Harm from Donald Trump’s false and violent incitements will vex American democracy into the future unless he is convicted of impeachment and barred from future office, it has been argued.
The point was made by House prosecutors as they concluded two days of emotional arguments in his historic trial.
Making their case, they presented piles of new videos of last month’s deadly Capitol attack, with invaders proudly declaring they were merely obeying “the president’s orders” to fight to overturn the election results.
Mr Trump is accused of inciting the invasion, which prosecutors said was a predictable culmination of the many public and explicit instructions he gave supporters long before his White House rally that unleashed the attack on January 6.
“If we pretend this didn’t happen, or worse, if we let it go unanswered, who’s to say it won’t happen again?” argued prosecutor Joe Neguse.
Even out of office, Democrats warned, Mr Trump could whip up a mob of followers for similar damage.
Mr Trump’s defence will take the Senate floor on Friday, arguing that as terrible as the attack was, it clearly was not the president’s doing.
The proceedings could finish with a vote this weekend by the senators who are sitting as impeachment jurors.
The Democrats, with little hope of conviction by two-thirds of the evenly divided Senate, are also making their most graphic case to the American public, while Mr Trump’s lawyers and the Republicans are focused on legal rather than emotional or historic questions.
Five people died in the Capitol chaos and its aftermath, a domestic attack unparalleled in US history.
Mr Trump’s second impeachment trial, on a charge of incitement of insurrection, has echoes of last year’s impeachment and acquittal over the Ukraine matter, as prosecutors warn senators that Mr Trump has shown no bounds and will pose a continuing danger to the civic order unless he is convicted.
Prosecutors used the rioters’ own videos from that day to pin responsibility on Mr Trump.
“We were invited here,” said one. “Trump sent us,” said another. “He’ll be happy. We’re fighting for Trump.”
“They truly believed that the whole intrusion was at the president’s orders,” said Diana DeGette of Colorado. “The president told them to be there.”
At the White House, President Joe Biden said he believed “some minds may be changed” after senators saw chilling security video on Wednesday of the deadly insurrection at the Capitol, including of rioters searching menacingly for House Speaker Nancy Pelosi and Vice President Mike Pence.
Mr Biden said he did not watch any of the previous day’s proceedings live but later saw news coverage.
Videos of the siege have been circulating since the day of the riot, but the graphic compilation offered a moment-by-moment retelling of one of the nation’s most alarming days.
And it underscored how dangerously close the rioters came to the nation’s leaders, shifting the focus of the trial from an academic debate about the Constitution to a raw retelling of the assault.
Mr Trump’s lawyer David Schoen took issue, saying that the presentation was “offensive” and that the Democrats “haven’t tied it in any way to Trump.”
He told reporters on Thursday at the Capitol that he believed Democrats were making the public relive the tragedy in a way that “tears at the American people” and impedes efforts at unity in the country.
