Trump trial closing arguments aim at voters, history
WASHINGTON — Closing arguments Monday in President Trump’s impeachment trial were directed more toward history than to sway the outcome, one final chance to influence public opinion and set the record ahead of his expected acquittal in the Republican-led Senate.
The House Democratic prosecutors drew on the Founding Fathers to urge senators — and Americans — to adopt their view that Trump’s actions are not isolated but a pattern of behavior that, left unchecked, will allow him to “cheat” in the 2020 election.
Democrat Rep. Adam Schiff implored those few Republican senators who agree with Democratic claims that Trump committed wrongdoing in the Ukraine matter to join them against a “runaway presidency” and stand up to say “enough.”
“For a man like Donald J. Trump, they gave you a remedy and meant for you to use it. They gave you an oath, and they meant for you to observe it,” Schiff said. “We have proven Donald Trump guilty. Now do impartial justice and convict him.”
The president’s defense countered the Democrats have been out to impeach Trump since the start of his presidency, that its nothing short of an effort to undo the 2016 election and to try to shape the next one, even as early primary voting begins Monday in Iowa.
“Leave it to the voters to choose,” said White House counsel Pat Cipollone.
He called for an end to the partisan “era of impeachment.”
Trump was impeached on charges that he abused power when he asked Ukraine to investigate corruption involving Democratic candidate Joe Biden and his son Hunter Biden, and then obstructed Congress.
Most Republicans agree the president’s actions toward Ukraine do not rise to the level of impeachable offense that warrants the dramatic political upheaval of conviction and removal from office. His acquittal in Wednesday’s vote is all but assured.
The Senate proceedings are set against a sweeping political backstop, as voters in Iowa on Monday are choosing presidential Democratic primary candidates and Trump is poised to deliver his State of the Union address Tuesday in his own victory lap before Congress.
It is unclear if any Republican or Democratic senators will break from party lines. One centrist Democrat, Sen. Joe Manchin, W-Va., said he was heavily weighing the vote ahead. He suggested censure may be a bipartisan alternative.
Before Trump’s defense mounted its closing argument, the president himself weighed in on Twitter, where he decried the whole thing as a “hoax.”
Kenneth Starr, the former prosecutor whose investigation led to Bill Clinton’s impeachment, complained about the inadequacy of the House prosecutors’ “fast track” case.
Trump attorney Jay Sekulow showed political clips of Democrats calling for impeachment to argue this was the “first totally partisan presidential impeachment in our nation’s history, and it should be our last.”