House Lays Out Case Against Trump, Branding Him the ‘Inciter in Chief’

“Nancy! Oh, Nancy! Where are you, Nancy?” one of the invaders could be heard shouting in a singsong voice.

“That was a mob sent by the president of the United States to stop the certification of an election,” Ms. Plaskett said. “President Trump put a target on their backs, and his mob broke into the Capitol to hunt them down.”

Glued to their desks, some recoiled or averted their eyes from the hours of footage, including of their own evacuation as the mob closed in just down a corridor.

“It tears at your heart and brings tears to your eyes,” said Senator Mitt Romney, Republican of Utah, who could be seen in one of the videos racing back toward the Senate for safety after a Capitol Police officer warned him to turn around. “That was overwhelmingly distressing and emotional.”

Senator John Thune of South Dakota, the No. 2 Senate Republican, conceded that the managers had “done a good job connecting the dots” and recreating a “harsh reminder of what happens when you let something like that get out of hand.”

But for all of the power of their case, the managers’ task remained an exceedingly steep one. Senators voted narrowly to proceed with the trial on Tuesday, but only six Republicans joined Democrats in deeming it constitutional to judge a former official no longer in office, foreshadowing Mr. Trump’s likely acquittal.

Even after Senator Mitch McConnell of Kentucky, the Republican leader, counseled senators to vote their conscience and let it be known he considered Mr. Trump’s conduct impeachable, few seemed willing to take the step of taking action against a former president who retains heavy sway power over their party.

“Today’s presentation was powerful and emotional, reliving a terrorist attack on our nation’s capital,” said Senator Ted Cruz, Republican of Texas. “But there was very little said about how specific conduct of the president satisfies the legal standard.”

Short of persuading 34 Republicans to join Democrats to achieve the two-thirds majority necessary to convict, the Democratic managers directed their arguments at the American public and at history in an attempt to bury Mr. Trump’s popular appeal and lay down a clear marker for future presidents.

The trial was proceeding at a blistering pace. Prosecutors were expected to take several more hours on Thursday before Mr. Trump’s lawyers will have two days to mount a defense. The Senate could render a verdict as soon as the weekend.

Mr. Trump’s lawyers, who made a much-criticized debut on Tuesday, have thus far spent much of their time focusing on why they believed the trial was unconstitutional. When they begin their own case later in the week, they are expected to assert that the former president was not trying to incite violence or interfere with the electoral process, but rather urge his supporters to demand general election security reforms, an argument that requires ignoring much of the evidentiary record.

Though they have sought not to repeat Mr. Trump’s outlandish claims that the election was “stolen” from him, the lawyers will insist they amount to constitutionally protected free speech for which the Senate cannot punish him.

The House managers, though, argued that Mr. Trump clearly incited the attack on Jan. 6, thus violating his oath of office to protect the Constitution. Mr. Trump repeatedly invited his supporters to show up for a huge rally on the day Congress would make his defeat final, his last change to change the outcome. It will “be wild,” he told them.

Prosecutors walked senators through his speech just before the mob closed in, playing again and again clips of him urging the thousands on hand to “fight like hell” alongside others, shot from the crowd, featuring a drastic response from the audience: “Take the Capitol.”

“This violent attack was not planned in secret,” Ms. Plaskett said. “The insurgents believed they were doing the duty of their president — they were taking his orders.”

To bolster their analysis, the managers turned to an unlikely group: the hundreds of people already charged with executing the riot who in interviews and court records leave little doubt that they believed they were delivering Mr. Trump what he asked for.

But it was all a prelude to a vivid recreation of the attack itself meant to drive home the enormity of what the managers said Mr. Trump had unleashed. Mindful that individual lawmakers still only had a limited view of the day, they used a computer generated model of the Capitol to the mob’s movements over time in precise detail relative to members of Congress.

In one jarring scene, Senator Chuck Schumer, Democrat of New York and the majority leader, was shown literally running with a security detail in search of safety. Representative Eric Swalwell of California, another of the impeachment managers, told senators he had counted 58 steps between where senators could be seen scurrying toward a secure location and where armed extremists were massing.

Instead of intervening to help as the Capitol fell, the managers asserted that Mr. Trump simply stood back and watched in a “dereliction of duty” as the second and third in line to the presidency were put in peril. Citing news reports and accounts from Republican senators themselves who contacted the White House desperate for him to call off the attack or send in security reinforcements, they said the evidence suggested the president refused because he was “delighted” with what he saw unfolding.

“When the violence started, he never once said the one thing everyone around him was begging him to say,” Representative Joaquin Castro of Texas said. “‘Stop the attack.’”

Emily Cochrane contributed reporting.