U.S. Rep. Joe Neguse delivered closing arguments Thursday as House Democrats concluded their case against Donald Trump on charges the former president incited an insurrection, calling the evidence “clear” and “overwhelming.”

Neguse, a Lafayette Democrat and one of nine House managers acting as prosecutors in the impeachment trial of the former president, pleaded with senators to examine the evidence presented over the past two days in the Senate trial.

“We humbly, humbly ask you to convict President Trump for the crime of which he is overwhelmingly guilty, because if you don’t – if we pretend this didn’t happen, or worse, if we let it go unanswered, who’s to say it won’t happen again,” Neguse said.

The evidence presented over two days in the Senate trial, Neguse said, “proves President Trump incited an insurrection, an insurrection that he alone had the power to stop. And the fact he didn’t stop it, the fact that he incited a lawless attack and abdicated his duty to defend us from it, the fact that he actually further inflamed the mob – further inflamed that mob – attacking his vice president while assassins were pursing him in this Capitol, more than requires conviction and disqualification.”

Neguse asked the senators weighing Trump’s fate to consider three questions: Was the violence foreseeable? Did the then-president encourage the violence? Did Trump act willfully?

“I’m going to show you why the answer to every one of those questions has to be yes,” Neguse said.

Reviewing the then-president’s actions for months, leading up to the Jan. 6 attack on the Capitol – including at a rally when Trump urged his followers to “fight like hell” because their government was being “stolen” from them – Neguse maintained Trump “was willing to do just about anything to prevent the peaceful transfer of power.”

Neguse said it was important to look at what Trump did after the mob breached the Capitol, stopping Congress from certifying Joe Biden’s election victory.

“He did virtually nothing,” Neguse said. “On Jan. 6 he didn’t condemn the attack, he didn’t condemn the attackers, he didn’t say he would send help … instead, he issued messages in the afternoon that sided with them – the insurrectionists.”

Added Neguse: “He reacted exactly the way someone would react if they were delighted and exactly unlike how a person would react if they were angry at what their followers had done.”

Neguse said the way Trump treated then-Vice President Mike Pence during the riot displayed Trump’s motives and culpability. 

“His own vice president was in this building with an armed mob shouting ‘hang him,’ the same armed mob with gallows set up outside,” Neguse said. “And what did President Trump do? He attacked him more, he singled him out by name. It’s actually hard to fathom.”

Trump’s legal team has said in legal briefs and in TV appearances this week that impeaching Trump a second time – and prosecuting a case against him after he left office – amounts to a naked political attack waged by Democrats who hate the former president. They argued earlier this week that the impeachment was unconstitutional and plan to make a case that what Trump said didn’t amount to incitement.

A former University of Colorado regent and head of Colorado’s Department of Regulatory Agencies, Neguse is serving his second term in Congress. He and U.S. Rep. Diana DeGette, a Denver Democrat, were named in mid-January by House Speaker Nancy Pelosi to the team of House managers tasked with making the case against Trump.

Watch Neguse’s full speech: (Mobile users: Click the link here)