Former President Donald Trump’s defense team is arguing that the impeachment effort against their client is driven not by a moral obligation but by political decisions.
In their opening arguments in the impeachment trial on Tuesday, Trump’s lawyers showed senators a montage of Democrats calling for him to be impeached over the years to argue that they have been looking for reasons to impeach him.
The montage featured a January 2019 clip of Rep. Rashida Tlaib (D-Mich.) telling supporters Democrats would “impeach the motherf**ker.” Additionally, they included a video of Tlaib speaking at an “impeachment rally” in September 2019.
During an appearance on MSNBC’s “All In with Chris Hayes” on Tuesday night, Tlaib was asked to respond to being featured in the montage.
“I mean, I was right,” the Michigan Congresswoman responded. “This is a person that’s been lawless. Not only that, [he] is a crooked billionaire running his businesses out of the White House. He was absolutely committing impeachable offenses.”
She continued, “This primary impeachment that you see before the Senate right now to convict him is for the violence on Jan. 6.”
Tlaib went on to defend her previous calls for impeachment by arguing that she saw Trump as “extremely corrupted” and claimed he tried to use his presidency to enrich his family business.
“Many of us didn’t wait for him to bribe a foreign government. Nor did we wait, in the 13th Congressional district, for a white supremacist attack on our Capitol. We knew what he was about, and we called him out on it from day one,” she added.
Watch the video below:
Rep. @RashidaTlaib reacts to Trump’s lawyers using video of her calling for impeachment in 2019:
— All In with Chris Hayes (@allinwithchris) February 10, 2021
“I mean, I was right.” pic.twitter.com/D8a9y5lT7r
Trump is facing his second impeachment trial, this time on the charge of “incitement of insurrection” as lawmakers argue that he is responsible for the violence at the U.S. Capitol on Jan. 6.
While Republicans have argued that it is unconstitutional to convict a former president and have urged Democrats to drop the trial, Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer (D-N.Y.) is arguing that lawmakers cannot “move on.”
“When you have such a serious charge, sweeping it under the rug will not bring unity. It will keep the sore open, the wounds open. You need truth and accountability ,” he said during a press conference on Tuesday.
