WASHINGTON, 3 February, 2021 (TON): The US Senate lacks the authority to conduct his impeachment trial now that he has left office, said the former President Donald Trump’s lawyers on Tuesday.

The Democratic lawyers serving as prosecutors made him responsible for the 6 January, 2021 attack on the Capitol.

Trump’s legal team and the nine House of Representatives Democrats set to prosecute him filed briefs with the Senate one week before the trial is scheduled to begin.

The defense lawyers focused on an argument that won the support of 45 of the 50 Republicans in the 100-seat Senate in a failed vote to dismiss the case because Trump is a private citizen, who left office on 20 January, 2021.

The former President’s team also refused to accept that he had committed violence, saying in their 14-page brief that his remarks to supporters shortly before they stormed the Capitol that Democrats contend incited violence were protected under the US Constitution’s First Amendment right to free speech.

The Democrats on the other hand in the pretrial brief rejected the argument. The Democrats urged senators to convict Trump - which would require a two-thirds majority - and then bar him from again holding public office.

“There is no ‘January Exception’ to impeachment or any other provision of the Constitution,” they wrote. “Presidents do not get a free pass to commit high crimes and misdemeanors near the end of their term.”

The house impeached Trump for a charge that before the attack he incited insurrection with his speech to supporters.

“It would be perverse to suggest that our shared commitment to free speech requires the Senate to ignore the obvious: that President Trump is singularly responsible for the violence and destruction that unfolded in our seat of government on January 6,” the Democrats wrote.

Trump’s defense team argued that not only does the Senate lack the authority to put Trump on trial but that the chamber also has no jurisdiction to prevent him from holding office again.

Challenging the case against Trump on the grounds that the Senate lacks constitutional authority to put a former president on trial would enable his fellow Republicans to vote against conviction without directly defending his incendiary remarks.

Trump’s defense team argued that not only does the Senate lack the authority to put Trump on trial but that the chamber also has no jurisdiction to prevent him from holding office again.

The Constitution states that conviction can lead to “removal from Office, and disqualification to hold and enjoy any Office of honor, Trust or Profit under the United States.”

“The 45th President of the United States performed admirably in his role as president, at all times doing what he thought was in the best interests of the American people,” Trump’s defense team said.

It is noted that the lawmakers claim Trump’s conduct to be offending for the constitution, apart from that, in order to secure a conviction, 17 Republicans would need to join the Senate’s 50 Democrats in the vote which seems a daunting hurdle.