Trump Impeachment Trial Video Shows Timeline of Insurrection in Harrowing Detail (Video)

To make their case for the conviction of Donald Trump for inciting the attack of the U.S. Capitol on Jan. 6, the House of Representatives’ impeachment managers played a striking video montage of the violence at the Capitol and then-President Trump’s words at a rally preceding the attack, where he urged his followers to “fight like hell” and head to the Capitol.

Presented by the House’s lead impeachment manager, Rep. Jamie Raskin, the video came right before Raskin recounted his experience inside the Capitol, where he was accompanied by his daughter and son-in-law but were separated when insurrectionists began attacking the building.

“I couldn’t get out there to be with them in that office, and all around me, people were calling their wives and their husbands, their loved ones, to say goodbye. Members of Congress — in the House, anyway — were removing their congressional pins so they wouldn’t be identified by the mob as they tried to escape the violence,” Raskin said. “And then there was a sound I will never forget, the sound of pounding on the door like a battering ram. The most haunting sound I ever heard, and I will never forget it.”

When Raskin said he was finally reunited with his daughter and son-in-law, he apologized and told his 24-year-old daughter that “it would not be like this again the next time she came back to the Capitol.

“And you know what she said? She said, ‘Dad, I don’t want to come back to the Capitol,’” Raskin said, choking up with tears. “Of all of the terrible, brutal things I saw and I heard on that day, and since then, that one hit me the hardest. That, and watching someone use an American flagpole, with the flag still on it, to spear and pummel one of our police officers ruthlessly, mercilessly, tortured by a pole with a flag on it that he was defending with his very life.”

“Senators, this cannot be our future. This cannot be the future of America. We cannot have presidents inciting and mobilizing mob violence against our government and our institutions because they refuse to accept the will of the American people under the constitution of the united states,” Raskin also said. “Much less can we create a new January exception in our precious beloved Constitution that prior generations have died for and fought for so that corrupt presidents have several presidents to get away with whatever they want to do.”

Later on Tuesday, the Senate voted by a simple majority that the impeachment trial is constitutional. The trial will continue on Wednesday.

Watch the video above.

Comments