Trump lawyers: Impeachment based on hatred, not facts

Donald Trump's impeachment lawyers accused Democrats of waging a campaign of "hatred" against the former president as they sped through their defense of his actions and fiery words before the Jan. 6 insurrection at the U.S. Capitol, hurtling the Senate toward a final vote in his historic trial.

The defense team vigorously denied on Friday that Trump had incited the deadly riot and said his encouragement of followers to "fight like hell" at a rally that preceded it was routine political speech. They played a montage of out-of-context clips showing Democrats, some of them senators now serving as jurors, also telling supporters to "fight," aiming to establish a parallel with Trump's overheated rhetoric.

"This is ordinary political rhetoric that is virtually indistinguishable from the language that has been used by people across the political spectrum for hundreds of years," declared Trump lawyer Michael van der Veen. "Countless politicians have spoken of fighting for our principles."

But the presentation blurred the difference between general encouragement to battle for causes and Trump's fight against officially accepted national election results. The defeated president was telling his supporters to fight on after every state had verified its results, after the Electoral College had affirmed them and after nearly every election lawsuit filed by Trump and his allies had been rejected in court.

The case is speeding toward a vote and likely acquittal, perhaps as soon as Saturday, with the Senate evenly divided between Democrats and Republicans and a two-thirds majority required for conviction. Trump's lawyers made an abbreviated presentation that used less than three of their allotted 16 hours.

Their quick pivot to the Democrats' own...