Trump defense team asserts charges are invalid
WASHINGTON — President Donald Trump’s lawyers on Sunday previewed their impeachment defense with the assertion that the charges against him are invalid, adopting a position rejected by Democrats as “nonsense” as both sides sharpened their arguments for trial.
“Criminal-like conduct is required,” said Alan Dershowitz, a constitutional lawyer on Trump’s defense team. Dershowitz said he will be making the same argument to the Senate and if it prevails, there will be “no need” to pursue the witness testimony or documents that Democrats are demanding.
The “no crime, no impeachment” approach has been roundly dismissed by Democrats, who called Trump’s behavior the “worst nightmare” of the country’s founders. In their view, the standard of “high crimes and misdemeanors” is vague and open-ended in the Constitution and meant to encompass abuses of power that aren’t necessarily illegal.
Behind the scenes Sunday, the seven House managers were meeting on strategy with staff and shoring up which prosecutor will handle which parts of the case. They were expected to do a walk-through of the Senate chamber on Monday around lunchtime, according to multiple Democrats working on impeachment who spoke on condition of anonymity to discuss plans.
The White House was working on its response to the House’s brief outlining the charges, while meanwhile, Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell, R-Ky., has shed no light on how the proceedings will follow — and differ from — the precedent of President Bill Clinton’s impeachment trial in 1999.
“The president deserves a fair trial. The American people deserve a fair trial. So let’s have that fair trial,” said Democratic Rep. Jason Crow of Colorado, one of the seven impeachment prosecutors.
Whatever happens in the Senate, House Speaker Nancy Pelosi, D-Calif., has said, Trump will “be impeached forever.” Members of Trump’s team countered that if they win a vindication for Trump, it means “there will be an acquittal forever as well,” Trump attorney Robert Ray said Sunday. “That is the task ahead.”
On Sunday, the president’s lawyers bore down on the suggestion that House impeachment is invalid unless the accused violated U.S. law. Dershowitz’s argument, backed up by Ray, refers to an 1868 speech by Benjamin Curtis, who after serving as a Supreme Court justice acted as the chief lawyer for Andrew Johnson at his Senate impeachment trial.
“There can be no crime, there can be no misdemeanor, without a law, written or unwritten, express or implied,” Curtis told the Senate. “There must be some law; otherwise there is no crime. My interpretation of it is that the language ‘high crimes and misdemeanors’ means ‘offenses against the laws of the United States.’”
“The core of the impeachment parameters allege that crimes have been committed, treason, bribery, and things like that, in other words, other high crimes and misdemeanors,” Ray said Sunday.
Dershowitz on Sunday distanced himself from the rest of Trump’s defense team and said he would merely speak about the Constitution at the trial.
“I’m a liberal Democrat ... I’m here as a constitutional lawyer,” Dershowitz said. “I’m here to lend my expertise on that issue and that issue alone.”