BREAKING NEWS: Attorney Plays Trump And Jan. 6 Footage To Disqualify Him From 2024 Ballot
An attorney trying to prevent former President Trump from access to the 2024 ballot makes his case in a Colorado courtroom using footage from January 6, 2021.
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00:00 Thank you, Your Honor. Good morning. Six Colorado voters, four Republicans, and two independents
00:10 brought this case to ensure Colorado has a fair election among eligible candidates. Trump
00:17 incited a violent mob to attack our Capitol to stop the peaceful transfer of power under
00:24 our Constitution. That mob got within 40 feet of Vice President Pence after they chased
00:31 him from the Senate floor. That mob tried to hurt and kill our elected leaders. And
00:38 we are here because Trump claims, after all that, he has the right to be president again.
00:46 But our Constitution, our shared charter of our nation, says he cannot do so. And Colorado
00:53 law says this court must ensure that only eligible candidates appear on our ballots.
01:00 Now, this case has four basic components. Trump took an oath as an officer of the United
01:08 States. January 6 was an insurrection against the Constitution. Trump engaged in that insurrection.
01:17 And the Secretary of State enforces constitutional qualifications. And this court can order her
01:23 to keep ineligible candidates off the ballot. Now, turning to the first element, there's
01:29 no dispute Trump took an oath as president. That's stipulated. I'll address their novel
01:35 claim that his oath somehow falls outside of the 14th Amendment later. And what happened
01:41 on January 6 was an insurrection against the Constitution. That's not in serious dispute.
01:48 Trump's own impeachment lawyer admitted as much. Many others have found it. We'll hear
01:56 today and tomorrow from three people who were there that day. First are two officers, Officer
02:03 Danny Hodges and Officer Winston Tangine. They fought the mob, hand-to-hand combat,
02:10 you'll see. We'll also hear from Representative Eric Swalwell, who will explain how that mob
02:17 disrupted the core constitutional process of the peaceful transfer of power. We'll also
02:24 hear from Professor Gerard Magliocca. He is one of the nation's leading experts on the
02:31 Section 3 of the 14th Amendment. He's written several peer-reviewed articles on Section
02:36 3 and many articles and books on the history of the 14th Amendment. He will explain that
02:43 when the 14th Amendment was ratified, insurrection against the Constitution referred to any public
02:50 use or threat of violence by a group to prevent or hinder the execution of the Constitution.
02:57 January 6 easily meets that standard. Trump assembled a violent mob that tried to prevent
03:05 the constitutional transfer of power and did, in fact, stop that transfer of power for some
03:11 time. Now turning to President Trump's role in all of this, he engaged in this insurrection
03:18 on January 6. He began by undermining the process for selecting our president and sowing
03:26 doubts about elections. This early pattern of behavior shows Trump's use of common extremist
03:32 tactics using language that played into existing conspiracy theories. He was a leading proponent
03:39 of the birther myth about President Obama. He questioned the validity of elections, even
03:44 the one he won in 2016, claiming he actually got millions more popular votes than he really
03:49 did. And leading up to the 2020 election, he developed a plan to cast doubt on the results.
03:57 And after the election, he quickly focused on the January 6 transfer of power to disrupt
04:04 the peaceful transfer of power. In December, he started laying the groundwork for disrupting
04:10 the constitutional process on January 6. On December 19, he posted that there will be
04:17 a big protest in D.C. on January 6. Be there. We'll be wild. A week later, he talked about
04:27 never giving up. See everyone in D.C. on January 6. See you in Washington, D.C., on January
04:37 6. Don't miss it. Again, see you in D.C. These tweets continued. Big protest rally. Stop
04:49 the steal. We'll hear about the importance of that language later on. Again, talking
04:55 about the 6, over and over again. Here he retweeted a claim that, quote, the cavalry
05:00 was coming. We'll hear about Trump's invocation of military terms to support and rile up his
05:07 supporters. More admonitions. Come to D.C. on January 6. Over and over and over again.
05:24 And then on January 6, he reposted his speech. Now, in addition to this drumbeat of pleas
05:35 to his supporters to have him come to Washington to disrupt the transfer of power on January
05:41 6, he made repeated deliberate statements to bring a mob primed for violence to D.C.
05:49 on January 6. He refused to criticize the Proud Boys, an important part of the insurrection
05:56 on January 6, in a presidential debate, and instead told them to stand back and stand
06:01 by.
06:02 Stand back and stand by.
06:14 Coming up to January 6, he praised the Trump train, which is a group of trucks that intimidated
06:20 and forced Biden campaign workers on a bus off a highway in Texas. He tweeted, I love
06:27 Texas, with this video.
06:55 He deliberately praised his supporters that used violent techniques to intimidate political
07:02 opponents. Again, leading up to January 6, he used violent inflammatory rhetoric. He
07:11 claimed that if this happened to someone else, they would consider it an act of war and fight
07:17 to the death. Right before January 5, he started threatening lawmakers with the crowd he assembled.
07:27 On the afternoon of January 5, he said, Washington is being inundated with people. Our country
07:37 has had enough. They won't take it anymore. And he got even more bold a few minutes later
07:43 when he said, I hope the Democrats, and even more importantly, the weak and effective rhino
07:48 section of the Republican Party, are looking at the thousands of people pouring into DC.
07:55 They won't stand for a landslide election victory to be stolen. And then he identified
08:01 three Republican leaders by name. He threatened leaders of his own party with the mob he assembled.
08:09 Now, you will hear from an expert in political extremism who will discuss Trump's relationship
08:17 with violence and political extremism. Professor Peter Seamy has studied extremists for his
08:24 whole career. He's written books, provided testimony at the January 6 committee's invitation,
08:32 and he will explain how communications like we just saw and additional ones by President
08:38 Trump fit into a longstanding call and response pattern that he developed with supporters,
08:44 where he instigated violence and praised those who committed violence against political opponents
08:49 on his behalf. Now, turning back to what happened on January 6, once Trump brought the crowd
08:58 there, he told them to march to the Capitol and fight. Let's look at two portions of his
09:05 speech on the ellipse on January 6.
09:08 >> Republicans are constantly fighting like a boxer with his hands tied behind his back.
09:17 It's like a boxer. And we want to be so nice. We want to be so respectful of everybody,
09:25 including bad people. And we're going to have to fight much harder. And Mike Pence is going
09:32 to have to come through for us. And if he doesn't, that will be a sad day for our country
09:40 because you're sworn to uphold our Constitution. Now it is up to Congress to confront this
09:50 egregious assault on our democracy. And after this, we're going to walk down, and I'll be
09:56 there with you, we're going to walk down, we're going to walk down, any one you want,
10:03 but I think right here we're going to walk down to the Capitol.
10:07 (Cheering.)
10:10 >> And we're going to cheer on our brave senators and congressmen and women. And we're probably
10:17 not going to be cheering so much for some of them. Because you'll never take back our
10:25 country with weakness. You have to show strength and you have to be strong.
10:30 (Cheering.)
10:32 >> But I said something's wrong here, something's really wrong. It can't have happened. And
10:37 we fight. We fight like hell. And if we don't fight like hell, we're not going to have a
10:42 country anymore. Our exciting adventures and boldest endeavors have not yet begun. My fellow
10:50 Americans, for our children and for our beloved country, and I say this, despite all that's
10:59 happened, the best is yet to come.
11:03 (Laughter.)
11:06 >> So we're going to -- we're going to walk down Pennsylvania Avenue -- I love Pennsylvania
11:15 -- and we're going to the Capitol and we're going to try and give -- the Democrats are
11:22 hopeless. They never voted for anything. Not even one vote. But we're going to try and
11:28 give our Republicans, the weak ones, because the strong ones don't need any of our help,
11:34 we're going to try and give them the kind of pride and boldness that they need to take
11:41 our country. So let's walk down Pennsylvania Avenue. I want to thank you all. God bless
11:48 you and God bless America.
11:53 >> Two important features of that speech we just saw. First is his focus of the crowd
12:00 on the actions of Mike Pence that were shortly to happen in the Senate chamber. And second,
12:06 his repeated reference to fight and urging his supporters to fight. Now, I'm sure that
12:14 Trump will claim that because he used the words, quote, "peacefully and patriotically"
12:20 later in that speech, that he did not, therefore, engage in insurrection. That claim is wrong
12:26 at every level. He used "fight" 20 times in that speech. "Peaceful" only once. Professor
12:36 Seamey explains how leaders use language like that, like the "peacefully" comment, to create
12:41 plausible deniability that is just filter. Trump well knew how his reporters would respond.
12:49 He saw what happened when he told the Proud Boys to stand back and stand by and how they
12:53 treated that as an endorsement. In fact, his use of "peaceful" in the rally and again, use
13:00 in this proceeding, highlights that he knew the power of his other words. If you don't
13:06 think people are going to engage in violence after what you told them or that your words
13:11 will provoke violence, you don't need to say, "Be peaceful." They already will be.
13:17 But that speech that we just saw got the crowd worked up and headed to the Capitol. I'll
13:23 show you a video taken from the top of the Capitol at 2.23. You can see the time stamp
13:31 in the upper left. So after the speech, the crowd followed Trump's orders and marched
13:37 down to the Capitol. But as you can see from the video, much of the rally, they weren't
13:42 doing much. They were just standing there. So what did Trump do right after, the minute
13:47 after this video? He posted a tweet that incited the mob to violence. Again, channeling on
13:57 the focus on Mike Pence he used earlier in the day, he described Mike Pence as weak and
14:02 said he didn't have the courage to do what should have been done to protect our country
14:06 and our Constitution. USA demands the truth. And look what happened instantaneously with
14:15 this tweet. We see people Reddit in the crowd from Bullhorns. They immediately started chanting
14:21 hang Mike Pence and the violence began in earnest.
14:46 [inaudible]
15:11 [inaudible]
15:16 [inaudible]
15:41 [inaudible]
15:56 [inaudible]
16:17 [inaudible]
16:45 [inaudible]
17:13 [inaudible]
17:40 [inaudible]
18:07 [inaudible]
18:36 [inaudible]
18:39 So within 30 minutes of the tweet, we see the picture from the same vantage point we
18:46 saw before. The crowd had overrun the barriers, but this was the back of the crowd. This was
18:53 a crowd that was not the front line of the attack of the assault on our constitutional
18:59 process. We have video which shows Officer Hodges within 30 minutes of the tweet. He
19:08 had retreated to the tunnel and was trying to defend the tunnel against this mob.
19:29 [inaudible]
19:42 That is Officer Hodges, who you'll hear from shortly. This was an interruption that Trump
19:53 led. As we've seen, he summoned and organized the mob. He gave the mob a common purpose,
20:02 disrupt Mike Pence's certification of the election. He did that by inciting the mob at the
20:09 ellipse. He knew that mob was armed and dangerous. He told the mob to go to the Capitol with
20:17 him. Once they were there and not sufficiently violent, he incited the mob with that 224
20:27 p.m. tweet and others that followed. And importantly, he helped the mob by refusing to mobilize
20:35 resources to stop the attack. He spent three hours watching it unfold on TV without doing a
20:45 single thing, even though he was the most powerful person in the world.
20:52 Now, what does Trump say in response to this overwhelming evidence? He says a few things.
20:59 He says, "Hey, I said peacefully in the speech, so I didn't engage in the insurrection." We
21:04 already talked about that. That peacefully proves his intent. He then says, "I wasn't
21:11 there. I did not engage in insurrection." But he did. He kept quiet. He tweeted inflammatory
21:25 statements that incited the mob and watched the mayhem unfold for three hours with doing
21:34 nothing. He continued to try to pressure Congress to do the mob's bidding and overturn the
21:39 election. And lastly, Trump says, "Others failed to protect the Capitol, so it's not my fault
21:50 there was an insurrection." He blames others.