Ladies and gentlemen,
Giuliani:
So that's the angle they're going with. "It wasn't incitement to violence, it was alternative facts".
Man, I hope that's what Trump's legal team is actually trying, because
1) Trying to defend what Trump said by bringing up
other things that Trump said is unlikely to work here.
1a) To be fair, a lot of things are unlikely to work here. Even if Trump's actions hadn't been televised, this is going to be a pretty directly partisan vote.
2) This legal strategy is an announcement
they have no defense but instead will use only conspiracy theories, without evidence or once that have been rejected by evidence (such as the famous five thousand, I mean two, dead voters in Georgia).
3) It might actually force Trump to take the stand. If Giuliani
claims that Trump was just saying true things about the election, then surely he'd repeat them while under a Bil Clinton situation. And we all know Trump is terrified of being under oath, because Trump lies all the time about everything. Also, I don't think "everyone is saying it" is an acceptable defense while under oath. He'd be forced at legal gunpoint to admit he didn't know if any of the statements were true, because he had no evidence...or he'd have to claim he knew they were true, which might actually inspire what few actual Republicans are left to vote against him.
3a) And just so we're clear:
Which is why I hope
so much that Giuliani is really involved. Trump provably lying to the Senate would be all Schumer needs
to throw Trump in jail.
There is another option:
This seems highly unlikely to work. Impeachment is spelled out very specifically in the Constitution, which I'm increasingly convinced Trump and Giuliani didn't read, but like Twitter's EULA you still have to abide by it. Even if the courts agreed to hear the case, I'm pretty confident they wouldn't block the impeachment -- "incited a riot against the House and Senate" sounds pretty clearly like a matter for impeachment, and the courts wouldn't have authority to judge the merits of the case, merely the charge or the way it's applied. Incidentally, if impeachment this way was illegal, why wasn't the House vote blocked?
And of course, there's a third option: Giuliani is just outright lying.