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 for the attack on the U.S. Capitol. Trump was impeached by the House in January, while he was still in office.
Swalwell noted that Trump spent “millions of dollars” from his legal defense fund to support a national ad campaign that spread falsehoods questioning the legitimacy of the 2020 presidential election, and encouraged his supporters to “stop the steal.”
He argued that those ads, which borrowed language repeatedly used by the president himself, served a “specific purpose” by targeting his base in the weeks leading up to the attack.
“How do we know that purpose? These ads were designed to run all the way up to January 5th and then they stopped,” Swalwell said on the Senate floor.
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