Says his Jan. 6, 2021, speech on the White House Ellipse drew the “same number of people,” as the 1963 March on Washington where Martin Luther King Jr. gave his “I Have a Dream” speech.
Earlier today, former President Donald Trump once again claimed he bore no responsibility for the violence at the U.S. Capitol on Jan. 6, 2021. "I said peacefully and patriotically," Trump told reporters. That has been a persistent theme of his for years. The former president was repeating part of a short sentence culled from his lengthy speech at the White House Ellipse on Jan. 6, 2021. By focusing on that brief phrase, Trump is trying to deceive both the courts and the public. He wants people to focus on a short passage in which he told his supporters to march "peacefully and patriotically" to the Capitol, while ignoring all the inflammatory rhetoric he employed during the same speech. [...] As we explain in detail below, Trump’s defense should fail in both those tribunals. We expect prosecutors will explain to the jurors why the sentence in the Ellipse speech is, in actuality, more incriminating than exculpatory when understood in context. Indeed, evidence uncovered by the January 6th Select Committee shows that Trump deliberately and repeatedly implored his followers to "fight" – and was reticent to use the word "peaceful" at all. Recent revelations of evidence gathered by Special Counsel Jack Smith will also help prove the case. [...] The key sentence in the Jan. 6 Ellipse speech, according to Trump and his attorneys, is this one: