On Wednesday, the U.S. House of Representatives impeached outgoing President Donald Trump for the second time, formally charging him with “incitement of insurrection” after violence at the Capitol the previous week that is connected to at least five deaths. On Thursday, Donald Trump Jr. — who, unlike his father, still has an active Twitter account — freaked out about the impeachment on Twitter, claiming that reported foreknowledge on the part of law enforcement of potential violence at the Capitol last week means that the outgoing president “didn’t incite anything.” In reality, right there in the article of impeachment that the House passed, legislators spell out the fact that Trump’s incitement didn’t end with his comments at an outdoor event in D.C. last Wednesday. Rather, for months, he pushed virulent lies about the election.
Trump Jr. tweeted as follows:
‘If these federal law enforcement agencies had prior knowledge that this was a planned attack then POTUS didn’t incite anything. If he didn’t incite anything then Nancy Pelosi and the Dems used impeachment on yet another sham political witch-hunt.’
If these federal law enforcement agencies had prior knowledge that this was a planned attack then POTUS didn’t incite anything. If he didn’t incite anything then Nancy Pelosi and the Dems used impeachment on yet another sham political witch-hunt. https://t.co/W2BGLIxMKU
— Donald Trump Jr. (@DonaldJTrumpJr) January 14, 2021
It seems safe to assume that Trump Jr. has not actually read the article of impeachment that the House passed this week, although the document is only some five pages long and a significant chunk of the space is taken up by a list of names of the article’s co-sponsors. Referring to the January 6 joint session of Congress where legislators met to formally confirm the electoral college outcome, meaning Biden’s victory, the article of impeachment says as follows:
‘In the months preceding the Joint Session, President Trump repeatedly issued false statements asserting that the Presidential election results were the product of widespread fraud and should not be accepted by the American people or certified by State or Federal officials.’
Besides also recounting the fact that, on the day of the Capitol riot, Trump admonished his supporters to “fight like hell,” the article of impeachment also notes that days before the incident, Trump got on the phone with Georgia Secretary of State Brad Raffensperger (R) and pressured the official to “find” enough votes to swing the state’s certified election outcome to Trump. In short — Trump spent months lying about the election, and these lies provided the groundwork for the Capitol violence. Trump Jr.’s pretending like these months of lies don’t exist or are irrelevant is ridiculous.
Check out Twitter’s response below:
