riot, will claim the trial is unconstitutional and stress Trump's First Amendment rights.
Because the legal team is so disorganized, Trump's allies are apprehensive about how the defense will go. Trump erupted Tuesday as Castor made a meandering opening argument during which he praised the prosecutors.
Several of Trump's allies lobbied him to get rid of Castor that day, which Trump briefly considered, according to two people. Trump was upset as he watched multiple people, including his usual allies on Fox News, trash Castor's performance. But Castor has remained on the team and is expected to present, at least in part, on Friday. He has told people he wasn't planning on speaking Tuesday, which led to the muddled speech. Castor also admitted on the Senate floor that he swapped speaking roles with David Schoen because Democrats presented such a strong opening argument.
Allies reassured the angry former president by reminding him he's still headed toward acquittal. President Joe Biden told reporters he thought grim new footage presented Wednesday could have changed the minds of some senators, but conceded, "I don't know."
Nobody expects enough Republicans to vote to acquit, and next week Trump will declare victory after the vote and then unleash his cultists in a wave of deadly rhetoric. It will be up to the states to administer justice, as our Senate is infested with evil GOP idiots. Hell, GOP senators are falling asleep and leaving the chamber during the trial because it bores them.
Senators are tuning out as former President Donald Trump’s impeachment trial grinds into its third day, with many falling asleep and more than a dozen Republicans exiting the chamber at various intervals.
As many as 15 seats of Republican senators were empty during the first few hours of the trial Thursday, compared to just a handful of Democrats who were outside of the chamber, according to pool reports.
Sens. Lindsey Graham (R-S.C.) and Rand Paul (R-Ky.) were both away from their desks, for instance, while Sen. Jim Risch (R-Idaho) was in the basement on his phone, CNN’s Manu Raju reported.
Many within the chamber were preoccupied with other activities: Sens. Tom Cotton (R-Ark.) and Chuck Grassley (R-Iowa) were reading papers, while, according to CNN’s Jeremy Herb, Sen. Rick Scott (R-Fla.) “had a blank map of Asia on his desk and was writing on it like he was filling in the names of the countries.”
On both sides of the aisle, a general malaise was setting in, with many senators reportedly appearing to struggle to stay awake, including Sens. Bernie Sanders (I-Vt.), Tom Carper (D-Del.), Pat Toomey (R-Pa.) and Tommy Tuberville (R-Ala.).
Even Trump’s lawyers were checked out, with David Schoen and Bruce Castor reportedly not taking notes and Schoen even leaving the chamber to speak to reporters and participate in several TV news interviews.
Asked by Raju why he was breaking from the trial to do interviews, Schoen said impeachment managers’ arguments are “more of the same thing,” labeling their use of footage of Capitol rioters citing Trump as their inspiration, “offensive, quite frankly.”
“It’s the same as yesterday and the same as the day before… it’s just redundant. The same thing, over and over again,” Sen. Jim Inhofe (R-Okla.) told reporters of impeachment managers’ arguments on Thursday. “To me, the more you hear it, the less credibility there is in it.”
They're bored because the outcome is assured. It's a mobster trial where the jurors are accomplices of the criminal.
As to justice, well, even if a miracle happens and Trump is indicted in a state trial, he'll never be convicted because rich people never go to jail in this country.
Besides, there's no way jurors in any Trump trail can be kept safe. Not when the cultists are police, prosecutors, and federal law enforcement agents at all levels. They will be found, and they will pay the price, and they will acquit, or they and their families will be "accidentally" killed in police raids.
That's how America works.
The impeachment trial will be over in a matter of days.
The trial of America begins when Trump is acquitted.
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