A3
THE ASTORIAN • SATURDAY, FEBRUARY 13, 2021
Defense lawyers accuse
Democrats of hatred for Trump
US to secure 600M vaccine
doses by July, Biden says
By ERIC TUCKER, LISA
MASCARO and MARY
CLARE JALONICK
Associated Press
By ZEKE MILLER and
JONATHAN LEMIRE
Associated Press
WASHINGTON — Law-
yers for former President
Donald Trump defended him
against impeachment Fri-
day by accusing Democrats
of waging a campaign of
“hatred” against the former
president and manipulating
his words in the lead-up to
the deadly siege of the U.S.
Capitol.
Their
presentation
included a blizzard of their
own selectively edited fi ery
comments from Democrats.
The Trump legal team
characterized the impeach-
ment case as a politically
motivated “witch hunt” — an
outgrowth, they said, of years
of efforts to drive him from
offi ce — and they sought to
reduce the case to Trump’s
use of a single word, “fi ght,”
in a speech preceding the Jan.
6 riot. They played dozens of
clips showing Democrats,
some of them senators now
serving as jurors, using the
same word to energize sup-
porters in speeches railing
against Trump.
“You didn’t do any-
thing wrong” in using the
word, Trump
attorney
David Schoen told the sen-
ators. “But, please, stop the
hypocrisy.”
The Trump defense team
left out that what Trump was
doing in telling his support-
ers to “fi ght like hell” was to
undermine a national elec-
tion after every state had ver-
ifi ed its results, after the Elec-
toral College had affi rmed
them and after nearly every
election lawsuit fi led by
Trump and his allies had been
rejected in court. Instead, they
contended, he was telling the
crowd to support primary
challenges against his adver-
saries and to press for sweep-
ing election reform — some-
thing he was entitled to do.
The case is speeding
BETHESDA, Md. — Pres-
ident Joe Biden said Thursday
that the U.S. will have enough
supply of the COVID-19 vac-
cine by the end of the sum-
mer to inoculate 300 million
Americans.
Biden made the announce-
ment at the sprawling National
Institutes of Health com-
plex just outside Washington,
D.C., as he visited some of
the nation’s leading scientists
on the frontlines of the fi ght
against the disease. He toured
the Viral Pathogenesis Labora-
tory that created the COVID-
19 vaccine now manufac-
tured by Moderna and being
rolled out in the U.S. and other
countries.
The U.S. is on pace to
exceed Biden’s goal of admin-
istering 100 million vaccine
doses in his fi rst 100 days in
offi ce, with more than 26 mil-
lion shots delivered in his fi rst
three weeks.
“That’s just the fl oor,”
Biden said. “Our end goal is
beating COVID-19.”
Biden announced on Thurs-
day that the U.S. had secured
contractual
commitments
from Moderna and Pfi zer to
deliver the 600 million doses
of vaccine by the end of July
— more than a month earlier
than initially anticipated.
“We’re now on track to
have enough supply for 300
million Americans by the end
of July,” he announced.
The pace of injections
could increase further if a
third coronavirus vaccine
from drugmaker Johnson &
Johnson receives approval
from the Food and Drug
Administration.
Speaking with Dr. Anthony
Fauci, the nation’s top infec-
tious-disease specialist, Biden
emphasized that his admin-
istration is doing everything
possible to increase the vac-
cine supply and the country’s
Senate Television
Bruce Castor, an attorney for former President Donald
Trump, speaks during the impeachment trial at the U.S.
Capitol on Friday.
toward a conclusion and
near-certain acquittal, per-
haps as soon as Saturday,
with Trump’s lawyers mak-
ing an abbreviated presenta-
tion that used less than three
of their allotted 16 hours.
The defense arguments and
the quick pivot to the Dem-
ocrats’ own words defl ected
from the central question of
the trial — whether Trump
incited the assault on the
Capitol — and instead aimed
to place impeachment man-
agers and Trump adversaries
on the defensive.
After a two-day effort
by Democrats to sync up
Trump’s words to the vio-
lence that followed, includ-
ing through raw and emotive
video footage, defense law-
yers suggested that Demo-
crats have typically engaged
in the same overheated rhet-
oric as Trump.
But in trying to draw that
equivalency, the defend-
ers minimized Trump’s
monthslong efforts to under-
mine the election results and
his urging of followers to do
the same. Democrats say that
long campaign, rooted in a
“big lie,” laid the ground-
work for the mob that assem-
bled outside the Capitol and
stormed inside. Five people
died.
Without Trump, who in
a speech at a rally preceding
the violence told supporters
to “fi ght like hell,” the vio-
lence would never have hap-
pened, Democrats say.
“And so they came,
draped in Trump’s fl ag, and
used our fl ag, the American
fl ag, to batter and to blud-
geon,” U.S. Rep. Madeleine
Dean, one of the impeach-
ment managers and a Penn-
sylvania Democrat, said
Thursday as she choked back
emotion.
On Friday, as defense
lawyers repeated their own
videos over and over, some
Democrats chuckled and
whispered among them-
selves as almost all of their
faces fl ashed on the screen.
Some passed notes. U.S.
Sen. Richard Blumenthal,
a Connecticut Democrat,
threw up his hands, appar-
ently amused, when his face
appeared. U.S. Sen. Amy
Klobuchar, a Minnesota
Democrat, rolled her eyes.
Most Republicans watched
intently.
During a break, some
joked about the videos and
others said they were a dis-
traction or a “false equiv-
alence”
with
Trump’s
behavior.
“Well we heard the word
‘fi ght’ a lot,” said U.S. Sen.
Angus King, a Maine inde-
pendent who caucuses with
the Democrats.
Evan Vucci/AP Photo
President Joe Biden speaks during a visit at the National
Institutes of Health on Thursday.
capacity to deliver injections
into arms.
“It’s been a hell of a learn-
ing process,” Biden said.
Fauci predicts by April it
will be “open season” for vac-
cinations in the U.S., as supply
boosts will allow most people
to get shots for the virus.
Speaking to NBC’s “Today
Show” on Thursday, Fauci
said the rate of vaccinations
will greatly accelerate in the
coming months. He credits
forthcoming deliveries of the
two approved vaccines, the
potential approval of a third
and moves taken by the Biden
administration to increase the
nation’s capacity to deliver
doses.
Biden, wearing a mask,
used his remarks to criti-
cize former President Don-
ald Trump, saying he inherited
“no plan to vaccinate most of
the country.”
“It is no secret that the vac-
cination program was in much
worse shape than my team and
I anticipated,” he said.
To date, the Biden admin-
istration has deployed active-
duty troops to help stand up
mass vaccination sites in sev-
eral states, as it looks to lay the
groundwork for increasing the
rate of vaccinations once more
supply is available.
The Viral Pathogenesis
Laboratory is led by Dr. Bar-
ney Graham, whose team
made critical discoveries
years ago that laid the ground-
work for rapid development
of that and other COVID-
19 vaccines. Before the pan-
demic erupted, one of Gra-
ham’s research fellows, Dr.
Kizzmekia Corbett, had been
using those earlier fi ndings to
develop a vaccine for MERS,
a cousin of COVID-19.
On the tour, Biden was
shown the lab bench where
researchers sequenced the
virus and developed the pre-
cursor of the Moderna vaccine.
Armed with their prior
research, Corbett and Graham
had a head start when Chinese
scientists shared the genetic
map of the new coronavi-
rus last January. They already
knew how to make spike pro-
teins, which coat the surface
of the new coronavirus and its
MERS relative, that were sta-
ble enough to be used as a key
vaccine ingredient.
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