President Donald Trump’s legal team filed a 110-page brief that described the articles of impeachment as “an affront to the Constitution and to our democratic institutions.”
The team also accused the House Democrats of “focus-group testing various charges for weeks” before they decided “two flimsy Articles of Impeachment.”
The House Democrats passed two articles of impeachment – abuse of power and obstruction of Congress – in December in a hasty vote. The legal team noted how the “House Democrats concocted an unheard of procedure that denied any semblance of fair process.”
The legal team urged the Senate to reject the articles along “with the rigged process that brought” the articles to the upper chamber.
Trump’s legal team pointed out that Trump had legitimate reasons to question Ukraine’s policies in order to receive aid. But then once Ukraine addressed the concerns the administration released the aid.
The House prosecution team filed its own brief over the weekend, which includes references to Special Counsel Robert Mueller’s investigation.
Trump’s team immediately dismissed these references because no one charged Trump with any wrongdoing or colluding with Russia to defeat failed Democratic presidential candidate Hillary Clinton in 2016. From Fox News:
“The Senate cannot expand the scope of a trial to consider mere assertions appearing in House reports that the House did not include in the articles of impeachment submitted to a vote,” the memo said.Trump’s attorneys also aimed to blast a hole through the articles of impeachment, calling for the president’s immediate acquittal because they do not include impeachable offenses.”After focus-group testing various charges for weeks, House Democrats settled on two flimsy Articles of Impeachment that allege no crime or violation of law whatsoever—much less ‘high Crimes and Misdemeanors,’ as required by the Constitution,” they wrote.
The arguments for the trial start Tuesday on the Senate floor.
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