<THREAD> Let's have a look at the impeachment trial brief just published by the House of Representatives' managers.

Bottom line: Impeachment exists for these offenses, even after an official leaves office - and this is *really* bad. Criminal, even.

OVERVIEW: Um, this was pretty bad. And the details are worse.

Why impeach Trump?

So no future officeholder *ever* tries this crap again - and to seal off the Queens Mobster from running any more campaigns - for starters.

The peaceful transfer of power is essential when your country has a stack of nukes as big as ours.

Nobody's ever attacked that ritual like Trump just did, with help from the GOP.

Felony incitement of insurrection
Express goal of murdering elected officials
Desecration of symbol of American power, democracy
Threatened line of succession between Trump and Pompeo
Major casualties, including a body count

YUP, THIS WAS PRETTY BAD.

Clean argument: No Trump? No coup.

Trump: repeatedly asked for violent coup, got violent coup attempt.

Zero repentance for attempted coup, in fact he liked it.

(Still unexplained: Why the Secret Service didn't evacuate Trump during the insurrection.)

Trump supported the insurrectionists even after the coup attempt.

Yeah, this argument is pretty tight, for impeachment or criminal charges, it seems.

Why impeach? No more violent coup attempts.

Seems simple enough.

As I've posited in a recent thread, a violent coup by right-wing paramilitaries seems to have been in the works since early 2020, months before the election.

Reminder: Trump and Roger Stone were pushing this EXACT SAME LINE PRIOR TO THE 2016 ELECTION. It's almost like - hypothetically, if they were both Russian agents - the goal would be to damage America by making its democracy illegitimate no matter *who* won.

There was a long history here of Trump's words being taken by his cult followers as calls to physical violence.

The "quid pro quo" here seems, Mob style, to have been "give me what I want, or my thugs will physically attack you."

Which, y'know, is bad for a president.

Even the shameless scoundrel William Barr was no help, finally.

This looks like a prosecutor wrote it as a draft for felony charges before a jury.

And might not need too much editing...

Here's where a whole lot of people at DoD and Capitol Police may have a lot of explaining to do - the warning was ample as to the threat.

Now we're just adding to the fact pattern: Trump incited violence throughout 2020.

Trump incited violence throughout 2020 (occasionally with an FBI informant around.)

There is no plausible deniability here. For any purpose.

The rest just hammers the case home.

It's not close, on impeachment or criminal charges. The question is what happens next.

More will emerge...daily.

It's bad.
</>

BREAKING: Trump's Mob attorneys have responded. Their response has two arguments:

1. You can't impeach him anyway, so who cares?

2. The election *was* stolen.

So now, Trump's new attorneys are joining his ongoing seditious conspiracy.
https://www.justsecurity.org/wp-content/uploads/2021/02/ANSWER-OF-PRESIDENT-DONALD-JOHN-TRUMP-45TH-PRESIDENT-OF.pdf