Trump lawyers offer surprisingly un-Trumpy defense to impeachment

WASHINGTON - Just before his lawyers stepped into the U.S. Senate to begin their argument that he should not be removed from office, President Donald Trump offered a preview of sorts.

Americans should turn on their televisions, he wrote on Twitter, and watch the attorneys make “our case against” his political antagonists, who he listed with a series of taunting nicknames.

What those who tuned in saw was something quite different.

When Trump’s legal team launched his defence at his impeachment trial on Saturday, they outlined a case far removed from his all-caps claims of a perfect phone call with his Ukrainian counterpart and denunciations of his political foes.

Instead they focused largely on what they cast as glaring holes in Democrats’ argument that Trump should be removed from office for his efforts to secure politically beneficial investigations from Ukraine’s government, and argued that the allegations against Trump did not justify ousting him in an election year.

“We don’t believe they have come anywhere close to meeting their burden for what they’re asking you to do,” White House counsel Pat Cipollone, the head of Trump’s defence attorneys, told lawmakers on Saturday.

The defence his team outlined was more subdued and sober than what Trump’s lawyers, his political allies and certainly he himself has presented in the past. Whether that will continue when the trial resumes today is anyone’s guess, but their tone and engagement with the merits of the case that the Democrats have tried to build did not go unnoticed by some of the lawmakers who will decide whether Trump remains in office.

Democratic Senator Tom Carper of Delaware told reporters he “came expecting that the Republicans would come out all guns blazing and fire and brimstone, and I think they got a message from some of their Republican brethren that that would not be helpful.” The Democratic- led House of Representatives impeached Trump in December on two charges, abuse of power for pressuring Ukraine to investigate former Vice President Joe Biden, a leading contender to challenge Trump this year, and obstruction of Congress for his efforts to impede the House investigation.