His lawyer’s have set down a argument against the current President being charged ANYTHING…
They charge that Democrats are simply trying to negate the the 2016 election…
They want NO evidence….
No witnesses….
But if they are?
They want to call Joe Biden and his son who have NOTHING to do with the case…
This isn’t a criminal trial….
It’s political…
Right now?
All this is just noise….
Trump owns the jury….
We’ll see how this play’s out…..
Don’t expect a conviction….
President Donald Trump’s lawyers on Monday offered a sweeping condemnation of the articles of impeachment against him, contending they’re a legally defective “affront to the Constitution and to our democratic institutions” but offering no substantive rebuttal to the charge that the president solicited Ukraine’s interference in the fast-approaching 2020 election.
The 110-page brief, compiled by a team of Trump’s White House and personal attorneys and filed to the Senate on the eve of the president’s trial, suggests Democrats ran a “rigged” impeachment investigation that led to the House’s adoption of the two charges against Trump: abuse of power and obstruction of Congress. Their arguments largely ignored the growing body of evidence that Democrats have presented indicating Trump pressured Ukraine to investigate his political rivals, while withholding desperately needed military aid to the war-torn nation.
Instead, the Trump legal team, led by White House Counsel Pat Cipollone and the president’s personal attorney Jay Sekulow, focused on broad, constitutionally questionable claims that the House’s process invalidates the articles of impeachment outright. Their most prominent argument is that the House did not allege a violation of any specific statute….
As President Trump’s impeachment trial opens, his lawyers have increasingly emphasized a striking argument: Even if he did abuse his powers in an attempt to bully Ukraine into interfering in the 2020 election on his behalf, it would not matter because the House never accused him of committing an ordinary crime.
Their argument is widely disputed. It cuts against the consensus among scholars that impeachment exists to remove officials who abuse power. The phrase “high crimes and misdemeanors” means a serious violation of public trust that need not also be an ordinary crime, said Frank O. Bowman III, a University of Missouri law professor and the author of a recent book on the topic.
“This argument is constitutional nonsense,” Mr. Bowman said. “The almost universal consensus — in Great Britain, in the colonies, in the American states between 1776 and 1787, at the Constitutional Convention and since — has been that criminal conduct is not required for impeachment.”
But the argument is politically convenient for Mr. Trump. For any moderate Republican senator who may not like what the facts already show about his campaign of pressure on Ukraine, the theory provides an alternative rationale to acquit the president.
Indeed, if it were true, then there would also be no reason to call witnesses like John R. Bolton, Mr. Trump’s former national security adviser, because what he and others know about Mr. Trump’s motivations and intentions in his Ukraine dealings would not affect the outcome of the trial.
Mr. Trump’s legal team hammered away at the argument in its 110-page brief submitted to the Senate on Monday. “House Democrats’ newly invented ‘abuse of power’ theory collapses at the threshold because it fails to allege any violation of law whatsoever,” the president’s lawyers wrote.
Many legal scholars say senators should not take this argument seriously. They point, among other things, to evidence that for centuries before the American Revolution, the British Parliament impeached officials for “high crimes and misdemeanors” that constituted abuses of power but were not indictable offenses. The pattern informed the framers of the Constitution, who echoed that concept….
Update…
I am not able to follow live,but Congresswoman Val Demings (D-FL) is speaking now as one of the Impeachment Managers.
I thought her House speech on impeachment was good. If she gets high marks for her role here, she may be someone to watch in terms of the Vice Presidential nomination if Biden is nominated.
If ABC News will be airing this live daily, there goes my DVR recording setting for “Jeopardy” until this is over.
A fellow employee at work who has been quiet on politics….
‘Democrats are making a big deal out of nothing…Look they are fighting among themselves ….Hillary….Sanders…Trump maybe a jerk but he’s getting things done…Just made a big deal with China…’
The employee is strictly Blue Collar…
But does have Trump’s back.,.Warts and all…
The anti-Left and Democratic thing overrides EVERYTHING…..
Even Trump being a ‘jerk’….