Politics
Trump's impeachment defense team rests, arguing his words before riot were 'ordinary political rhetoric' – NBC News
Lawyers for former President Donald Trump’s defense rested their case Friday after less than three hours of arguments in which they echoed their client in calling the impeachment case built by Democratic House managers an act of “political vengeance” and alleged that Trump’s speech preceding the Capitol riot was merely “ordinary political rhetoric.”
The defense lawyers said that Trump’s words at the Jan. 6 “Stop the Steal” rally that preceded the violent storming of the Capitol was protected free speech and that convicting him for it would amount to “canceling” him and his supporters.
“This trial is about far more than President Trump. It is about silencing and banning the speech the majority does not agree with,” said Bruce Castor, one of Trump’s lawyers. “It is about canceling 75 million Trump voters and criminalizing political viewpoints. It’s the only existential issue before us. It asks for constitutional cancel culture to take over in the United States Senate.”
Senators are now posing written questions for representatives of both sides for four hours. Sen. Patrick Leahy, D-Vt., the Senate president pro tempore, who is presiding over the trial, will read the questions aloud.
The defense needs only to keep only 34 Republican senators in their camp to avoid a conviction of the former president. So far, few minds of GOP senators appear to have been changed and most still expect Trump to be acquitted.
The defense focused mainly on process and lawyerly arguments about the Senate trial and the prosecution’s case, as well as political arguments equating common Democratic rhetoric with Trump’s rally speech.
They did not address some of the prosecution’s core arguments, such as offering a complete explanation of Trump’s actions during the violence at the Capitol and a defense of why he didn’t do more to stop it once it was underway.
Sens. Susan Collins, R-Maine., and Lisa Murkowski, R-Alaska — who are both seen as swing votes — asked Trump’s lawyers when exactly the former president learned of the Capitol breach and what actions he took to stop it, adding, “please be as detailed as possible.”
Michael van der Veen, one of Trump’s lawyer, said he could not answer the question about his own client’s actions, blaming Democrats and saying he could only “piece together a timeline” from Trump’s tweets.
“That’s the problem with this entire proceeding,” he claimed. “The House managers did zero investigation and the American people deserve a lot better.”
Sen. Mitt Romney, R-Utah, another potential Republican vote for conviction, asked if Trump was aware former Vice President Mike Pence was in danger before he sent a tweet saying Pence “didn’t have the courage to do what should have been done to protect our Country and our Constitution.”
Van der Veen said no, and that the question was “not really relevant,” but Alabama Republican Sen. Tommy Tuberville told reporters that he told Trump that Pence had been evacuated from the Senate Chamber and was in danger moments before Trump’s tweet was posted.
Van der Veen seemed to grow increasingly frustrated with senators’ questions, refusing to say whether Trump lost the presidential election — “my judgment is irrelevant” — and declaring the trial “about the most miserable experience I’ve had down here in Washington, D.C.”
His lawyers also argued that Trump could not have incited an assault on the Capitol because it had been preplanned by extremists. “You can’t incite what was already going to happen,” he said.
And they attempted to equate the influence that Democrats argued Trump has with right-wing extremist groups to the support by some Democrats for largely peaceful racial justice protesters over the summer.
Van der Veen also said that extremists “of various different persuasions” had “pre-planned the attack on the Capitol” and “hijacked the event for their own purposes,” including members of Antifa. Multiple news outlets, including NBC News, have said there is no evidence that any members of Antifa were involved in the riots. On the contrary, as Democratic House managers said during their arguments, rioters were overwhelmingly tied to right-wing extremist groups like the Proud Boys.
Echoing language that was once frequently used by his client, van der Veen blasted the Democrats’ impeachment case against Trump as an “unjust and blatantly unconstitutional act of political vengeance” and a divisive “politically motivated witch hunt.”
And he repeatedly argued Trump was merely encouraging supporters to make sure their lawmakers were faithfully conducting a proper certification of the Electoral College Vote count.
“Far from promoting insurrection,” Van der Veen said, “the president’s remarks…explicitly encouraged those in attendance (at the rally) to exercise their rights peacefully and patriotically.”
Castor said Trump’s pugilistic rhetoric about members of Congress was merely about encouraging primary challenges to Republican lawmakers who he thought weren’t fighting hard enough.
“Nobody in this chamber is anxious to have a primary challenge. That is one truism I think I can say with some certainty. But that’s the way we operate in this country,” Castor said.
The defense played a dizzying and lengthy video montage of various Democrats using the word “fight,” arguing that no one had ever construed those words as literal encouragement to physically fight.
At the start of the lengthy montage, Democratic senators in the chamber were mostly stone faced. But that changed quickly, as more clips played, leading to murmurs, whispering, and some laughing.
Van der Veen said this was not an exercise in “whataboutism,” but rather, that he was making the case that “all political speech should be protected.”
The lawyers repeatedly said the impeachment fell short of the high legal standards expected in a criminal case, even though impeachment is a political process, not a legal one, and the Senate is not a court of law.
The short allotment used by Trump’s legal team means the trial is likely headed to a quick conclusion.
And because neither side is expected to request witnesses, closing arguments — and a final vote on conviction — could happen before the weekend is over.
Both sides are eager to move on, with Democrats needing Senate floor time to advance their Covid-19 relief bill and Republicans eager to put the trial and the uncomfortable questions it raises behind them.
Trump’s defense came one day after Democratic House impeachment managers rested their case against Trump by focusing on the damage his supporters caused at the U.S. Capitol on Jan. 6 and warning that he could incite further violence if he is not convicted.
That marked the end of two days of methodical and at times emotionally wrenching arguments from Democrats that included the showing of graphic and devastating never-before-seen footage from inside the Capitol during the riot.
It would take 67 senators — including at least 17 Republicans — to convict Trump.
Already this week, 44 of the 50 Republicans in the Senate have voted to declare the entire proceedings unconstitutional because Trump is no longer president, making it unlikely that any evidence would persuade them.
However, the question-and-answer phase of the trial later Friday could indicate more clearly what some Republican senators are thinking.
Trump is the first president to have been impeached twice by the House, and he is the first former president to be put on trial in the Senate. He was impeached Jan. 13 on an article charging him with “incitement of insurrection” for his role in the riot.
Politics
Florida's Bob Graham dead at 87: A leader who looked beyond politics, served ordinary folks – Toronto Star
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TALLAHASSEE, Fla. (AP) — A leader like Bob Graham would be a unicorn in the hyper-partisan politics of today.
The former Florida governor and U.S. senator wasn’t a slick, slogan-spouting politician. He didn’t have an us-against-them mentality. Sometimes, he even came across as more of a kind-hearted professor just trying to make the world a better place.
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Politics
The Earthquake Shaking BC Politics
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Six months from now Kevin Falcon is going to be staggering toward a catastrophic defeat for the remnants of the BC Liberals.
But what that will mean for the province’s political future is still up in the air, with the uncertainty increased by two shocking polls that show the Conservatives far ahead of BC United and only a few percentage points behind the NDP.
BC United is already toast, done in by self-inflicted wounds and the arrival of John Rustad and the Conservative Party of BC.
Falcon’s party has stumbled since the decision to abandon the BC Liberal brand in favour of BC United. The change, promoted by Falcon and approved by party members, took place a year ago this week. It was an immediate disaster.
That was made much worse when Rustad relaunched the B.C. Conservatives after Falcon kicked him out of caucus for doubting the basic science of climate change.
Falcon’s party had fallen from 33 per cent support to 19 per cent, trailing the Conservatives at 25 per cent. (The NDP has 42 per cent support.) That’s despite his repeated assurances that voters would quickly become familiar with the BC United brand.
BC United is left with almost no safe seats in this election based on the current polling.
Take Abbotsford West, where Mike de Jong is quitting after 30 years in the legislature to seek a federal Conservative nomination. It’s been a BC Liberal/United stronghold. In 2020 de Jong captured 46 per cent of the votes to the New Democrats’ 37 per cent and the Conservatives’ nine per cent.
But that was when the Conservatives were at about eight per cent in the polls, not 25 per cent.
Double their vote in this October’s election at the expense of the Liberals — a cautious estimate — and the NDP wins.
United’s prospects are even worse in ridings that were close in the 2020 election, like Skeena. Ellis Ross took it for the BC Liberals in 2020 with 52 per cent of the vote to the NDP’s 45 per cent.
But there was no Conservative candidate. Rustad has committed to running a candidate in every riding and the NDP can count on an easy win in Skeena.
It’s the same story across the province. The Conservatives and BC United will split the centre-right vote, handing the NDP easy wins and a big majority. And BC United will be fighting to avoid being beaten by the Conservatives in the ridings that are in play.
United’s situation became even more dire last week. A Liaison Strategies poll found the NDP at 38 per cent support, Conservatives at 34 per cent, United at 16 per cent and Greens at 11 per cent. That’s similar to a March poll from Mainstreet Research.
If those polls are accurate, BC United could end up with no seats. Voters who don’t want an NDP government will consider strategic voting based on which party has a chance of winning in their ridings.
Based on the Liaison poll, that would be the Conservatives. That’s especially true outside Vancouver and Vancouver Island, where the poll shows the Conservatives at 39 per cent, the NDP at 30 per cent and United lagging at 19 per cent. (The caveat about the polls’ accuracy is important. Curtis Fric and Philippe J. Fournier offer a useful analysis of possible factors affecting the results on Substack.)
And contributors will also be making some hard choices about which party gets their money. Until now BC United was far ahead of the Conservatives, thanks to its strong fundraising structure and the perception that it was the front-runner on the right. That’s under threat.
The polls also mark a big change in the NDP’s situation. This election looked like a cakewalk, with a divided centre-right splitting the vote and a big majority almost guaranteed. Most polls this year gave the New Democrats at least a 17 per cent lead over the Conservatives.
Politics
Political longevity of Sunak smoking ban likely to outlast PM – BBC.com
Unless the opinion polls shift and shift quite a bit, Rishi Sunak knows his time left as prime minister might be running out.
But he is the instigator of a smoking plan with substantial, cross-party political support, which looks set to herald a sizeable social change.
And that cross-party support suggests it’s an idea with greater political longevity than he might have, because Labour wouldn’t scrap it if they win the election.
In other words, whatever happens, it is what some in politics call a legacy.
As I wrote here when Mr Sunak first set out his plans last autumn – in what he described at the time as “the biggest public health intervention in a generation” – this is a government seeking to nudge, or elbow, a societal shift along: the near end of smoking.
On Tuesday, Health Secretary Victoria Atkins said she hopes creating a smoke free generation will “spare thousands of young people from addiction and early death as well as saving billions of pounds for our NHS”.
What was once mainstream is already marginal. Now the attempt to near-eradicate it, over time.
This isn’t the end of this discussion: what we have seen so far are the early parliamentary stages. There is more to come before it becomes law.
So that is the big picture, potential social change stuff. What about the politics?
Nearly 60 Conservative MPs voted against Mr Sunak’s idea.
Yes, they had a free vote – they weren’t told how to vote – but they defied him nonetheless. The cabinet minister Kemi Badenoch among them.
Another 100-ish abstained. The cabinet minister Penny Mordaunt among them.
A source close to Ms Mordaunt told me that she abstained because “she was not a supporter of the bill. She has many objections to it. The practicality of it. The implementation and enforcement of it. But being a serving cabinet minister she thought voting against it would look more confrontational and posturing than abstaining would have been.”
Who could that possibly be a dig at? Ah, Kemi Badenoch.
And what do Ms Mordaunt and Ms Badenoch have in common? A splash of ambition.
They are both talked up by some as future Conservative leaders.
Read more about the smoking ban
When you look at the numbers, nearly half of Conservative MPs couldn’t bring themselves to endorse one of their leader’s flagship ideas of the last six months.
Which tells you something about the fractious nature of the Conservative parliamentary party, although not a lot that wasn’t pretty clear to the regular observer already.
Labour are already gleefully talking up that it is a good job they backed the idea or Mr Sunak would have lost.
And they are also publicly pondering what those opponents might do once the chance arises to change the ideas, to bolt on amendments.
But then again they would be defeated if those in favour keep backing the plan as it is.
When governments manage to latch on to a plan which goes with the grain of where a society is already heading, the might of the law can shove it along profoundly and, probably, permanently.
This idea – for now at least – looks like it might be one of those.
And, for all his political troubles, it is Mr Sunak who is its author.
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