Dean In Spotlight as Case Against Trump is Made

Image from screenshot

The Washington Post website carried live coverage of Wednesday's first full day of impeachment proceedings against former president Donald Trump.

U.S. Rep. Madeleine Dean, D-4th Dist., who represents most of Montgomery County stood before the nation Wednesday and helped other Democrats outline the impeachment case against former president Donald Trump.

She was one of six members of the House of Representatives, called "House managers," who began the case against Trump on a single charge of inciting an insurrection against the U.S. government.

Over the course of roughly eight hours, the managers presented a cogent timeline designed to show how Trump's speeches and Tweets had prepared the ground for the violence on Jan. 6 when a mob breached the Capitol as both houses of Congress were meeting to certify the results of the presidential election.

The presentation included numerous clips of Trump's own words and Tweets, as well as video of his supporters reactions at rallies, as well as evidence of how Trump's words were being interpreted by far right extremists groups, who made their plans on the Internet, in plain view of the world, the intelligence community and the White House.

(Click here for a link to a Washington Post sampling of video evidence presented by the House managers.)

U.S. Rep. Joaquin Castro, D-Texas

Texas Representative Joaquin Castro of Texas worked his way through a recitation of all the times Trump had told his supporters the only way he could lose his reelection is if there was fraud, laying the groundwork for his subsequent claims that this is exactly what happened.

He showed Trump's refusal to commit to a peaceful transfer of power, saying instead he "would have to see how the votes turn out."

And as counting dragged on and it became apparent Trump was going to lose, his supporters began protesting and attacking places where the votes were being counted, Castro said.

"President Trump's months of inflaming and inciting his supporters had worked," Castrotold the Senate as headlines of angry Trump supporters showing up at election counting sites in Pennsylvania, Wisconsin and Michigan flashed by. "They showed up as he commanded. They had bought into his big lie."

U.S. Rep. Eric Swalwell of California said the violence on Jan. 6 was a result of Trump's many statements, his "back-up plan."

"Day after day he told his supporters false, outlandish lies that the election was rigged. He had no support, but that wasn't the point," said Swalwell. "He wanted to make them angrier and angrier and he was willing to say anything. This was never about pursuing legitimate claims. He would say anything he could to trigger and anger his base, and it worked."

U.S. Rep. Eric Swalwell, D-California

"He's literally telling them he won more votes in Detroit than there are people," Swalwell said as video of Trump supporters shouting outside the home of Michigan's secretary of state played. "He wanted to convince his supporters the election was stolen from them."

"He could have very easily told supporters stop threatening officials, stop going to their homes. He didn't," said Swalwell. The night before electoral college votes were certified, Trump issued 14 Tweets saying results were not legitimate.

"He directed all of the rage he had incited to Jan. 6. That was his chance to stop," said Swalwell. "He spent $50 million on ads to 'stop the steal' and amplify his message. they used the same words and phrases the president had been using for months. Now they had a specific purpose."

Trump's ads, paid for from his defense fund, were all scheduled to stop on Jan. 5, said Swalwell. "On Dec. 19, at 1:42 in the morning, our commander-in-chief Tweeted 'Big protest in D.C. on Jan. 6. Be there. It will be wild.' A date he repeated over and over," he said.

When they arrived on Jan. 6, "these crowds were ready to fight. He foresaw what was coming," Swalwell said. "He repeatedly over months told them to fight for a specific purpose; repeated the messaging even when he saw the violence it was inciting."

Dean, who presented on two different occasions, began by describing Trump's actions after the election as those of "an increasingly desperate president."

(Click here to see a compilation of of some of Dean's video evidence put together by the Washington Post.)

During her second presentation, Dean built on Swalwell's theme, saying "you saw a man who refused to lose. You saw a man willing to attack anyone who got in his way," says Dean.

"Combat. Fight. Violence. This was not just one speech, this was weeks and weeks of Donald Trump trying to hold on to the presidency."

Trump's lawyers filed 62 lawsuits in an attempt to overturn elections results and lost 61 one them, Dean said during her first appearance. The only victory he had was in Pennsylvania in a case that had no impact on the state's election results.

"Not a single court, not a single judge, agreed these election results should be invalidated," Dean said. Most cases did not even allege fraud. "Donald Trump told his supporter 'they're stealing the election,' but that was not true."

Trump then began calling elections officials in state's he needed to win to change the results of the election, including Pennsylvania, Michigan and Georgia. 

His "relentless attack" on Georgia Secretary of State Brad Raffensperger, said Dean, "had consequences," including death threats against Raffensperger, a Republican, and his family.

She played a recording calling Raffensperger "an enemy of the people," and a recording of Recording of Georgia election official, Gabriel Sterling, also a Republican calling on Trump to stop. Sterling said  "someone is going to get hurt. Someone is going to get shot. Someone is going to get killed." 

Sterling, Dean said, "foresaw what Trump was fomenting."

She was followed by U.S. Rep. Ted Lieu of California who told the senators, "I'll tell you how we got here. President Trump ran out of non-violent options" to remain in power.

Trump's Tweets at this point on the timeline, citing the ways he had helped various senators win elections and calling some part of "the surrender caucus," were designed to show them and his followers that "you owe him," Lieu told the senators.

Stacey Elizabeth Plaskett, D-U.S. Virgin Islands

Stacey Elizabeth Plaskett, a Democrat and the delegate from the U.S. Virgin Islands, revealed the many ways in which the way Trump's words were being interpreted. 

She showed a Biden-Harris campaign bus in Texas being surrounded by vehicles bearing Trump flags, one of which rammed the bus in an attempt to drive it off the road.

The next day, Trump Tweeted a news photo of the incident with the phrase "I love Texas." 

 

Plasektt also outlined how Trump's words were being interpreted on web sites devoted to Trump and to far-right extremists -- as instructions to take action.

They were sites, Plaskett said, the White House is known to monitor.

She noted that known members of the white supremacist group The Proud Boys had not only produced plans of the capitol building, but had "ear pieces" on Jan. 6 from which they were receiving information about where House members of Senators might be found.

One of the Internet memes from a  pro-Trump site displayed during the presentation by Stacey Elizabeth Plaskett.

When she returned, Dean recounted her experience from Jan. 6, one similar to every other House member and Senator who was in the Capitol that day.

"I will never forget that sound," Dean said of the rioters pounding on the doors to the House chamber. "Shouts and panicked calls to my husband and my sons, and the chamber of the House of Representatives turned to chaos."

After weeks of "riling his supporters," Trump, Dean said, pulled the trigger.

"The only thing different about his speech on Jan. 6 is he was no longer just telling them to fight to 'stop the steal,' said Dean. "He was telling them 'now is the time to do it. Here's where. Here's how," Dean says, adding he had posted 34 "relentless" Tweets since the morning of Jan. 5 to Jan. 6.

"The timing was no coincidence. He sent 34 Tweets because this was his last chance to rile up his supporters before the 'big wild event' he had planned," Dean said. 

Trump provoked his supporters to attack former vice president Mike Pence, said Dean. "This was his last chance to get his vice president to stop the certification," she said of Trump's Jan. 6 speech at the rally.

"He told them, and us, right at the beginning, that the only way to take back the country was to fight," Dean said, referring to "example after example" Plaskett presented of Trump praising violence rather than condemning it.

Trump spoke on Jan. 6 for 70 minutes using 11,000 words, and only once did he use the phrase "peacefully and patriotically making your voices heard." 

U.S. Rep. Madeleine Dean, in a gas mask,

being evacuated during the Jan. 6 attack.

By contrast, Dean said, noting that Trumps' defense team is likely show that clip, Trump used the word "fight" or "fighting" 20 times. At this point, Dean played a clip of Trump speaking and those in the crowd chanting "take the capitol" and "attack the capitol."

"You will have an illegitimate president," Trump told the crowd. "When you catch someone in a fraud, you are allowed to go by very different rules. We're going to the capitol, we're going to try to give our Republicans, the weak ones, the kind of pride and boldness they need to take back our country," Trump told the crowd.

"This was clearly not just some rally, or march or protest. This was about Donald Trump trying to steal the election for himself," said Dean. "He invited people he knew to be violent, then he pointed at us, and lit the fuse."

After a video showing Trump supporters marching up Pennsylvania Avenue toward the capitol chanting "fight for Trump, fight for Trump," Dean said, "there was only one fight left, and it was a mile up the road."

Her voice cracking, Dean concluded "the truth is this never would have happened if not for Donald Trump. And so they came, draped in Trump's flag, and used our flag, the American flag, to batter and to bludgeon. For the first time in more than 200 years the seat of our government was ransacked – on our watch."

Former Montgomery County DA Bruce Castor,

shown here speaking to a reporter after Wednesday's

proceedings, will have to counter the evidence 

presented Wednesday and Thursday.

After a break, Plaskett showed the long-promised security camera footage from inside the capitol, detailing how the rioters got into the building, scenes of Pence, senators and house members sheltering, wearing gas masks and being hustled to safe locations literally steps ahead of the rioters.

At least one of those rioters was wearing combat gear and carrying a metal baseball bat while two others were carrying flexible handcuffs.

The man photographed with his feet up on the desk of House Speaker Nancy Pelosi was armed "with a powerful stun gun," Plaskett said.

Some of those who breached the capitol have not been arrested and charged and told police they "would have killed anyone they got their hands on," Plaskett said.

In presentations that continued until nearly 8 p.m., Swalwell then continued to show the timeline of Trump failing to act as capitol police battled rioters "in hand-to-hand combat" for a full three hours.

Click here to see my live-Tweets of today's proceedings, which naturally focused on Dean.