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Trump’s Defense Team Declares Trial An ‘Act of Political Vengeance’
On Friday, former President Donald J. Trump’s defense team argued that his impeachment was politically motivated and not based on his actions on Jan. 6 or those leading up to it.
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The article of impeachment now before the Senate is an unjust and blatantly unconstitutional act of political vengeance. This appalling abuse of the Constitution only further divides our nation when we should be trying to come together around shared priorities. Like ever — like every other politically motivated witch hunt the left has engaged in over the past four years, this impeachment is completely divorced from the facts, the evidence and the interests of the American people. The Senate should promptly and decisively vote to reject it.” “Throughout the course of today, my colleagues and I will explain in some detail the simple fact that President Trump did not incite the horrific, terrible riots of Jan. 6 will demonstrate that to the contrary the violence and looting goes against the law and order message he conveyed to every citizen of the United States throughout his presidency, including on Jan. 6.”
Lawyers for Donald J. Trump delivered an incendiary but brief defense of the former president on Friday, calling the House’s charge that he incited an insurrection at the Capitol a “preposterous and monstrous lie” as they falsely equated his conduct to Democrats’ own combative rhetoric.
Confident they have enough votes from Republicans to acquit Mr. Trump, the lawyers used only about three of their 16 allotted hours, allowing senators to proceed Friday afternoon to a period of questioning the prosecution and defense.
Earlier, the defense team had channeled the former president’s own combative style and embrace of falsehoods to claim, contrary to facts, that Mr. Trump never glorified violence during his presidency and that he consistently called for peace as the rampage at the Capitol unfolded. Showing video clips of Democrats urging their supporters to “fight” and Mr. Trump venerating “law and order,” they sought to rewrite not just the narrative of his campaign to overturn the election but that of his entire presidency.
“This trial is about far more than President Trump,” said Bruce L. Castor Jr., one of the lawyers, as he closed the defense. “It is about silencing the speech the majority does not agree with. It is about canceling 75 million Trump voters and criminalizing political viewpoints.”
The defense’s presentation unfolded after nine House prosecutors spent two days laying out a meticulous case against the former president — dramatized with never-before-seen video of the Jan. 6 riot — portraying the rampage as the direct result of Mr. Trump’s monthslong campaign to overturn the election. Desperate to cling to power, the Democrats argued, Mr. Trump goaded his followers into joining his effort and would do so again, they said, if the Senate failed to convict him and bar him from holding office in the future.
Among the lawyers’ core arguments were that the Senate “lacks jurisdiction” to even try a former president now out of office, that Mr. Trump’s conduct was protected by the First Amendment and that it came nowhere near the legal definition for “incitement.”
But standing before a jury of 100 senators, their case was as political in nature as it was legal. Using a favorite tactic of Mr. Trump’s, his lawyers also sought to defend his behavior by citing that of others, arguing that he could no more be held responsible for the Capitol assault than Democrats could for the violence that erupted at some racial justice protests last summer.
They also sought to selectively poke holes in Democrats’ case. Michael van der Veen, one of the lawyers, insisted on Friday that Mr. Trump had only ever been interested in election security reforms, like voter ID laws — an assertion that directly contradicted months of public and private actions by Mr. Trump. He said the president intended for the Jan. 6 rally he hosted before the attack to be peaceful, but that it had been “hijacked” by extremists, including from the far left — another claim disproved even by Republicans.
“The reality is Mr. Trump was not in any way shape or form instructing these people to fight using physical violence,” Mr. van der Veen said. “What he was instructing them to do was challenge their opponents in primary elections, to push for sweeping election reforms, to hold big tech responsible — all customary and legal ways to petition your government for redress of grievances.”
Mr. Castor also pointed to tweets by Mr. Trump while the attack was underway telling his supporters to “stay peaceful” and “support our Capitol Police.” But he did not discuss Mr. Trump’s actions during the hours when the Capitol was under attack in which managers’ said he reveled in his success and delayed sending in reinforcements.
“We know that the president would never have wanted such a riot to occur, because his longstanding hatred for violent protesters and his love for law and order is on display, worn on his sleeve, every single day that he served in the White House,” he said.
Later, during the question and answer session, Mr. van der Veen said Mr. Trump had not been aware that his vice president, Mike Pence, had been in danger, even though a senator he called during the attack told him Mr. Pence was being evacuated from the chamber.
Maggie Haberman contributed reporting.
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transcript
Trump Defense Team Presents Video to Counter Prosecution’s Case
Former President Donald J. Trump’s defense team on Friday released a video montage of Democrats encouraging their supporters to “fight” as a contrast to the prosecution’s video of Mr. Trump egging on his supporters before the Jan. 6 riot.
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“The House managers spoke about rhetoric, about a constant drumbeat of heated language. Well as I’m sure everyone watching expected, we need to show you some of their own words.” “I just don’t know why there aren’t uprisings all over the country. Maybe there will be.” “There needs to be unrest in the streets for as long as there is unrest in our lives.” “We’ve got to be ready to throw a punch. We have to be able to throw a punch.” “Donald Trump, I think you need to go back and punch him in the face.” “Please get up in the face of some Congresspeople.” “People will do what they do.” “I want to tell you Gorsuch, I want to tell you, Kavanaugh, you have released the whirlwind, and you will pay a price.” “If you had to be stuck in an elevator with either President Trump, Mike Pence or Jeff Sessions, who would it be?” “Does one of us have to come out alive.” “I’m just going to keep the fight up.” “What we have to do right now is fight as hard as we can.” “We have to rise up and fight back.” “And so, we’re going to fight. And we’re going to continue to fight.” “I am going to be fighting fighting like hell.” “Keep fighting, fighting, fighting — we kept fighting, and we did. So we’re going to keep fighting.” “Never, never, never give up this fight. I’m a citizen fighting for it — Means not only fighting — As a leader who fought for progressive change — As a lawyer who fought for people his whole life — As well as other fights, and I’m proud to have Tim in this fight.”
Former President Donald J. Trump’s defense team offered their own video presentation on Friday — a montage of remarks by Democrats urging supporters to “fight” — a rhetorical drumbeat aimed at countering the impact of the footage of the real fight at the Capitol, images of blood and broken glass, presented by the prosecution on Wednesday.
The strategy by Mr. Trump’s lawyers was to prove that Mr. Trump’s call for his followers to “fight like hell” in a speech shortly before members of the crowd stormed Congress on Jan. 6 was no different than anti-Trump remarks made by Speaker Nancy Pelosi of California, Representative Maxine Waters of California, Senator Elizabeth Warren of Massachusetts and other members of Congress.
To make their point, the team played a lengthy mash-up of bellicose statements from Democrats — including President Biden’s claim on the campaign trail that he would have beaten “the hell out of” Mr. Trump in high school.
The presentation, featuring quick-cut editing and the type of ominous music often heard in negative campaign ads, a sharp contrast to the raw footage, sometimes silent, of the attack that was compiled by the House impeachment managers from security cameras and cellphone video, and accompanied by a minute-by-minute timeline.
The defense team’s montage concluded with images of Democrats praising the protests against police violence in cities across the United States last summer, juxtaposed with video of rioting, even though every senior Democrat denounced violence.
“I showed you the video because in this political forum, all robust speech should be protected,” said Michael van der Veen, one of the president’s lawyers.
“When you see speech such as this, you have to apply the First Amendment evenly. Blindly,” he said, adding, “She is blind, lady justice.”
It reflected the argument being promoted by Trump defenders on conservative media outlets like Fox News, and was part of an effort to offer a more defiant defense pushed by the former president, who was dissatisfied with the earlier efforts of his team.
It is not clear that the approach had its desired effect, however.
During the presentation, senators in both parties were overheard chatting and laughing by observers in the chamber. Democrats emerged enraged at what they saw as an argument built upon false equivalence.
“Show me anytime that the result was our supporters pulled someone out of the crowd, beat the living crap out of them and then we said: ‘That’s great. Good for you. You’re a patriot,’” Sen. Chris Coons of Delaware said after watching the video.
Yet the approach might have succeeded in giving Republicans — caught between their disdain for Mr. Trump’s behavior and fear of his hold over the party — enough cover to justify an acquittal.
“The Twitter/CNN/MSNBC bubble will mock & dismiss this defense, but it is going to work with Republican voters and it will give much needed cover and justification to Republican Senators to acquit,” said Joe Walsh, a former Republican congressman and frequent Trump critic, on Twitter during the defense’s arguments.
Just a few hours before former President Donald J. Trump’s defense lawyers were to appear in the well of the Senate, Mr. Trump’s team was still hashing out the order of appearance of his two chief attorneys. In the end, they decided that a third lawyer, Michael van der Veen, would deliver the opening act.
The uncertainty apparently stemmed from Bruce L. Castor Jr.’s widely panned appearance on Tuesday, when he delivered a rambling, unfocused opening statement that enraged his client. Mr. Trump has told several people he did not want to hear from Mr. Castor anymore, people familiar with the Trump team’s discussions said. But the former president’s second defense lawyer, David I. Schoen, has not been hired to handle the entire presentation, and so Mr. Castor will need to be involved.
The lawyers are a substitute team, most of them called in after Mr. Trump abruptly parted ways with another group of lawyers about a week before the trial began because of differences over how to defend him.
Mr. Castor, 59, is a former district attorney of Montgomery County, Pa., who is best-known for deciding not to prosecute Bill Cosby in a sexual assault case. Well known in Pennsylvania Republican politics, he ran and lost a race for state attorney general and also lost a bid for a third term as county prosecutor. His opponent made an issue of his choice not to pursue Mr. Cosby, who in 2018 went to jail in the same case Mr. Castor decline to prosecute.
Mr. Castor came to Mr. Trump’s attention through his cousin Stephen R. Castor, a staff lawyer to House Republicans who helped defend the president in his first impeachment in 2019.
Mr. Schoen, 62, is an Alabama-based civil rights and criminal defense lawyer. An outspoken supporter of Israel, he has sued Palestinian terrorists and brought a lawsuit against Simon & Schuster for purported misrepresentations in former President Jimmy Carter’s 2006 book “Palestine: Peace Not Apartheid.”
Mr. Trump became aware of Mr. Schoen when he appeared on Fox News and other conservative outlets as a critic of the special counsel investigation into the Trump campaign’s ties to Russia. Mr. Schoen handled the appeal of Roger J. Stone Jr. after his conviction for trying to impede a congressional investigation — until Mr. Trump granted him clemency.
Mr. van der Veen is the founder of a Philadelphia personal injury and criminal defense firm where Mr. Castor also works. The profile of Mr. van der Veen on his firm’s website highlights a series of multi-million-dollar awards in vehicle accidents.
Both of Mr. Trump’s chief lawyers have experience disputing the weight of strong evidence against a polarizing client. As a prosecutor, Mr. Castor fought the release from prison in 2002 of a man who was exonerated by DNA evidence after a conviction for rape.
For his part, Mr. Schoen argued with the finding of New York City’s chief medical examiner that Jeffrey Epstein, the disgraced financier and accused sex criminal, died by suicide in prison in 2019. Mr. Schoen had met with Mr. Epstein nine days before his death to discuss taking his case.
“I don’t think it was a suicide,” Mr. Schoen said in an interview with The New York Times recently, adding: “I don’t know what happened. I don’t have a conspiracy theory.”
A core argument of Mr. Trump’s defense, made by Michael van der Veen, one of his lawyers, is that Mr. Trump cannot be convicted of inciting an insurrection because everything he said was protected by his rights to free speech under the Constitution.
Mr. van der Veen — who is a personal injury lawyer, not a civil liberties lawyer — dismissed a letter signed last week by 144 constitutional scholars and First Amendment lawyers from across the political spectrum, who called a free speech defense of Mr. Trump “legally frivolous” and not grounds for dismissing the charge against him.
Nonetheless, Mr. van der Veen argued, “Mr. Trump’s speech deserves full protection under the First Amendment.” He cited Supreme Court cases holding that elected officials can engage in political speech.
Adam Liptak, who covers the Supreme Court for The New York Times, addressed the argument in a live analysis.
“It’s true, of course, that elected officials have First Amendment rights,” Mr. Liptak wrote. “It’s also true that government officials may be fired for making statements that would otherwise be protected political speech. An impeachment trial may present that second sort of question.”
Mr. Liptak quoted from the House impeachment managers’ brief that addressed the First Amendment argument advanced by Mr. Trump’s lawyers: “Under President Trump’s view of the First Amendment, even a sitting President who strenuously urged States to secede from the Union and rebel against the federal government would be immune from impeachment.”
FACT CHECK
Donald J. Trump’s lawyers, mounting their defense of the former president on Friday, made a number of inaccurate or misleading claims about the Jan. 6 siege of the Capitol, Mr. Trump’s remarks and the impeachment process itself. Here are some of them.
On the former president’s own words in his speech at the Jan. 6 rally.
Michael van der Veen, one of the lawyers, misleadingly said that Mr. Trump did not express “a desire that the joint session be prevented from conducting its business” but rather “the entire premise of his remarks was that the democratic process would and should play out according to the letter of the law.” But Mr. Trump repeatedly urged former Vice President Mike Pence to “send it back to the States to recertify” and noted that he was “challenging the certification of the election.”
“Far from promoting insurrection of the United States, the president’s remarks explicitly encouraged those in attendance to exercise their rights peacefully and patriotically,” Mr. van der Veen said. Mr. Trump used the phrase “peacefully and patriotically” once in his speech, compared to 20 uses of the word “fight.”
On the role of left-wing antifa activists.
Mr. van der Veen also claimed that one of the first people arrested in connection with the riots at the Capitol “was the leader of antifa.” That was a hyperbolic reference to John E. Sullivan, a Utah man who was charged on Jan. 15 for violent entry and disorderly conduct. Mr. Sullivan, an activist, has said he was there to film the siege. He has referred to antifa — a loose collective of antifascist activists that has no leader — on social media, but he has repeatedly denied being a member of the movement, though he shares its beliefs.
The Federal Bureau of Investigation has said there is no evidence that supporters of the antifa movement had participated in the Jan. 6 siege.
On a previous protest outside the White House.
Mr. van der Veen equated the Jan. 6 siege to the protests at Lafayette Square in front of the White House last summer, and presented a false timeline, claiming that “violent rioters” repeatedly attacked Secret Service officers and “at one point, pierced a security wall, culminating in the clearing of Lafayette Square.”
There was no breach. Law enforcement officials began clearing Lafayette Square after 6 p.m. on June 1, to allow Mr. Trump to pose, while holding a Bible, in front of a church near the square. Additional security fencing was installed after those events, according to local news reports and the National Park Service.
On Russian interference in the 2016 election.
Similarly, Mr. van der Veen compared Mr. Trump’s complaints and political language about the 2020 election with concerns about the integrity of the 2016 election, arguing that “the entire Democratic Party and national news media spent the last four years repeating without any evidence that the 2016 election had been hacked.” But American intelligence agencies concluded years ago that Russia tried to interfere in the 2016 election. The Republican-led Senate agreed last year that Russia disrupted that election to help Mr. Trump.
On the timing of when the article of impeachment was delivered.
David Schoen, another lawyer, misleadingly claimed that the House held on to the article of impeachment until “Democrats had secured control over the Senate” and “Representative Clyburn made clear they had considered holding the articles for over 100 days to provide President Biden with a clear pathway to implement his agenda.”
In fact, Democrats had considered delivering the article to the Senate earlier, almost immediately after it was approved, but Senator Mitch McConnell, then the majority leader, precluded the possibility of an immediate trial in a letter informing Republican lawmakers that the Senate was in recess and “may conduct no business until January 19.” Mr. Clyburn made his suggestion of withholding the article even longer, after Mr. McConnell had sent his letter.
On a graphic the House managers were preparing for their case.
Mr. Schoen also accused Democrats of presenting a “manufactured graphic,” referring to a New York Times photo of Representative Jamie Raskin, Democrat of Maryland and the lead impeachment manager, looking at a computer screen. The screen featured an image of a tweet Mr. Trump shared stamped with an erroneous date. Left unsaid was that the image was recreated because Mr. Trump has been banned from Twitter and House managers could not simply show the retweet itself. Mr. Schoen then acknowledged that House managers fixed the incorrect date before presenting the graphic during the trial.
On whether Mr. Trump had due process.
Mr. Schoen complained once again that the impeachment did not afford Mr. Trump “due process” — a point Mr. Trump’s lawyers and supporters had previously argued during his first impeachment, and a point law scholars had dismissed.
There are no “enforceable rights” to due process in a House inquiry, and while those rights exist in the Senate trial, they are limited, said Frank O. Bowman III, a law professor at the University of Missouri and an expert on impeachment. Former President Andrew Johnson, for example, was impeached by the House before it even drew up the articles.
The House impeachment managers wrapped up their case against former President Donald J. Trump on Thursday, warning senators that if they did not vote to convict, it would set a dangerous standard for the country in the future.
Here are some takeaways from the third day of the trial.
The angry, violent mob came to Washington at Trump’s invitation, the prosecution concludes.
The impeachment managers used their final day of arguments to try to convince senators that Mr. Trump invited the rioters to Washington on Jan. 6. They argued that the “insurrectionists” who attacked the Capitol were not acting on their own, as his defense lawyers have said and will most likely assert when they present their case.
The managers again used video footage of Mr. Trump and his supporters to make their points, interspersed with clips of the chaos to remind the senators of how they felt as the Capitol was under assault. They asserted that such violence would not have occurred without Mr. Trump.
Even after the attack, managers say Mr. Trump showed a ‘lack of remorse.’
The impeachment managers stressed that despite the five deaths and dozens of injuries among law enforcement officers alone, including cracked ribs and smashed spinal disks, Mr. Trump never apologized for what happened on Jan. 6.
“President Trump’s lack of remorse and refusal to take accountability during the attack shows his state of mind,” said Representative Ted Lieu of California, one of the managers. “It shows that he intended the events of Jan. 6 to happen. And when it did, he delighted in it.”
Vice President Mike Pence’s presence looms large as a traitor, victim and hero.
Throughout the impeachment trial, the House managers have praised former Vice President Mike Pence for standing up to Mr. Trump and refusing to do his bidding of rejecting Electoral College votes to grant him re-election.
“Vice President Pence showed us what it means to be an American,” Mr. Lieu said on Wednesday. “What it means to show courage. He put his country, his oath, his values and his morals above the will of one man.”
It was unusual praise to hear from Democrats after four years of Mr. Pence going along with his combustive boss, which critics have said only enabled Mr. Trump.
The managers emphasized that the rioters wanted to assassinate Mr. Pence, the second in command of the country, in what appeared to be an appeal to Republican senators’ respect for the sacred chain of command.
Mr. Pence, a former congressman and governor of Indiana, has been largely out of sight since he left office.
Trump still appears to have enough votes to be acquitted.
The House impeachment managers closed three days of emotional footage of the attack. They showed senators just how close they were to the violent mob of Trump supporters as they ducked and ran to safety that day. At times, the videos and recordings appeared to strike a chord with the Republicans in the room. Some of them even praised the work of the House managers. But it has not been enough to change their minds.
To secure a conviction, Senate Democrats would need 17 of their Republican peers to side with them, and that has never been an expected outcome.
“The impeachment trial is dead on arrival,” Senator Rand Paul, Republican of Kentucky, predicted last month.
Sabrina Tavernise, Luke Broadwater and Glenn Thrush contributed reporting.
President Biden said Friday that he is watching to see whether Republican senators will “stand up” to former President Donald J. Trump in his impeachment trial, but Mr. Biden said he is not lobbying them about how to vote.
“I’m just anxious to see whether — what my Republican friends do. Whether they stand up,” Mr. Biden said during a brief, impromptu walk on the North Lawn of the White House early Friday morning.
The president has largely avoided providing commentary on the trial, in which the House managers spent two days using graphic video to reconstruct the Jan. 6 assault on the Capitol and Mr. Trump’s role in it. On Thursday, he said he thought the gripping video might have changed some minds.
Friday’s comments appeared to go slightly further toward pressuring Republican senators to convict the former president. But Mr. Biden was quick to say that he is not calling Republican senators directly to lobby them.
“No. No, I’m not,” he said.
Mr. Biden’s comments came as he prepared to meet later Friday morning with a bipartisan group of mayors and governors in the Oval Office to discuss efforts to pass the president’s $1.9 trillion coronavirus relief package. A news release from the White House said the president would make the case to the local leaders that passage of the legislation would “get more support to their communities and those on the front lines of the fight against Covid-19.”
The president is scheduled to meet privately with Janet Yellen, the secretary of the Treasury, for an update on the economic situation facing the country. In the early evening, Mr. Biden is expected to leave for Camp David, the presidential retreat in the nearby Maryland mountains. It will be his first weekend there as president.
Nikki Haley, the former United Nations ambassador in the Trump administration, criticized Donald J. Trump in an interview published by Politico on Friday, saying that she was “disgusted” by the former president’s conduct on Jan. 6 and believed he had “lost any sort of political viability.”
Ms. Haley, who is widely believed to be considering a run for president in 2024, also said that she does not think the former president will run himself. “I don’t think he’s going to be in the picture,” she told Politico, adding, “I don’t think he can. He’s fallen so far.”
Ms. Haley’s comments may cost her some support among Mr. Trump’s base, a constituency that will be important to any future Republican nominee and one that she had worked hard to avoid offending since leaving his administration in 2018.
But the Capitol riot last month and Mr. Trump’s role in inciting it appears to have been Ms. Haley’s breaking point. Her tone changed markedly between interviews with Politico in December and January. Initially, she refused to acknowledge that the former president was doing anything reckless by refusing to concede election defeat. She said that because he genuinely believed his defeat was rigged, his actions since November were not irresponsible.
She wrongly predicted that he would “go on his way” once his legal options were exhausted.
In the series of interviews, Ms. Haley then went on to say “he let us down.”
“He went down a path he shouldn’t have, and we shouldn’t have followed him, and we shouldn’t have listened to him,” she said.
Ms. Haley’s remarks suggest that she has made a political bet that many other Republicans who have eyes on the White House have not: That Mr. Trump’s hold over the Republican base will loosen and he will not be the kingmaker many predict.
In contrast, Senator Josh Hawley of Missouri has ignored calls to apologize for advancing Mr. Trump’s voter fraud claims. Former Vice President Mike Pence has said nothing publicly since being forced to flee the Senate chamber on Jan. 6 as pro-Trump rioters chanted, “Hang Mike Pence.”
One officer lost the tip of his right index finger. Others were smashed in the head with baseball bats, flag poles and pipes. Another lost consciousness after rioters used a metal barrier to push her into stairs as they tried to reach the Capitol steps during the assault on Jan. 6.
“We don’t have to hurt you — why are you standing in our way?” one rioter told the officer as he helped her to her feet, according to court documents. She tried to regroup, but blacked out while making an arrest hours later. Doctors determined she had a concussion.
A little more than a month after the Capitol siege, a fuller picture of the injuries sustained by the police has emerged from court documents, footage revealed at former President Donald J. Trump’s impeachment trial, accounts provided by officers and interviews with law enforcement officials and experts.
The Capitol assault resulted in one of the worst days of injuries for law enforcement in the United States since the Sept. 11, 2001, terrorist attacks. At least 138 officers — 73 from the Capitol Police and 65 from the Metropolitan Police Department in Washington — were injured, the departments have said. The injuries ranged from bruises and lacerations to more serious damage such as concussions, rib fractures, burns and even a mild heart attack.
One Capitol Police officer, Brian D. Sicknick, was killed, and investigators are increasingly focused on whether chemical irritants were a factor in his death, according to a senior law enforcement official. The Capitol Police said in a statement that Officer Sicknick died from injuries sustained “while physically engaging with protesters.” Two officers involved in the response have died by suicide, the local police have said.
The number of those injured does not account for the dozens, if not hundreds, of officers who law enforcement officials estimate will suffer in years to come with post-traumatic stress disorder and the dozens who most likely contracted the coronavirus from unmasked Trump supporters who overran the Capitol, the experts and officials said.
“If you’re a cop and get into a fight, it may last five minutes, but these guys were in battle for four to five hours,” said Chuck Wexler, the executive director of the Police Executive Research Forum, a nonprofit that advises departments across the country on management and tactics. “You would be hard-pressed to find another day in history like this, when the police encountered this level of violence in one event.”
The horror of the siege — which officers have described as “medieval” because of brute hand-to-hand combat and the use of blunt objects as weapons — received renewed attention this week at Mr. Trump’s impeachment trial. House managers repeatedly raised the injuries as they revealed new video and audio to argue that Mr. Trump incited his supporters to overrun the Capitol while lawmakers were certifying his election loss.
At the trial on Thursday, Representative David Cicilline of Rhode Island, an impeachment manager, listed a litany of injuries that laid out the effects of the siege on officers: concussions, irritated lungs and injuries caused by repeated blows from bats, poles and clubs.
“Capitol Police officers also sustained injuries that will be with them for the rest of their lives,” he said.
Zolan Kanno-Youngs, Katie Benner and Shaila Dewan contributed reporting.
The Biden administration is preparing to resume processing migrants who were forced back to Mexico and have been stuck in limbo under a Trump-era policy that blocked access to the United States, administration officials said Thursday evening.
Under the policy, the Trump administration returned tens of thousands of asylum-seeking migrants to Mexico to wait for their day in immigration court. Many of them have been in squalid tent camps for months, or longer. Moreover, immigration hearings were suspended as the coronavirus pandemic closed immigration courts in the United States, leaving many migrants vulnerable to muggings, kidnappings, sexual assault and other crimes.
President Biden had already directed the government to suspend returning migrants to Mexico under the program, more commonly known as the “Remain in Mexico” policy. On Feb. 19, the administration will begin bringing some of those migrants to the United States, with a focus on those who have waited in Mexico the longest, administration officials said.
Migrants “with particular vulnerabilities” will be a priority, one official said, adding that the administration would work with international organizations to help provide coronavirus testing. Migrants will not be allowed into the United States unless they have a confirmed negative test, officials said.
The Biden administration has repeatedly sought to discourage migrants from rushing to the southwestern border as Mr. Biden looks to make good on his pledge to roll back Donald J. Trump’s immigration policies. Still, Mr. Biden will keep in place a pandemic emergency rule that has empowered Border Patrol agents to rapidly turn away border crossers without providing the opportunity to ask for protection.
“Especially at the border, however, where capacity constraints remain serious, changes will take time,” Alejandro N. Mayorkas, the homeland security secretary, said in a statement. “Individuals who are not eligible under this initial phase should wait for further instructions and not travel to the border.”
Instead, the migrants who were processed under the Remain in Mexico program will be able to register online for their case to resume and will be told when and where to arrive at the border, officials said.
The asylum seekers who had been stuck in Mexico will not enter long-term detention, but will be processed through initiatives that track migrants after they are released into the United States, in some cases with ankle monitors, to ensure they appear at immigration court. During his campaign, Mr. Biden said that he would rely on such initiatives and cut funding used to jail migrants.
The officials said they expected to be able to eventually process 300 migrants a day, but it was unclear when the new system would start.
Many of the more than 60,000 migrants who had been sent back to Mexico under the program had returned to their home countries. But more than 25,000 migrants still have active asylum cases in the program, administration officials said.
Twitter on Thursday said it had suspended the official account of Project Veritas, a conservative activist group, because the account posted private information.
The social media company also temporarily locked the account of James O’Keefe, the founder of Project Veritas.
Mr. O’Keefe will have to delete a tweet that violated Twitter’s rules before he can tweet again, Twitter said.
The tweets that Twitter said violated its policies against posting private information showed a Project Veritas staffer questioning a Facebook executive, Guy Rosen, outside his home.
“The account, @Project_Veritas, was permanently suspended for repeated violations of Twitter’s private information policy,” a Twitter spokeswoman said.
Mr. O’Keefe said Project Veritas had appealed Twitter’s decision.
“It would be unconscionable for me to take down our reporting where it didn’t violate anyone’s privacy rights,” he said.
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