CNN’s fact checker Daniel Dale criticized former President Donald Trump’s legal defense team on Monday after examining its impeachment filing ahead of the start of the Senate trial Tuesday.
“Trump‘s legal team just yada-yada breezes past the incendiary parts of Trump‘s January 6 speech — accusing the media of cherry-picking from the speech while itself doing egregious cherry-picking,” Dale tweeted Monday.
Dale, who has read or listened to nearly every word Trump has uttered while in office, documenting more than 30,000 lies, also says the disgraced, former president’s legal team will argue the January 6 insurrection was not pre-planned. Others disagree.
In this excerpt, Trump’s team claims he “used the word ‘fight’ a little more than a handful of times,” in that January 6 speech.
That’s false.
“Just before a MAGA mob descended on the US Capitol on Wednesday and caused a riot that killed five people, including a Capitol police officer who was beaten to death, President Donald Trump delivered a speech to his supporters in which he used the words ‘fight’ or ‘fighting’ at least 20 times,” Vox reported.
“We’re going to have to fight much harder and Mike Pence is going to have to come through for us,” Trump said at one point, alluding to Pence’s ultimate refusal to attempt to steal the election for him during that day’s hearing where the Electoral College made his loss official.
They also claim it is “simply absurd” to blame Trump for the actions of a “small group of criminals.” Thousands of Trump supporting insurrectionists attacked the U.S. Capitol that day, hundreds of whom had listened to Trump’s speech.
Trump, it has been argued by The Independent’s Andrew Feinberg, had to have known the effect his words would have because his team had been monitoring social media and sites like Reddit, Facebook, Gab, and Parlor, along with QAnon groups, and saw the plans being made.