Trump’s lawyers hit out at impeachment trial
FACE-OFF Defence team says Americans’ right to choose president under attack
WASHINGTON: US President Donald Trump’s legal team presented on Saturday its line of defence for his upcoming impeachment trial, a process they dismissed as unconstitutional and “dangerous”.
The weekend exchange between the two sides in the first legal filings set the tone for the bitter political fight that is expected at the trial that starts on Tuesday to determine if the president should be removed from office, following his impeachment by the House of Representatives on December 18, or be allowed to stay.
Democratic impeachment managers called on Saturday for President Donald Trump’s conviction calling him a threat to national security in a legal brief filed ahead of the start of the senate trial coming week and the
“The evidence overwhelmingly establishes that he is guilty of both,” the managers wrote in a 111-page brief referring to the two articles of impeachment charging him with abuse of power and obstruction of congress.
“The only remaining question is whether the members of the Senate will accept and carry out the responsibility placed on them by the Framers of our Constitution and their constitutional Oaths.”
President Trump’s legal team has until noon on Monday to file their legal brief. But it responded to the Democratic brief with a scathing six-page statement.
It said the articles of impeachment was a “brazen and unlawful attempt to overturn the results of the 2016 election and interfere with the 2020 election”.
“The highly partisan and reckless obsession with impeaching the president began the ay he was inaugurated and continues to this day”, it added.
The Democratic-led House impeached Trump last December accusing him of abusing the powers of his office to force Ukraine to investigate his leading Democratic presidential candidate Joe Biden by withholding $400 million in military aid and a White House meeting with Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskiy.