Mr Trump’s lawyers ridiculed the request in a letter by lead House prosecutor Jamie Raskin to answer questions over the 6 January attack on the US Capitol as a “public relations stunt.” “Your letter only confirms what is known to everyone: you cannot prove your allegations,” attorneys Bruce Castor and David Schoen said in their reply.A senior adviser to Mr Trump, Jason Miller, said flatly: “The president will not testify in an unconstitutional proceeding”.It came days before Mr Trump’s charge of “incitement to insurrection” is taken to trial in the US Senate on Tuesday.
In an unprecedented second impeachment, Mr Trump is accused of fomenting the attack by his supporters on the US legislature one month ago, forcing a halt to proceedings to certify Joe Biden’s victory in the November presidential election.Democratic House prosecutors say the Republican leader was “singularly responsible” for the Capitol attack, which left five dead.In a White House rally just before the attack, Mr Trump encouraged supporters to reject the election results and to “fight like hell.” “His immediate refusal to testify speaks volumes and plainly establishes an adverse inference supporting his guilt,” Mr Raskin said in a statement.While Democrats will make such statements the focus of their case, Mr Trump’s lawyers will hone in on the question of constitutionality.Conviction requires support of two-thirds of the 100 senators, who serve as judges and jury in the trial.But last week 45 of 50 Republican senators made clear in a vote they think putting an ex-president on trial is unconstitutional.Mr Raskin had asked Mr Trump, who baselessly alleged that Mr Biden won by fraud, to testify sometime next week, before or during the trial.
He said Mr Trump, who now lives in his Florida Mar-a-Lago resort, had little excuse to avoid testifying, and could no longer claim he was too busy overseeing the country, as was the White House position when he was still president.TRUMP ALLY DEMOTED OVER VIEWSIt comes as the Republican congresswoman whose toxic views and conspiracy theories was stripped of her committee appointments in the House of Representatives on Thursday night, local time, in a vote without precedent in the modern era.Eleven of 210 Republicans broke ranks and voted with all 219 Democrats to demote Marjorie Taylor Greene over social media posts that included endorsements of messages advocating the assassination of senior Democrats.Alarming actions before she ran for office included posting video of herself harassing a teen school shooting survivor and casting doubt on the September 11, 2001 attacks.“No member ought to be permitted to engage in the kind of behaviour that Representative Greene has and face zero consequences,” number two House Democrat Steny Hoyer told the chamber.“This vote can be a first step in correcting the error of those who so far have chosen to do nothing.”Ms Greene, 46, had taken to the House floor to plead her case before the vote. “These were words of the past, and these things … do not represent my values,” she said.“I was allowed to believe things that weren’t true and I would ask questions about them and talk about them,” she added. “And that is absolutely what I regret.” In a striking moment on the House floor, Ms Greene acknowledged that “school shootings are absolutely real” and that “9/11 absolutely happened”.But she did not directly apologise in her 10-minute speech.
Republicans were forced to go on record over Ms Greene’s conduct, which includes her trafficking in anti-Semitic, racist and Islamophobic tropes.Before running for Congress, Ms Greene “liked” Facebook posts that advocated the execution of Democrats including House Speaker Nancy Pelosi.In 2018 she asserted that California wildfires were ignited by a space laser controlled by a Jewish family, and she supported QAnon conspiracy theories that a “deep state” cabal operated against Donald Trump when he was president.“When I started finding misinformation, lies, things that were not true in these QAnon posts, I stopped believing it,” Ms Greene told the House.However, casting herself as a victim of “cancel culture” and wearing a “Free Speech” mask, she also said that the media were just as guilty as QAnon for promoting lies.She vilified Democrats for trying to “crucify me in the public square for words that I said, and I regret, a few years ago”.Nancy Pelosi, leader of the House, criticised the Republican leadership for its “acceptance of extreme conspiracy theorists” after Ms Greene escaped punishment from her own party.
The Congresswoman, who was anointed by Mr Trump last year as “a future Republican star”, has become a lightning rod for the party’s efforts to navigate its way through the aftermath of its presidential election defeat and subsequent loss of the Senate.Mitch McConnell, the Republican leader in the Senate, said on Monday that she was “not living in reality” and denounced her views as “cancer for the Republican party and our country”.
Source link
