Donald Trump’s defense team rested their case on Friday, urging the US Senate to acquit the former president of charges of inciting insurrection.

Bruce Castor, a Trump attorney, said the goal of the impeachment case was “cancelling 75 million Trump voters and criminalizing political viewpoints.

“That is what this trial is really about,” Castor said. “The goal is to eliminate a political opponent.”

Castor said that the critical issue in this case is the very narrow issue that is charged against the 45th president.

“That issue is did the 45th president engage in incitement of — they continue to say — insurrection. Clearly there was no insurrection,” he said.

“To answer the question of the House manager, does anybody believe that this would have occurred but for the speech from Donald Trump? I do. All of these facts make clear the January 6 speech did not cause the riots. The president did not cause the riots. He neither explicitly or implicitly encouraged the use of violence or lawless action, but in fact called for peaceful exercise of every American’s first amendment rights to peaceably assemble and petition their government for address of grievances,” Castor said.

Democratic impeachment managers rested their case on Thursday after two days of often emotional presentations. The former US president has been charged by the impeachment team with stoking an insurrection after losing re-election to Joe Biden on November 3.  

The trial will now move to questions from the senators sitting as jurors.