Trump lawyer David Schoen’s crazy theory on ‘Hannity’ unmasks the GOP’s ugly core by Greg Sargent



Trump lawyer David Schoen’s crazy theory on ‘Hannity’ unmasks the GOP’s ugly core 

by Greg Sargent, washingtonpost.com

February 10, 2021 09:28 AM

It’s instructive to venture into the confines of Sean Hannity’s universe, because it often showcases the propaganda being injected into the GOP base’s veins in its most venomous form. In this regard, Monday night’s appearance by David Schoen, Donald Trump’s impeachment lawyer, did not disappoint.

Schoen floated a strange theory in defense of the former president. It’s worth unpacking, because it points in a direction that further incriminates Trump. It also underscores what is becoming of the GOP as it prepares to wholly exonerate Trump for attempting to incite the violent overthrow of U.S. democracy.

Schoen appeared to suggest law enforcement might refrain from further investigations into the rioters who stormed the Capitol, because they are showing that the assault was preplanned, supposedly exonerating Trump.

“Right now, you really are finding out about the preplanning,” Schoen told Hannity. “And I’m afraid they’re going to back off that investigation, because maybe — you know — so many people want to tie it to Donald Trump.”

Schoen added that in Monday’s Senate trial presentation, the House impeachment managers showed “nothing” that “ties” the assault to Trump.

The “they” who might “back off” appears to be a reference to law enforcement. If so, the idea that they might stop investigating rioters to avoid exonerating Trump is rank crackpottery.

But more important, whoever the “they” is here, the theory underlying this story is completely divorced from reality — in a way that actually further incriminates Trump.

Trump’s legal team wants to argue that because investigators are discovering that some rioters preplanned the attack, it proves Trump couldn’t possibly have incited them during his Jan. 6 harangue.

The truth is the opposite: The investigators are turning up evidence that is increasingly damning to Trump, not the other way around.

What the investigations are telling us

We are learning from the investigations that rioters who preplanned their attacks did so because they fully understood that Trump had directed them to do so.

In a deep dive into what the investigations are revealing, Post reporters recently found ample evidence of this. Their stark conclusion:

Court documents show that more than two dozen people charged in the attack specifically cited Trump and his calls to gather that day in describing on social media or in conversations with others why they decided to take action by coming to Washington.

More than two dozen cited Trump. One woman who recruited for the assault said days before: “Trump wants all able bodied patriots to come.” A QAnon-supporting man wrote in advance that if Trump called for attacking the Capitol, he’d do it: He was following Trump’s marching orders.

Even the attackers’ own lawyers say Trump inspired them. As one attorney put it to The Post: “What these people heard, including my client, was an invitation, a call to arms by the president.”

One might push back by arguing that they were wrong to believe Trump indicated any of this. But that, too, is blown apart by the public record.

Indeed, the House impeachment managers’ report documents numerous examples of Trump explicitly telling his supporters well in advance to prepare to descend on the Capitol, while directly tying this to the big lie that the election had been stolen and that they were the victims of that crime. And an extensive new timeline from Just Security shows many leading pro-Trump voices amplifying the call, also well in advance.

It’s important to emphasize this: In communicating to his supporters for months that the election had been stolen from them, Trump told them in every which way that they were the victims of a tyrannical injustice that could be rectified only by overturning the official election results.

In short, he falsely told them that their own freedom was on the line, and told them to take action in response. They believed him. Trump’s words on the day itself also unequivocally show him inciting the attack, but the lead-up to that day is every bit as incriminating.

GOP’s alternate reality version of the insurrection

It’s deeply perverse that despite all this evidence, virtually all GOP senators will acquit Trump. As Sarah Longwell points out, the rioters are being prosecuted for the attacks, but the GOP elites who inspired their crimes — Trump and the GOP senators who themselves propped up the stolen-election lie — will face zero accountability.

I’d like to take this idea further. In claiming that ongoing investigations into the attack are only exonerating Trump — that the actual evidence being unearthed simply doesn’t exist at all — Trump’s lawyer is hinting at where the GOP will end up on all this.

Though there are exceptions, many in the party are gravitating toward an absolute refusal to acknowledge the slightest wrongdoing by Trump — a comprehensive refusal to acknowledge the barest existence of any of the extensive factual record demonstrating unambiguously that Trump did incite an effort to overturn our democracy, including with intimidation and violence.

You can see this erasure everywhere. Sen. Ted Cruz (R-Tex.) is now claiming that all this evidence is “full of sound and fury, signifying nothing.” Trump’s constitutional crime simply never happened.

Meanwhile, the Wyoming GOP’s censure of Rep. Liz Cheney for voting to impeach falsely claims antifa instigated the riot and treats the belief of GOP voters in Trump’s absolute innocence as guiding truth. Sen. Josh Hawley (R-Mo.), who led Trump’s effort to overturn the election in Congress, continues to do the same.

If large swaths of the GOP are going to comprehensively exonerate Trump and their party of any responsibility for the worst assault on our democracy in modern times, it doesn’t bode particularly well for its future.

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