How direct is the connection between what President Donald Trump communicated to his supporters and their actions in laying siege to the U.S. Capitol? Videos recorded by many individuals over the course of the day provide some answers. A portion of these videos have not been seen widely before, including video footage largely from the platform Parler showing how the crowd reacted in real time to some of the most potent lines in Trump’s speech at the Ellipse. The videos, along with other information in the public record, provide strong evidence of a causal link between Trump’s messages to his supporters and their dangerous, illegal conduct. The collection of videos, viewed chronologically, also shows the ways in which Trump placed the life of Vice President Mike Pence, among others, in grave danger.
What’s revealed by these videos is not only relevant to the impeachment trial of Trump, where the House has charged that Trump “willfully made statements that, in context, encouraged—and foreseeably resulted—in lawless action at the Capitol.” The video evidence may also be relevant to an investigation by the Attorney General of the District of Columbia for potential incitement to riot. And it may be relevant down the road to other federal prosecutors. Ultimately, the greatest relevance of these videos will be how parts of the public understands the events of the day, and how history records it.
Below is the video followed by reactions to it from former senior Justice Department officials and former federal prosecutors.
The video segments sourced from Parler include a number of clips made publicly available previously by ProPublica, as well as separate footage that has not been widely referenced in the news media that was made available for download following the much publicized scraping of publicly available information from the Parler site.
Click over to the link at Just Security to see various legal opinions about what this means for Trump’s defense in the impeachment. Here’s just one:
Andrew Weissmann (@AWeissmann_), lead prosecutor in Robert S. Mueller’s Special Counsel’s Office, former Chief of the Fraud Section in the Department of Justice, and former General Counsel for the FBI:
Under the criminal law, a person is presumed to intend the natural and foreseeable consequences of his actions. What happened on 1/6 meets both prongs to establish criminal intent for incitement. Moreover, If Trump did not intend there to be violent rioting, his actions during and after the violence would have been abject horror and strenuous efforts to stem and condemn the violence. That did not occur.