Is the legal profession more stressful than I think it is? Trump keeps finding lawyers to defend him, some of whom used to do a good job, but all of them now seem to have lost their marbles as they got older.
What happened to Bruce Castor? He used to be a … somewhat good lawyer, I guess? It can’t just be him succumbing to Trump’s charisma. That same aura didn’t cause Sidney Powell to suddenly forget how to spell, either.
It shows that he was not just a casual speaker at something that got out of hand. Like if I was invited to speak at a conference, showed up for an hour and a riot broke out - that’s very different than if I organized a conference, paid for a crowd to attend, helped get people there, whipped the crowd up with lies for weeks/months, and encouraged them to storm a building.
To repeat myself:
It shows he was MORE than simply a key note speaker.
He was a funder, organizer and promoter. That makes him more culpable for the results.
It doesn’t though. I mean it halfway does to me, Joe Citizen with an opinion*. But if I were on a jury where the standards were ‘beyond a reasonable doubt’ it’s circumstantial, not a smoking gun.
Now the Senate isn’t bound by those rules. They could vote to convict Trump because they don’t like his hair. But it is just the sort of reasonable doubt cagey Republicans and crazy cultists can use to dodge doing the right thing.
OK, I guess I just took that as a given. Basically, to me, this revelation was as much of a shock as learning that the Jo Camel advertising campaign was funded by R.J. Reynolds.
No, it shows that the rally was planned for a long time and was not a spontaneous rally or something thought up short-term. They’re laying the ground work for claiming this was premeditated and that Trump was not simply an innocent politician taken by surprise that a mob turned violent but contributed to riling up the masses and priming them for violence.
Also:
And:
Well, beside the obvious, there is fundraising, since iirc trump has raised 10 time more money on “stop the steal” than was spent on it.
But I dont think “conning my gullible supporters out of money” will be a raised defense,
Obligatory Clockwork Orange reference.
Powerful remarks and clear evidence from the Democrats on the impeachment team.
Too bad that 50 senators have basically tuned them out at this point, and don’t give one tiny shit about the facts.
44 or 45, more likely. But the case must be made. Yesterday’s case actually flipped a Republican. Maybe today’s case will flip another.
It shows a pattern of conduct. He spent a lot of time and money telling a pack of lies to get people all riled up, and he succeeded. And having gotten a sizable mob all riled up and having made sure they ‘knew’ that Congress could fix it but would need to be pressured into it, he sent them thataway.
Whether or not he expected it to get out of hand, it was damned sure a realistic possibility that a reasonable person could have foreseen. (The only reason I wasn’t worried that morning was that I assumed there’d be a couple thousand cops in riot gear protecting the Capitol. But of course we know now that his minions had made sure the Capitol wouldn’t be protected to any greater extent on January 6th, 2021 than it had been on January 6th, 2020, and that the Capitol police, and Congress itself, would have to jump through hoops to summon help if needed.) If you start a campfire in the woods and leave it unattended, you may not expect it to start a forest fire, but you know it could. And if you do that, and the forest catches fire, you’re damned sure responsible.
And that pattern of conduct continued as Trump watched the insurrection on TV and did diddy-squat about it for hours.
To be fair, about 40ish of the Dems can tune them out too, as they already know the facts, and have already made their decision as well.
Although, truth be told, we don’t know how much of that money was actually spent to spread lies and how much was just discretely absconded with.
Follow the money except for Trump’s? How does this make any sense? Evidentially (is that a word?) it shows a direct financial tie between one of Trump’s entities and the rally. He wasn’t just a ‘keynote speaker’, he funded the damned thing! 
Just because this linkage may be known to some doesn’t make it any less relevant to the question of intent: Disgraced ex-president Donald Trump’s campaign funded a rally called ‘Stop the Steal’, which turned into an Insurrection.
Holy shit! I had no idea how much planning actually went into this attempted coup. Stacey Plaskett is laying it all out really clearly.
^ That post right there is one reason it’s important to have this trial.
No shit. She’s crushing it.
And I like how she is CLEARLY laying out how the Trump administration had to KNOW that this rally would lead to violence. And this was the goal.
You also could add that as the head of the nation, it was his job description to know the likely outcomes of his words - heck he would have had a whole train of non - political advisors such as FBI and other agencies who would have provided him with reports.
If there had been witnesses, we would have seen some of those reports from the various law agencies along with internal terrorism reports from less familiar agencies.
We also would have had other representatives called to account for things they said and did, and under oath they would have been under some massive pressure to comment and provide statements.
That would have been slow and ugly, and it won’t necassarily get in the way of criminal proceedings.
This is not a show for the GOP, we know the likely outcome of the hearing, but the words are being reported on and broadcast around the country and the world - it will have an effect on party funding and it will have future effects when other election campaigns are being run - you can expect the stain of this will carry through to state elections.
If Trump is not found by the GOP to be at fault despite the overwhelming evidence it is going to hit them badly - maybe not even in an up front way - we still jave a certain view of Nixon all these years on, not finding Trump guilty will damage GOP, that’s why the language is being kept very accessible and the procedures as uncomplicated as possible