Impeachment managers used the final day of their opening arguments to hammer home the case against Trump. Here are the 5 biggest takeaways.

• House managers wrapped up their opening arguments on Thursday, about four and a half hours early.
• They hammered home the case against Trump using his own followers' words.
• They also dismantled the defense's claim that Trump's January 6 rally was protected free speech.

The Democratic House impeachment managers who are acting as prosecutors in former President Donald Trump's impeachment trial ended their opening arguments with a bang on Thursday, laying out in detail how they said Trump spread a "big lie" about the election, encouraged and incited his followers into committing violence, and failed to act as that violence unfolded.

Next, the defense will get up to 16 hours to rebut the prosecution's argument, after which US senators who are acting as jurors in the impeachment trial will get time to ask both sides questions.

Here are the biggest takeaways from Thursday's proceedings:

• Impeachment managers hammered their case home using Trump's own followers' words: Rep. Diana DeGette cited several examples of Trump supporters explicitly saying they engaged in the Capitol riot at Trump's direction.
  • A lawyer representing Jacob Chansley, known as the QAnon Shaman, said this month that his client felt played by the president. The lawyer told CNN Chansley and "millions" of other Americans "truly did hang on every word of their president, our president, the person that we permitted day in, day out to speak to us in ways and in fashions that simply weren't true." Chansley also said this week that he was "deeply disappointed" in Trump.
  • A lawyer representing Riley Williams, who was arrested and charged with multiple felonies in connection with the Capitol siege, told a judge it was "regrettable that Ms. Williams took the president's bait and went inside the Capitol."
  • Samuel Fisher, who is also accused of participating in the riot, wrote on Facebook: "At 1 when congress certifies the election … Trump just needs to fire the bat signal … deputize patriots … and then the pain comes."
  • Dominic Pezzola, a member of the far-right group Proud Boys, said Trump "invited us down." His lawyer said of the insurrectionists, "These were people acting in a way they've never acted before, and it begs the question: Who lit the fuse?"
  • The "insurrectionists believed and understood themselves to be following President Trump's marching orders," Rep. Jamie Raskin, the lead impeachment manager, said. DeGette also said they were acting "in perfect alignment" with Trump's "instructions."
• Trump had a "pattern and practice" of inciting violence that showed the insurrection wasn't an aberration, Raskin said: Raskin said Trump's rhetoric "galvanized, encouraged, and electrified these extremist followers" even before January 6, adding "these tactics were road-tested."
  • He pointed to the Charlottesville, Virginia, riot, a right-wing extremist plot to kidnap and assassinate Michigan Gov. Gretchen Whitmer, and Trump's refusal to condemn the attacks.
  • "These prior acts of incitement cast a harsh light on Trump's obvious intent" and "unavoidable knowledge of the consequences of his incitement and the clear foreseeability of the violent harm that he unleashed on our people and our republic," Raskin said. "January 6 was not some unexpected, radical break from his normal law-abiding and peaceful disposition. This was his state of mind. This was his essential MO."
• The physical, emotional, and psychological toll of the siege: House impeachment managers laid out in detail the effect that the insurrection had on members of Congress, janitorial and custodial staff, the press, Hill staffers, and Capitol Police, particularly Black officers.
  • "The sound of those window panes popping" in the House chamber, "I won't forget that sound," one House staffer said in an audio clip played by Rep. David Cicilline, an impeachment manager.
  • Cicilline pointed to tweets from CNN's Kristin Wilson, which said two people on her team were on crutches the day of the siege and had to run from the violence, while another trapped in the House chamber "had to crawl out to hide." Wilson added: "Every bang on the door of them trying to come through I can still hear in my head."
  • A janitorial staffer who hid in a closet told Insider's Kayla Epstein: "I was all by myself. I didn't know what was going on."
• The risks to national security and the US's international reputation: Impeachment manager Joaquin Castro said some insurrectionists were on an FBI watch list, while other names were in the national terrorist-screening database.
  • Intelligence and law-enforcement agencies "have the burden to figure out exactly what was stolen, taken, ransacked, and compromised," Castro said. "Think about it: Every foreign adversary considering attacking this building got to watch a dress rehearsal, and they saw that this Capitol could be overtaken."
  • He also said US adversaries like Russia and China seized on the insurrection to say America had no right to dictate how other countries should run their governments and to paint the US as hypocritical.
• Impeachment managers broke down the First Amendment argument from Trump's lawyers: The last part of the trial focused mainly on the House managers dismantling the defense's free-speech argument piece by piece.
  
  • "President Trump wasn't just some guy with political opinions who showed up at a rally on January 6 and delivered controversial remarks," Rep. Joe Neguse, an impeachment manager, said.
  • He added that Trump spent months "using the unique powers of that office, of his bully pulpit, to spread the big lie that the election had been stolen, to convince his followers to stop the steal, to assemble them just blocks away from here on January 6 at the very moment that we were meeting to count the Electoral College votes.
  • Trump's lawyers are "offering a radically different version of what happened that day, totally inconsistent with the evidence," Neguse said. "And then they insist that if that fictional version of events, if that alternate reality were true, well then he may be protected by the First Amendment. That's their argument."
  • Raskin followed up, saying that the Supreme Court case Brandenburg v. Ohio established that there was no First Amendment protection for speech "directed to inciting or producing imminent lawless action and likely to produce such action."
  • He wrapped up the argument by saying the free-speech rhetoric from the defense was "insidious" because Trump's words incited "the most devastating and dangerous assault by a government official on our Constitution, including the first amendment, in living memory."