Donald Trump’s impeachment attorney made a dubious legal argument on Friday when he claimed that the Jan. 6 insurrection at the U.S. Capitol wasn’t actually an insurrection.
Bruce Castor contended that “clearly, there was no insurrection” because the people who stormed the Capitol didn’t actually succeed in overthrowing the federal government.
“Insurrection is a term of art defined in the law that involves taking over a country, a shadow government, taking the TV stations over and having some plan of what you will do when you finally take power,” Castor told the Senate. “Clearly, this is not that.”
But many Twitter users found big flaws in Castor’s insurrection argument since it ignored the accepted dictionary definition of the term.
Bruce Castor says what happened on January 6th was not an insurrection.
— Yamiche Alcindor (@Yamiche) February 12, 2021
Webster defines an insurrection
as “an act or instance of revolting against civil authority or an established government.”
Castor’s argument also ignored the fact that both senators and the Justice Department have been calling the Jan. 6 attack an “insurrection” for weeks.
"There was no insurrection," is an astonishing argument to make for what was obvously an insurrection, and has been described that way by senators and the Justice Department for weeks.
— Kyle Cheney (@kyledcheney) February 12, 2021
Trump defense attorney Bruce Castor seriously just tried to say there was no insurrection on Jan. 6 — when even the Justice Department under the Trump admin slammed the Capitol attack as an insurrection.
— Hugo Lowell (@hugolowell) February 12, 2021
Trump's lawyer Castro:
— Ryan Goodman (@rgoodlaw) February 12, 2021
"Clearly there was no insurrection."
U.S. Department of Justice Jan. 14:
“The crimes charged in the indictment involve active participation in an insurrection attempting to violently overthrow the United States Government.”
Castor: "There clearly was no insurrection."
— Seth Abramson (@SethAbramson) February 12, 2021
Castor: "Could his words have been misunderstood [as promoting violence]? I would suggest to you that they could not have been."
Actually, FYI, a good criminal defense is connected to reality.
The argument being, apparently, that it would have had to have succeeded to be called an insurrection. https://t.co/duCjcHEp6C
— Eli Stokols (@EliStokols) February 12, 2021
As Castor argues there was no insurrection it's important to point out many of the people who have been charged have been charged with insurrection
— Alan Fisher (@AlanFisher) February 12, 2021
Castor just said "this trial is not about trading liberty for security," but "giving up those liberties we have so long fought for" overseas.
— David Cay Johnston (@DavidCayJ) February 9, 2021
The US has never sent soldiers to war to protect a right to incite to rioting and insurrection because no such right exists.
You can see Castor try to make his case below:
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