Trump impeachment trial live updates: Biden makes 1st comments on acquittal

Leading closing arguments for the Trump defense team, attorney Michael van der Veen continued to equate Trump's speech ahead of the deadly riot at the Capitol to comments Democrats have made to supporters to "fight."

Van der Veen said protests over the summer in the wake of the killing of George Floyd in police custody celebrated "radicalism" and added that those protests allowed "marginalized people" "to blow off steam."

He condemned all rioting and said law enforcement deserves respect and support -- a view Trump has always held, van der Veen pushed.

Van der Veen then pivoted to the argument that the trial in itself is unconstitutional and unfair. However, the Senate voted on Tuesday 55-45 to affirm its power that Trump trial is Constitutional.

"For the first time in history, Congress has asserted the right to try and punish a former president who is a private citizen," van der Veen said. "Nowhere in the Constitution is the power enumerated or implied. Congress has no authority, no right, and no business holding a trial of citizen Trump, let alone a trial to deprive him of some fundamental civil rights."

The House impeachment mangers have finished closing arguments in Trump's impeachment trial.

In lead manager Rep. Jamie Raskin's, D-Md., closing statement, he invoked emotion in raising his family, reminding senators that families are what is at the heart of the country and that history is watching.

"Our reputations and our legacy will be inextricably intertwined with what we do here," Raskin said. "And with how you exercise your oath to do impartial justice, impartial justice. I know and I trust you will do impartial justice, driven by your meticulous attention to the overwhelming facts of the case and your love for our Constitution, which I know dwells in your heart. 'The times have found us,' said Tom Payne, the namesake of my son. 'The times have found us. Is this America? What kind of America will we be?' It's now literally in your hands. Godspeed to the senate of the United States."

Raskin was referring to his late-son Tommy. His youngest daughter, Tabitha, and son-in-law, Hank, were with him at the Capitol on Jan. 6 as a show of support because it was one day after their family laid Tommy to rest.

He also recalled a recent conversation he shared with his other daughter, Hannah.

"Hannah told me last night she felt really sorry for the kid of a man who said goodbye to his children before he left home to come and join trump's actions," Raskin said. "Their father had told them that their dad might not becoming home again and they might never see him again. In other words, he was expecting violence -- he might die -- as insurrectionists did. And that shook me. Hannah said, 'how can the President put children and people's families in that situation and then, just run away from the whole thing?' That shook me."

"The children of the insurrectionists, even the violent and dangerous ones, they're our children too," Raskin said earlier. "They are Americans, and we must take care of them and their future. We must recognize and exercise these crimes against our nation and then, we must take care of our people and our children, their hearts and their minds. As Tommy Raskin used to say, 'it's hard to be human.'"

In addition to breaking down the Trump defense arguments one by one, House impeachment manager Rep. Joe Neguse, D-Colo., appealed to senators' sense of history in his final appeal for a vote to convict Trump. 

In a thinly veiled appeal to Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell, he quoted Kentucky Sen. Henry Clay -- McConnell's political idol and college thesis subject -- and referenced the vote of Sen. John Sherman Cooper -- McConnell's former boss who he interned for -- on the Civil Rights Act. 

Noting his own parents' immigrant journey from East Africa, Neguse also noted McConnell's vote in 1986 to override President Ronald Reagan's veto of sanctions of South Africa during apartheid. McConnell was one of the few Republicans to buck Reagan on the vote.

"We remember those moments because they helped define and enshrine America at its best," Neguse said. "I believe that this body can rise to the occasion once again today. By convicting president trump and defending our republic."

"The cold, hard truth is that what happened on Jan. 6 can happen again," he said. "Senators, this cannot be the beginning. It can't be the new normal."

McConnell told colleagues in an email earlier in the day he would vote to acquit Trump.

-ABC News' Benjamin Siegel

House impeachment manager Rep. Joe Neguse, D-Colo., countered arguments from Trump and his defense team that Neguse called "excuses" and "distractions."

"I would like to take a minute to explain why each of those distractions are precisely that, distractions, and why they do not prevent in any way the Senate from convicting President Trump," Neguse said.

He went on to counter the defense team's main arguments one by one. First, he argued impeachment is the best course of action, even with Trump being out of office, because the attack happened while he was under his oath as president.

Neguse argued the framers would have seen "incitement of insurrection" as an impeachable offense, and he blasted the defense for saying they were not given due process when leaders on both sides of the aisle agreed on the trial resolution before it kicked off.

Addressing the First Amendment, Neguse knocked the defense for trying to equate Democrats' past calls for supporters to "fight" with Trump's actions -- "because what you will not find in those video montages that they showed you is any of those speeches, those remarks, culminating in a violent insurrection on our nation's Capitol."

"Senators, all of these arguments offered by the president have one fundamental thing in common," he said. "They have nothing to do with whether or not, factually, whether or not the president incited this attack. They've given you a lot of distractions, so they don't have to defend what happened here on that terrible day."

Neguse went on to note he's the youngest member of the House managers team "by quite a few years" -- to a laugh from the chamber -- "so perhaps I'm a bit naive," he joked, and said he expects more from the U.S. Senate, noting how Congress responds to the Jan. 6 attack will go down in history.

"I fear, like many of us do, that the violence we saw on that terrible day may be just the beginning. We've shown you the ongoing risks, the extremist groups who grow more emboldened every day," Neguse said. "It can't be the new normal. It has to be the end. That decision is in your hands."