BREAKING NEWS: Attorney Plays Trump And Jan. 6 Footage To Disqualify Him From 2024 Ballot

Forbes Breaking News

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.

Transcript

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]

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15:16 [inaudible]

15:41 [inaudible]

15:56 [inaudible]

16:17 [inaudible]

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17:13 [inaudible]

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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.

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