Impeachment officer details the case against Trump as the second trial begins
Monday night, House impeachment officers will officially walk the Articles of Impeachment to the U.S. Senate and the process will officially begin as President Donald Trump is tried for a second time before the body.
Speaking to MSNBCs Ari Melber on an impeachment special Sunday evening, a solemn Rep. Stacey Plaskett (D-NY) explained that this is not something the House members do lightly.
"And then we'll begin the trial of our president, of former President Donald Trump in the Senate, for what we believe to be one of the most heinous crimes against our country in its existence," she said. "Something that the founders anticipated and put in guardrails against. That being a despot, drunk with power, trying to keep his grip on power and using the people of this country to try and stage an insurrection."
She didn't intend to reveal the strategy for impeachment but explained that the attack on the Capitol Jan. 6 wasn't the beginning of Trump's efforts to incite violence against the legislature.
"President Trump has engaged in a prolonged effort to overturn the results of the 2020 election and spent months spreading disinformation and the results falsely claiming that he had won by a landslide," she explained. "He stated it would be illegitimate to accept those results, and then he brought individuals to Washington, D.C. on Jan. 6. Make no mistake that that was an extremely important date in his mind and in our Constitution's time, because there was a time where the entire body of Congress along with the vice president would be present at the Capitol to fulfill our duties, that being to certificate five the election. And with that, he knew who the individuals were, who would be coming, what they would do and what hold he had over them."
She described what happened as "foreseeable," in fact, Georgia elections official Gabriel Sterling warned that what Trump was doing would "get people killed." Indeed, five people were killed as a result of what happened on Jan. 6.
"It's bad enough that we have a president who wanted to obstruct justice, who wanted to obstruct a free and fair election, who did not want the fulfillment of Constitution, but the worst part that he did it through the attack, assault, mayhem, vandalism, the attempted assassination of the vice president and the speaker of the House, potential attempt to kidnap members of congress and the fulfillment of felony murder as well. All for his own self-aggrandizement. Absolutely shameful," Plaskett said.
See the full interview below:
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