This is obviously unconstitutional, and that's why the Chief Justice refused to participate.
It is not an impeachment trial.
There was no investigation.
There was no crime.
There was no due process in the House.
And you can't impeach a private citizen.
This is just another opportunity for horrible Democrats to verbally attack Donald Trump, and his supporters.
Trump will be acquitted because 45 Republican Senators had previously voted against having this show trial.
President Trump had the free speech right to complain about election fraud.
Along with every other American.
I complained about it here too.
When Trump won 18 of 19 bellwether counties, yet lost the election, that was unprecedented in American history.
Calling for a "peaceful" demonstration against election fraud at the Capitol building was also legal.
Demonstrations by various right-wing and left-wing groups were already in progress before Trump began speaking.
Violence began before Trump called for a peaceful demonstration, near the end of his speech -- which was given about two miles away from the Capital building.
The January 6, 2021 rally made no sense politically, simply because the election had been decided by the electors on December 16, 2020.
Nothing was going to change on January 6, 2021.
The following quotes are from an article about a possible Trump defense, if his lawyers decide to talk about the content of his speech:
"Count me as one who believes that the impeachment trial against former President Trump is an unconstitutional bill of attainder against a private citizen.
Still, the proceeding is going to play out and it appears that Trump’s attorneys are going to fight hard.
One of their plans in a case charging President Trump with inciting violence is to play for the Senate all the footage of Democrats inciting violence in 2020.
The problem for the Democrats going into the trial is one of evidence.
The evidence against Trump isn’t just slim, it’s non-existent.
The FBI has admitted that what happened at the Capitol was planned long before January 6.
The planning did not involve Trump.
There’s also evidence that the FBI knew about the plan against the Capitol in advance, but that the FBI, the Capitol Police, and the Democrats in charge of Congress did nothing with that information.
Uncontroverted evidence shows that Trump was still speaking when events began to play out at the Capitol.
At that point, Trump had not yet asked his supporters at the vast Stop the Steal rally to peaceably go to the Capitol and cheer on Republican senators who were trying to get a hearing for election fraud claims.
Frankly, Biden’s presidency would be a lot more stable, and Democrats a lot less paranoid, if they’d had that hearing and proven that there was no basis for the many fraud claims.
We also know now that Antifa was involved in the event and may even have been handing out weapons.
Indeed, there were multiple non-Trump-supporters at the Capitol.
This lends more credence to the theory that the whole rally was intended as a false flag operation to discredit Trump and his supporters."
