Trump’s lawyers openly lie in latest impeachment filing: law professor

In a Twitter thread, JustSecurity author and New York University Law Professor Ryan Goodman said that former President Donald Trump's lawyers lied in their latest impeachment filing. What's worse, he said, is that Republican senators know it.

One claim in the Trump brief was that Trump acted "swiftly" to quell the violence. Even Sen. Lindsey Graham (R-SC) confessed in an interview, "It took [Trump] awhile to appreciate the gravity of the situation."

Graham went on to say: "The president saw these people as allies in his journey."

Goodman also cited many Republican leaders scrambling during the attack to get the White House to send in help.

"Hiding from the rioters in a secret location away from the Capitol, House Minority Leader Kevin McCarthy (R-CA) appealed to Jared Kushner, President Trump's son-in-law and senior adviser. Sen. Lindsey O. Graham (R-SC) phoned Ivanka Trump, the president's daughter," the Washington Post reported of the "six hours of paralysis" in the Trump White House on Jan. 6.

"He was hard to reach, and you know why? Because it was live TV," a close Trump adviser told the Post. "If it's TiVo, he just hits pause and takes the calls. If it's live TV, he watches it, and he was just watching it all unfold."

Still, everyone from Kellyanne Conway to a slew of Trump loyalists in Congress "also called White House aides, begging them to get Trump's attention and have him call for the violence to end. The lawmakers reiterated that they had been loyal Trump supporters and were even willing to vote against the electoral college results — but were now scared for their lives, officials said."

Republicans, Goodman argued, know the truth because they experienced it in real-time. They know how long they were forced to hide in undisclosed locations.

He also noted that Sen. Ben Sasse (R-NE) revealed publicly that senior White House aides told him that Trump was "delighted" by the attack and "walking around the White House confused about why other people on his team weren't as excited." Trump "wanted there to be chaos."

It's unclear how the impeachment managers will argue about this during the trial. Either they'll bring it up or assume Republicans are willing to recall their own reality and not choose the claims by Trump's lawyers.

See his thread here.