Trump lawyers challenge impeachment trial legitimacy

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Former President Donald Trump’s lawyers said on Tuesday the US Senate lacks the authority to conduct his impeachment trial now that he has left office, while the Democratic lawmakers due to serve as prosecutors called him singularly responsible for the deadly Jan 6 attack on the Capitol.

Trump’s legal team and the nine House of Representatives Democrats set to prosecute him filed briefs with the Senate one week before the trial is scheduled to begin, reports Reuters.

His lawyers focused on an argument that last week won the support of 45 of the 50 Republicans in the 100-seat Senate in a failed vote to dismiss the case because Trump is a private citizen, having left office on Jan 20.

Trump’s team also denied he had fomented violence, saying in their 14-page brief that his remarks to supporters shortly before they stormed the Capitol that Democrats contend incited violence were protected under the US Constitution’s First Amendment right to free speech.

Challenging the case against Trump on the grounds that the Senate lacks constitutional authority to put a former president on trial would enable his fellow Republicans to vote against conviction without directly defending his incendiary remarks.

The House Democrats, in their pretrial brief, anticipated that post-presidency argument and rejected it. The Democrats urged senators to convict Trump – which would require a two-thirds majority – and then bar him from again holding public office.

“There is no ‘January Exception’ to impeachment or any other provision of the Constitution,” they wrote. “Presidents do not get a free pass to commit high crimes and misdemeanours near the end of their term.”

The Democratic-led House impeached Trump on Jan 13 on a single charge of inciting insurrection with his speech to supporters before the attack. He is the first US president to be impeached twice and the first to face trial after leaving office.

“It would be perverse to suggest that our shared commitment to free speech requires the Senate to ignore the obvious: that President Trump is singularly responsible for the violence and destruction that unfolded in our seat of government on January 6,” the Democrats wrote.

Trump’s defence team argued that not only does the Senate lack the authority to put Trump on trial but that the chamber also has no jurisdiction to prevent him from holding office again.

The Constitution states that conviction can lead to “removal from Office, and disqualification to hold and enjoy any Office of honour, Trust or Profit under the United States.”