Van der Veen argues Trump's words covered by 1st Amendment
The former president's legal team argued that the increased "hatred" in politics has led to more incendiary political language and that the First Amendment protections must be applied evenly across all political language.
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"Will the Senate then have to deal with constant articles of impeachment by a majority party accusing minority presidents or other elected officials of so-called 'inciteful' or false speeches?" Michael van der Veen said. "You can see where this would lead."
Van der Veen argued that Trump's speech and the speech of other politicians is protected by case law and the Constitution, and accused House managers of urging senators to ignore that.
"They astoundingly urge you to disregard your oath by ignoring the First Amendment of the Constitution. They also ignore landmark binding United States Supreme Court cases ... which unequivocally hold that elected officials have core First Amendment rights to engage in the exact type of political speech which Mr. Trump engaged in," van der Veen said.