Lawyers representing Capitol rioters blame Trump for the insurrection

This week, Donald Trump stands trial for his second impeachment. According to the House of Representatives' charges, the former president incited an insurrection by telling a crowd to "fight like hell" before a mob of his supporters stormed the Capitol building.

Criminal defense lawyers representing members of that very mob may be watching with rapt attention.

"If I'm a defendant's lawyer, I want to sit back and watch the impeachment proceedings unfold," Randy Zelin, an adjunct professor at Cornell Law School and criminal defense attorney at Wilk Auslander LLP, told Insider. "Because that's going to be the best evidence that I could possibly muster for a motion to dismiss my client's case."

While the participants in the Capitol riot won't be showing up for trial in Congress this week — even though the "QAnon Shaman" has offered to stand as a witness against Trump — what happens in Trump's second impeachment trial may have consequences for their own cases, criminal law experts say.

The evidence that House impeachment managers bring for their case against Trump, Zelin said, may also be used by the rioters' defense attorneys in court. Trump told his supporters that they would walk up to the Capitol building and "fight like hell." The lawyers representing those doing the fighting may argue they were simply acting at Trump's command. 

"If you are encouraging someone who is charged with doing it, then your defense is, 'The president told me to do it. And here's the proof: Go take a look at the evidence in the impeachment proceedings,'" Zelin said.

Rioters are already blaming Trump

Many of the participants in the insurrection have already used this excuse in some form, as Insider's Sonam Sheth previously reported.

More than 230 people have been criminally charged in connection with the insurrection so far. And as attorneys argue for pretrial release — letting their clients stay out of jail ahead of the criminal trial — they're piling much of the blame on Trump himself.

Jenna Ryan, the Texas realtor famous for flying to Washington, DC, on a private jet, said she "went and answered the call of my president." Lori Ulrich, the attorney representing Riley Williams, who was accused of taking a laptop belonging to House Speaker Nancy Pelosi, said she "took the president's bait." An attorney for Matthew Miller, who prosecutors said discharged a fire extinguisher at Capitol Police, said he was "merely following the directions of then-President Trump."

Even Al Watkins, the attorney representing "QAnon Shaman" Jacob Chansley, said his client acted upon "months of lies and misrepresentations and horrific innuendo and hyperbolic speech by our president designed to inflame, enrage, motivate."

"Our president, as a matter of public record, invited these individuals, as president, to walk down to the Capitol with him," Watkins told a local NBC News affiliate, adding that Chansley "regrets very very much having not just been duped by the president, but ... allowed that duping to put him in a position to make decisions he should not have made."

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But just because the impeachment managers use something in an impeachment trial doesn't mean the same rhetoric or evidence can be admissible in a criminal court. Judges will typically only admit evidence that has a direct connection to the immediate case, according to Joseph Low, the head trial attorney at Arash Law. But judges will likely try to keep out any politically charged rhetoric from the trial.

"In an impeachment hearing, you know, it's pretty loose as to what can be used as evidence. It's not the same standard as what can be used in court criminal court," Low said, adding: "You can say a lot of inflammatory argument, innuendo, and insinuation in an impeachment proceeding that will never be admitted in a criminal court."

Judges — as well as prosecutors and defense attorneys — may also seek to insulate court proceedings from the impeachment trial altogether, according to Chicago-based defense attorney Donna Rotunno.

"We're going to hear a lot of banter in the court of public opinion — about what they think, and why they think people did it — but when it comes to actually walking in the courtroom, I just don't see how that stuff's really relevant to the plaintiff, or to the defense, or to the decision-making," Rotunno said.