Trump's lawyer says he's innocent because 'clearly there was no insurrection'

Donald Trump’s lead impeachment defense attorney on Friday said Trump cannot be guilty of inciting an insurrection because the insurrection on Jan. 6 at the U.S. Capitol wasn’t an insurrection.

“They continue to say insurrection, clearly there was no insurrection,” Bruce Castor said of how the Democratic impeachment managers described the Jan. 6 attack. “Insurrection is a term of art, it’s defined in the law, it involves taking over a country, a shadow government, taking the TV stations over and having some plan on what you’re going to do when you finally take power. Clearly this is not that.”

Castor’s comment is false.

What happened at the Capitol on Jan. 6 was the textbook definition of an insurrection.

According to Merriam-Webster, an insurrection is “an act or instance of revolting against civil authority or an established government.”

That’s exactly what happened on Jan. 6, when a mob of Trump supporters broke into the Capitol to stop the peaceful transition of power by blocking President Joe Biden’s electoral victory from being certified.

Trump had been pushing for members of Congress, as well as Mike Pence, to vote to stop Biden’s Electoral College victory from being certified — a last-ditch attempt to steal the election, after his legal challenges and ham-handed attempts to get Republican legislatures to simply overturn the results had already failed.

Even if you accept Castor’s definition of insurrection, that is still what occurred on Jan. 6.

The insurrectionists did have the goal of overthrowing the rightfully elected Biden administration to keep Trump in power.

Indictments from the Justice Department against the insurrectionists call the attack an insurrection.

“The crimes charged in the indictment involve active participation in an insurrection attempting to violently overthrow the United States Government,” reads an indictment of Jacob Chansley, the man photographed in fur and horns at the Capitol.

Published with permission of The American Independent Foundation.