"President Trump was reportedly 'delighted' by the mayhem he had unleashed, because it was preventing Congress from affirming his election loss."

"This dereliction of duty—this failure to take charge of a decisive security response and to quell the riotous mob— persisted late into the day. In fact, when Congressional leaders begged President Trump to send help, or to urge his supporters to stand down, he instead renewed his attacks on the Vice President and focused on lobbying Senators to challenge the election results. Only hours after his mob first breached the Capitol did President Trump release a video statement calling for peace—and even then, he told the insurrectionists (who were at that very moment rampaging through the Capitol) 'we love you' and 'you’re very special.' President Trump then doubled down at 6:01pm, issuing a tweet that blamed Congress for not surrendering to his demand that the election results be overturned: 'These are the things and events that happen when a sacred landslide election victory is so unceremoniously & viciously stripped away from great patriots who have been badly & unfairly treated for so long. Go home with love & in peace. Remember this day forever!'" 

From the trial memorandum of the House Managers — PDF. 

It's this stage of the event — what Trump did after we know he knew the crowd had breached the Capitol — that has the most power to convince me that he deserves to be convicted. I can't see the evidence that there was an advance plan to storm the Capitol, and that, if there was, Trump knew about it, and, therefore, that we should read the language of his rally speech in that light. But at some point, we can see that Trump knew the mayhem was in progress, and clearly he ought to have done what he could to stop what his supporters were doing in his name. 

It's not that easy to find the time line in the memo. The House Managers are keen to give the impression that Trump knew what was in the offing before he started the rally speech. If you don't accept that argument, you may be frustrated. What time was the first breach of the Capitol? When did Trump finish his speech? When was Trump informed about what happened? I see:

House Minority Leader Kevin McCarthy confirmed that he had “talked to the President” on the telephone and said: “I think we need to make a statement. Make sure that we can calm individuals down.”

I'd like to know at what time that happened. And "we can calm individuals down" is something that could be said about protests outside the building, before any breach or threat to the members of Congress. 

Mick Mulvaney, the President’s former Acting Chief of Staff, tweeted that President Trump “can stop this now and needs to do exactly that. Tell these folks to go home.”

We're given a time stamp for that: 3:01. And yet, as the memo states, Trump had tweeted at 2:38 PM: "support our Capitol Police and Law Enforcement … Stay peaceful!" and "ask[ed] everyone at the U.S. Capitol to remain peaceful. No violence! Remember, WE are the Party of Law & Order."

The memo has to acknowledge those tweets, but it diminishes them as "totally ineffectual" and not a "substantial effort... to protect the Congress." Trump could have tweeted different words — ordering his supporters out of the Capitol — but those are the words he used. He stressed peacefulness, I think, because he wanted a big, expressive protest, and he wasn't ready to accept that the rally was not a success. The great majority of his supporters were peaceful, but some had transgressed. 

Finally, at 4:17, Trump put up his video telling his supporters "you have to go home now."

When did the protesters break into the Capitol? The NYT says it begins at 2:11. The Senate calls a recess at 2:13. Trump's "Stay peaceful!" and "No violence!" tweets came 25 minutes later. His "go home" video went up an hour and 39 minutes after that. 

The memo stresses that this was "more than three hours from the start of the siege," but we're judging Trump's behavior, so that stress feels deceptive. It seems to me that Trump, in his speech, called for a peaceful march to the Capitol. He repeated his "peace" theme in 2 tweets very soon after he, I presume, heard of the breach of the building. And then it took an hour and 39 minutes before he got out the message "you have to go home now." It was video, so some time was consumed scripting and recording the video. 

He could have acted more quickly. Did he believe the marauders in the Capitol were watching his Twitter feed waiting for orders? Was he simply numb and slow to process the information? Did he have some sort of idea that it wasn't so bad for his supporters to be in the Capitol terrorizing the members of Congress — that maybe they deserved it? Was he "'delighted' by the mayhem"?

Is that a quote from Trump — "delighted"? The trial memo gives a footnote for the quote: "Andrew Prokop, Republican Senator: White House Aides Say Trump Was 'Delighted' as Capitol Was Stormed" (Vox). The quote — I discover from Vox, not from the House Managers' memo — is from Ben Sasse (speaking on Hugh Hewitt's radio show): 

“I don’t have any idea what was in his heart about what he wanted to happen once they were in the Capitol, but he wanted there to be chaos. And I’m sure you’ve also had conversations with other senior White House officials, as I have. As this was unfolding on television, Donald Trump was walking around the White House confused about why other people on his team weren’t as excited as he was as you had rioters pushing against Capitol Police trying to get into the building. He was delighted.”

So, "delighted" is Sasse's characterization of how unnamed White House officials characterized Trump's mood. Even if the officials and Sasse (and Vox) were observing and interpreting accurately, I still can't tell what Trump was happy about — perhaps his own rousing speech and the great size and enthusiasm of the crowd on the street. I think the danger to the members of Congress became overwhelmingly important, and Trump was slow to admit it or to say anything that would take the energy out of his intense effort to convince everyone that he'd actually won the election. 

That's my reaction to the presentation of the facts in the memo.