Disgraced former President Donald Trump’s lawyer Bruce Castor embarrassed himself again on Friday by claiming that there was no insurrection at the Capitol on January 6th despite hours of news and surveillance footage of the attack.

Trump supporters stormed the Capitol building in a quest to overthrow democracy and install Trump as a dictator as the House and Senate tried to certify the legitimate election victory of then-President-elect Joe Biden.

The insurrectionists committed assault and murder to get inside. They broke windows, raided offices, defecated on the floors, and intended to assassinate lawmakers if they could have found them, including former Vice President Mike Pence, whose military aide was nearly overtaken, putting the nuclear football at risk of ending up in the wrong hands.

House impeachment managers have masterfully and disturbingly presented video footage of the insurrection and just how close the terrorists came to catching up with lawmakers. It is absolutely indisputable that an insurrection took place.

But Bruce Castor argued in Trump’s defense on Friday that there was never an insurrection. Seriously.

“Clearly, there was no insurrection,” Castor said during the Senate trial. “Insurrection is a term of art defined in the law that involves taking over a country, a shadow government, taking the TV stations over and having some plan of what you will do when you finally take power. Clearly this is not that.”

Castor has some nerve. This was a textbook definition of insurrection, an insurrection that Trump himself incited. He told his supporters to go to the Capitol and fight. They stormed the building with the intent of overturning the legitimate results of the 2020 presidential election so that Trump could stay in power. That’s not only an insurrection, it’s an attempted coup and a terrorist attack all in one.

Pretending that an insurrection did not happen is insulting and enraging. Our democracy was nearly overthrown. Capitol Police officers were murdered. Lawmakers faced being executed or taken hostage. This was very much an insurrection and Castor’s denial of that basic fact should make Republicans reconsider their intention to acquit Trump. Because if they acquit, they are subscribing to the falsehood Castor uttered today, even though they were targets themselves.

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