Impeachment Trial For Former President Trump To Begin Next Week

In a preview of the arguments that will play out during former President Trump's second impeachment trial, House prosecutors say Mr. Trump's responsibility for last month's deadly mob violence at the U.S. Capitol is "unmistakable," while the President's legal team said he was simply exercising his right to free speech and had no intention of inciting an insurrection.

The impeachment trial begins in one week, but Tuesday, the House impeachment managers and the attorneys representing President Trump had to file briefs laying out their respective cases.

It has been almost four weeks since the shocking attack on American democracy, an attack that the nine House members will argue occurred only because then-President Trump was unwilling to concede defeat. "Instead, he summoned a mob to Washington," they write in an 80-page filing, "exhorted them into a frenzy, and aimed them like a loaded cannon down Pennsylvania Avenue."

House prosecutors said Trump's unrelenting insistence that the election was stolen, despite all evidence to the contrary, set the stage for this high crime.

Based on the much shorter brief they filed today, lawyers for the former president plan to counter by insisting the trial is unconstitutional, as Trump is no longer in office, and beyond that, "[T]he 45th President exercised his First Amendment right under the Constitution to express his belief that the election results were suspect…"

It's not clear how long the trial will last.

Two more of President Biden'sCabinet picks were confirmed today, Alejandro Mayorkas as Secretary of Homeland Security, and Pete Buttigieg as Transportation Secretary.

Despite a two-hour meeting between the President and GOP Senators yesterday, both the Senate and House were taking procedural steps today to move forward with a $1.9 trillion COVID-19 stimulus plan that most Republicans oppose.

"Though the majority has claimed to want to work with Republicans on a bipartisan process for this relief bill," said Rep. Tom Cole, (R) OK-4, in a House Rules Committee hearing today, "we have yet to see any such bipartisanship here in the house."

Finally, Brian Sicknick, the Capitol police officer who died from injuries sustained in the January 6th attack, will lie in honor in the Capitol rotunda beginning tonight. There will be an overnight viewing for fellow officers, a tribute ceremony tomorrow morning, and then Officer Sicknick will be laid to rest at Arlington National Cemetery.