Michael Van der Veen says the current vice president of the United States, Kamala Harris, urged supporters to donate to a fund that bailed out violent rioters and arsonists out of jail as hundreds of police subject to violent assault by “angry mobs”.

“One of those was released and went out and committed another crime, assault, he beat the bejesus out of somebody,” he said.

“She said of the violent demonstrations: ‘Everyone beware, they’re not going to stop before election day in November and they’re not going to stop after election day, they’re not going to let up, and they should not.”

“When violent left-wing anarchists conducted a sustained assault on a federal courthouse in Portland Oregon, speaker Pelosi did not call it an insurrection, instead she called the federal law enforcement officers protecting the building ‘stormtroopers’, says Michael Van der Veen.

“When violent mobs destroyed public property she said: ‘People will do what they do.”

“Speaker Pelosi herself said that the 2016 election was hijacked and that congress was a duty to protect our Democracy,” says Michael Van der Veen.

“She also called the president an imposter and a traitor, and recently referred to her colleagues in the House as the enemy within.”

“Consider the language that the House impeachment article alleges to constitute incitement, ‘if you don’t fight like hell, you’re not going to have a country anymore’,” says Michael Van der Veen

“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.”

Lawyers played a supercut of Democrats using the language they’ve accused the president of inciting insurrection.

Joe Biden: “The vast majority of the protests have been peaceful.”

Joe Biden: “If we were in high school I’d take him outside the gym and beat the hell out of him.”

Nancy Pelosi: “I just don’t know why there aren’t uprisings all over the country and maybe there will be.”

Ayanna Presley: “There needs to be unrest in the streets for as long as there is unrest in our lives.”

Maxine Waters: “And you tell them that they’re not welcome anymore, anywhere.”

Corey Booker: “I feel like punching him.”

Chuck Schumer: “You have released the whirlwind and you will pay the price.”

Chris Cuomo: “Show me where it say protests are supposed to be polite and peaceful.”

Joe Biden had to “gavel them down”, says Michael Van der Veen before playing Raskins objections fom 2017:

Jamie Raskin: “I have an objection because 10 of the 29 electoral votes cast by Florida were cast by electors not lawfully certified.”

“Maxine Waters: “I wish to ask is there one United States senator who will join me in this letter of objection.”

“Far from promoting insurrection against the United States, the presdient’s remarks explicitly encourage those in attendance to exercise their rights, “peacefully and patriotically”,” Michael Van der Veen say quoting from Trump’s speech on 6 January.

“Peaceful and patriotic protest is the very antithesis of a violent assault on the nation’s capital. The House impeachment article slanderously alleges that the president intended that the crowd at The Ellipse to, quote, ‘interfere with the join session solemn constitutional duty to certify the results of the 2020 presidential election”.

Van der Veen says this is “manifestly disproven by the plain text” of the speech.

“The entire premise of his remarks were that the Democratic process would and should play out according to the letter of the law,” he says.

Read the full speech transcript.

“No thinking person could seriously believe that the president’s January 6 speech on the Ellipse was in any way an incitement to violence or insurrection,” says Michael Van der Veen

“The suggestion is patently absurd on its face, nothing in the text could ever be construed as encouraging, condoning or enticing unlawful activity of any kind.”

Donald Trump’s impeachment is an “unjust and blatantly unconstitutional act of political vengeance” that amounts to a witch hunt, the former president’s lawyers have argued.

The Independent’s Andrew Buncombe reports.

The trial starts with Donald Trump’s defence team.

Follow live with The Independent.