Rep. Eric Swalwell, D-Calif., spoke Feb. 10 as House impeachment managers made their case for why the Senate should convict former President Donald Trump on a charge of inciting insurrection during the attack on the U.S. Capitol. Trump was impeached by the House in January, while he was still in office.
Swalwell focused on the period between the Nov. 3 election and the Jan. 6 attack, during which Trump made repeated false claims on social media and during public appearances suggesting that he had lost to Joe Biden because of widespread voter fraud. The California congressman showed a number of tweets from Trump in the weeks after the media called the election for Biden, claiming that votes were cast by dead Americans and that ballots had been thrown out during “midnight vote dumps.”
“This was never about pursuing legitimate claims,” Swalwell said, adding that Trump was “saying anything he could to trigger his base so they would fight like hell to overturn a legitimate election.”
He then showed a series of Tweets Trump sent to more than 70 million followers in the weeks before Jan. 6, encouraging them to show up to Washington on that day to protest the election results. “The evidence is overwhelming,” Swalwell said. “Trump’s conduct leading up to January 6th was deliberate, planned and premeditated.”
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