Impeachment is officially dead. Well, perhaps it's not officially dead, but it's a dead horse all the same. Why? Because 44 Republican senators have voted that the trial is unconstitutional, that the trial is illegitimate, that a trial is invalid, it shouldn't be taking place at all. And so that, in effect, you may say blows up whatever occurs within the trial, it doesn't matter that the Democrats press forward. It doesn't matter that they produce this evidence or that evidence because no matter what Trump did or didn't do, if the process itself is irremediably flawed, it follows that it shouldn't be happening. Trump is going to get acquitted by the Democrats failing to come even close to the 17 Republican votes that they need for a conviction.
Now, the fact that the trial may be held to be unconstitutional doesn't settle the matter because there is a political sort of exhibitionistic function to impeachment for the Left to push a narrative of Trump's culpability of his evil doings of this horrific act of 9/11-style carnage and insurrection and violence and attempted takeover of the country and so on. Now, the sheer nonsense of this, the preposterous aspect of it, should be evident to everybody, but the Democrats create this kind of illusion. They want you to live in their make-believe world in which people are trying to launch a Confederate style assault on the Capitol.
Now, let's think about this for a moment. Let's take their word seriously for just a second. A coup attempt, in which the rebels all disbanded peacefully, "Hey, it's time to get out of here. Okay, let's leave. Okay, goodbye, we're going home." What kind of coup attempt is that? Is this really a terrorist action where the terrorists issued no demands, they took no hostages, they killed nobody? This makes absolutely no sense. It takes you into the world of Lewis Carroll, "Alice in Wonderland," where Alice says, "Things are getting curiouser and curiouser." And indeed they are.
Now, I think that there is a watertight proof that Trump could not have incited the Capitol takeover. And that is that the Capitol takeover was pre-planned. How do we know it was pre-planned? Well, the evidence is right there in the affidavits and charging documents and FBI reports that have been made against the people, I guess 100 or so of them, who have been charged. Now interestingly, in those documents, which lay out a kind of factual record, it's very clear that there were people who planned to take the Capitol. I'm looking here at an article; this is the Washington Post, "Self-styled militia members planned on storming the US Capitol days in advance of January 6 court documents say." This talks about a group of people, including a fellow named Thomas Edward Caldwell of Berryville, Virginia, talking to a co-defendant Jessica Watkins, an Army veteran. And she goes, "We have 30 to 40 of us. We're sticking together and sticking to the plan." And then a little bit later, they communicate to each other, "We are in the main dome right now. We are rocking it." Another guy goes, "Get it. This is everything we effing trained for." So this was an event that was organized by a group of people who planned to do this.
Interestingly, these people who did that were aware that Antifa was also involved, and you could see this in their internal communications. Here's a fellow named Crowl, who is warning, "Keep eyes on people with red MAGA hats worn backward, saw a report they are going to infiltrate crowd," think about this, so apparently, the Antifa guys were able to communicate with each other by pretending to be MAGA but wearing the hats backward so they would recognize each other as Antifa, and then his friend replies, "Thanks brother, but we are way ahead on that, we have infiltrators in their ranks." So this is some guy saying that they've got infiltrators in the Antifa ranks. So this is what's going on taken directly from court documents and FBI reports.
Now, here's a report in The Epoch Times, where you have a communication between two guys who are planning the attack. "We have a good group. We have about 30 to 40 of us. We're sticking together." And here's the remarkable thing. The FBI not only knew about this in advance. But the FBI warned the Capitol Police. The FBI put out a bulletin, in which it told the Capitol Police there are people who have been sharing maps of the Capitol tunnels. You better be aware that there are people afoot, who are thinking about taking the Capitol and then the Capitol Police, another article from the Washington Post, "Capitol Police intelligence report warned, three days before the attack that Congress could be targeted." This is an internal document, a 12-page report; I'm just going to read a couple of lines from it. "Supporters of the current presidency January 6 is the last opportunity to overturn the results of the presidential election," this is according to the memo. And it talks about the fact that the Capitol Police should be ready for an attempt to take the Capitol.
Bottom line, not only was there planning, but the FBI knew about it. The Capitol Police Chief knew about it. I don't know who the memo was circulated to, but the police did know. Now, if all that's true, and that's really what the FBI is trying to establish in court in order to convict these defendants, if that's true, how could Trump have incited it? Trump might have gotten a crowd riled up. They may have meandered their way to the Capitol. If they saw that they were meeting with absolutely no resistance, there might have been some people who moseyed their way into the Capitol, but these are not the people who quote "took the Capitol," that was done by planning. So bottom line of it is, Trump incited nothing. The attack was pre-planned, and that becomes, I think, an adequate defense against the idea that Trump was, in the words of the House impeachment document, singularly responsible. Not only was Trump not singularly responsible. He wasn't responsible at all.
You can hear D'Souza's entire podcast here.
