Former President Donald Trump’s impeachment defense team filed its final brief before the Senate trial begins on Tuesday. And the full, 78-page Trump legal brief contains a number of bizarre claims and partisan whataboutist attacks on Democrats and is replete with the same pugnacious, rhetoric befitting Trump’s now-departed Twitter feed.

Many observers quickly pointed out that, in the footnotes, the brief tries to cite as evidence of its defense of Trump against incitement of insurrection a post from the far right conspiracy blog Gateway Pundit, whose proprietor, Jim Hoft, was just banned from Twitter this past Saturday for repeatedly pushing the “big lie” about widespread election fraud.

But that is just the tip of the proverbial crazy iceberg.

#1 – It cites “Trump Derangement Syndrome.” The legal brief trots out this popular MAGA phrase and gives what is ostensibly a legal response to the House Impeachment Managers the feel of an angry thread on a pro-Trump subreddit. And it cites an op-ed on a British website that likewise claims TDS is driving the bipartisan House impeachment of Trump.

#2 – It dismisses news reports citing hundreds of hours of video evidence and first-hand eyewitness accounts over the insurrection as “hearsay.” In its “Statement of Facts Relevant to the Article of Impeachment” section, Trump’s legal team tries to brush away the overwhelming amount of incontrovertible primary evidence, and seems to want to preclude any accounts that don’t come from law enforcement, more than 100 of which were injured in the January 6th Capitol riot, including one who died from injuries sustained from a violent assault. All those media reports are instead sniffed at as merely “purported ‘facts.'”

The House Managers’ compulsion to obfuscate the truth is borne out of an absence of evidence relied upon in their ‘Statement of Facts.’ As the body vested with the sole power to impeach, the House serves as the investigator and prosecutor. There was no investigation. The House abdicated that responsibility to the media. Of the 170 footnotes in the House Manager’s Trial Memorandum, there were only three citations to affidavits of four law enforcement officers and they were merely referenced to support descriptions of what rioters were wearing and weapons that were found. The rest of the purported “facts” relied upon by these Constitutionally-charged prosecutors came from hearsay through the media.

#3 – It trots out the “Webster’s defines…” defense. In addressing Trump’s speech to the rallygoers on January 6th, the legal teams continually cherry-picks positive comments, while brushing off his incendiary remarks, and argues that the lack of a direct, prescriptive order to attack the Capitol exonerates Trump from any incitement charge. To further bolster its claim, it links to the Cambridge dictionary definition of the word “incitement,” as opposed to any legal precedent or statute.

Of the over 10,000 words spoken, Mr. Trump used the word “fight” a little more than a handful of times and each time in the figurative sense that has long been accepted in public discourse when urging people to stand and use their voices to be heard on matters important to them; it was not and could not be construed to encourage acts of violence Notably absent from his speech was any reference to or encouragement of an insurrection, a riot, criminal action, or any acts of physical violence whatsoever. The only reference to force was in taking pride in his administration’s creation of the Space Force. Mr. Trump never made any express or implied mention of weapons, the need for weapons, or anything of the sort. Instead, he simply called on those gathered to peacefully and patriotically use their voices.

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#4 – It attempts to give Trump an alibi against incitement based on a timeline of events — but instead serves to strengthen the House impeachment accusations. The legal team tries to engage in a logistical debunking on behalf of the former president, claiming the crowd could not have been so inspired to attack the Capitol because the riot was already underway when Trump finished his remarks. But a review of Trump’s speech on January 6th shows that he urged his supporters to march on the Capitol and told them “you have to show strength and you have to be strong” early on in his more than hour-long remarks, giving his supporters plenty of time to absorb his message and reach the Capitol before he concluded — even by the Trump legal team’s calculations.

A simple timeline of events demonstrates conclusively that the riots were not inspired by the President’s speech at the Ellipse. “The Capitol is 1.6 miles away from Ellipse Park which is near the White House. This is approximately a 30-33 minute walk. Trump began addressing the crowd at 11:58 AM and made his final remarks at 1:12 PM… Protesters, activists and rioters had already breached Capitol Grounds a mile away 19 minutes prior to the end of President Trump’s speech.”

#5 – It clings to the absurd “planning = exoneration” argument. Despite numerous insurrectionists having tied Trump’s incendiary rhetoric about election fraud lies and his many implied threats to Congress and his own vice president in the weeks before Jan. 6th, the former president’s legal team continues to pretend as if those setting-the-conditions comments either don’t exist or don’t matter.

Embarrassingly enough, even members of the Democratic leadership themselves have admitted on the record, albeit subsequent to January 6, 2021, that they believed the riots were pre-planned, with some, including Representative James C. Clyburn, the House Democratic Whip, going so far as to accuse fellow House Members of coordinating and planning the attack in advance as co-conspirators.The problem with that claim of course is that while the House Managers are clearly eager to make the most of this tragedy for their own purely personal political gain, House Leadership simply cannot have it both ways. Either the President incited the riots, like the Article claims, or the riots were pre-planned by a small group of criminals who deserve punishment to the fullest extent of the law.

But the House Impeachment Managers directly address this fallacy — often repeated on conservative media — noting the wealth of court documents that show that the incitement of MAGA supporters by Trump had begun weeks earlier than the actual attack on the Capitol.

In all, the impeachment defense brief reads like an everything-but-the-kitchen-sink rant that draws heavily from both the former president’s own partisan grudges and pro-Trump media talking points, with little regard for addressing any actual facts that contradict their alternate reality.

The post 5 Craziest Takeaways From Trump Team’s Impeachment Trial Brief first appeared on Mediaite.

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