On Tuesday, Trump’s two-person defense team filed a 14-page argument laying out some of their perspectives ahead of his impending Senate impeachment trial — and among other serious issues, the filing included a typo less than half a dozen lines into the document. The lawyers, including Bruce Castor and David Schoen, addressed their filing to the “Unites States Senate,” which is obviously not the actual name for the legislative body in which the trial will be taking place. Just this week, Axios revealed that then-President Trump apparently concluded that misspellings in court filings from infamous attorney Sidney Powell were “embarrassing,” and now he has one of his own.
Trump legal team couldn't get through the header without a typo. pic.twitter.com/iP65Qvmd9X
— Greg Miller (@gregpmiller) February 2, 2021
Besides the ineptitude suggested by the misspelling in the heading for the document, Trump’s lawyers also held on to the idea that there might be some legitimacy to Trump’s delusional claims about the recent presidential election after all, which is an utterly ridiculous notion. Initially, the House impeached Trump for a second time overall after his deranged lies about an imaginary nationwide election-rigging scheme in favor of Joe Biden provided a rhetorical cover for violent and apparently murderous rioters at the U.S. Capitol building on January 6. On that fateful day, a frenzied mob of Trump supporters stormed the U.S. Capitol and attempted to forcibly stop the then-ongoing Congressional proceedings to formally certify the electoral college outcome and Biden’s victory.
The legal team is apparently refusing to admit that Trump conclusively lost the election and that his claims are false. Trump’s lawyers wrote, in part, as follows:
‘After the November election, the 45th President exercised his First Amendment right under the Constitution to express his belief that the election results were suspect, since with very few exceptions, under the convenient guise of Covid-19 pandemic ‘safeguards’ states election laws and procedures were changed by local politicians or judges without the necessary approvals from state legislatures. Insufficient evidence exists upon which a reasonable jurist could conclude that the 45th President’s statements were accurate or not, and he therefore denies they were false.’
Although they relied heavily on legalese, the lawyers are apparently claiming that there’s “insufficient evidence” to prove whether Trump was wrong in his claims about the integrity of the 2020 election — which is, again, ridiculous. No court anywhere in the country ever accepted the idea of systematic fraud. Officials from the Department of Homeland Security, Justice Department, and state and local governments across the nation all confirmed that there is no legitimate evidence of any kind of systematic election fraud. What more evidence could these people possibly need to admit to the reality of what’s in front of them?
Trump’s lawyers also complained about the timing of the upcoming impeachment trial, which is taking place after Trump left office.
In their own filing, the House members who are handling the impeachment case noted, however, that there’s no “January exception” in the Constitution, and the ex-president “must answer comprehensively for his conduct in office from his first day in office through his last.” The Constitution doesn’t provide an escape from accountability for impeachable offenses if those offenses are committed without enough time left in office to hold a Senate trial for the president before leaving power.
The managers argue: "There is no ‘January Exception’ to impeachment or any other provision of the Constitution." https://t.co/cx7JpthkbX
— Alex Moe (@AlexNBCNews) February 2, 2021