Their defence of their client was NOT refuting the facts presented by the prosecution….
WASHINGTON — President Trump’s legal defense team mounted an aggressive offense on Saturday as it opened its side in the Senate impeachment trial by attacking his Democratic accusers as partisan witch-hunters trying to remove him because they could not beat him at the ballot box.
After three days of arguments by the House managers prosecuting Mr. Trump for high crimes and misdemeanors, the president’s lawyers presented the senators a radically different view of the facts and the Constitution, seeking to turn the Democrats’ charges back on them while denouncing the whole process as illegitimate.
“They’re asking you to tear up all of the ballots all across the country on your own initiative, take that decision away from the American people,” Pat A. Cipollone, the White House counsel, said of the House managers. “They’re here,” he added moments later, “to perpetrate the most massive interference in an election in American history, and we can’t allow that to happen.”
From the White House, Mr. Trump weighed in on Twitter with attacks on prominent Democrats including Representative Adam B. Schiff of California, the lead prosecutor for Democrats, Senator Chuck Schumer of New York, the Democratic leader, Speaker Nancy Pelosi and Representative Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez of New York, portraying his impeachment trial as a forum for convicting them instead.
“Our case against lyin’, cheatin’, liddle’ Adam ‘Shifty’ Schiff, Cryin’ Chuck Schumer, Nervous Nancy Pelosi, their leader, dumb as a rock AOC, & the entire Radical Left, Do Nothing Democrat Party, starts today at 10:00 A.M.,” he wrote.
Donald J. Trump
@realDonaldTrump
The abbreviated Saturday trial session, which opened earlier than previous days and lasted about two hours so that senators could leave town for the rest of the weekend, was the first time Mr. Trump’s representatives have formally made a case for him in a congressional proceeding since the House opened its impeachment inquiry back in September.
With the odds stacked against him in the Democratic-run House, Mr. Trump refused to send lawyers to participate in Judiciary Committee hearings last month, complaining that he was not given due process. But he faced a more receptive audience in the Republican-controlled Senate, where the White House has been working in tandem with Senator Mitch McConnell of Kentucky, the Republican majority leader….
image…YouTube.com
President Trump on Saturday morning encouraged his followers on Twitter to watch his lawyers present his defense in the impeachment trial beginning at 10 a.m.
Trump encouraged people to watch the proceedings on Fox News and One America News while jabbing at CNN as “Fake News” and apparently mocking MSNBC as “MSDNC” — a likely reference to the Democratic Party.
Trump also hurled insults at lead House impeachment manager Adam Schiff (D-Calif.), House Speaker Nancy Pelosi (D-Calif.) and Senate Minority Leader Charles Schumer (D-N.Y.) as well as freshman Democratic Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez (N.Y.), who has had not formal role on the Senate trial…
The Hill….
Robert Reich
@RBReich
Trump’s attorneys are essentially arguing that removing a president from office through the impeachment process would violate the Constitution.
You can’t make this stuff up.