Trump ‘is who he is’
Majority seems skeptical; defense begins Saturday
On Friday, the last day of their opening statements, House case managers pressed their assertion that President Donald Trump sought his own benefit in the acts that led the chamber to bring two articles of impeachment against him.
And because the president was placing “Trump first. Not America first,” the abuse of power would continue unless he was removed from office, Rep. Adam Schiff, one of the case managers, told the senators. “He is who he is.”
The White House defense team is scheduled to begin its opening presentation this morning, and attorney Jay Sekulow has promised a vigorous defense based both on facts and the Constitution. A vote on calling witnesses might follow, sometime next week.
WASHINGTON – Democratic House prosecutors launched their final arguments Friday at Donald Trump’s impeachment trial, arguing the president will persist in abusing the power of his office ahead of the 2020 election unless Congress intervenes to remove him from office.
“He is who he is,” Rep. Adam Schiff, the chairman of the House Intelligence Committee, told senators, accusing Trump of putting the U.S-Ukraine relationship on the line in a way that benefited Russia just so he could take a political “cheap shot” at former Vice President Joe Biden.
“You cannot leave a man like that in office,” Schiff said. “You know it’s not going to stop. It’s not going to stop unless the Congress does something about it.”
As case managers addressed skeptical Republican senators for a third day, the president’s legal team was preparing his defense, expected to start Saturday. Trump, with eyes on the audience beyond the Senate chamber, bemoaned the schedule in a tweet, saying “looks like my lawyers will be forced to start on Saturday, which is called Death Valley in T.V.”
The Senate jurors were enduring another long day Friday armed with pens and paper – and, for Republicans, the gift of fidget spinners – for the historic trial.
The president is being tried in the Senate after the House impeached him last month, accusing him of abusing his office by asking Ukraine for politically motivated probes of political foe Biden and Biden’s son while withholding military aid from a U.S. ally that was at war with bordering Russia. The second article of impeachment accuses him of obstructing Congress by refusing to turn over documents or allow officials to testify in the House probe.
Republicans have defended Trump’s actions as appropriate and are casting the process as a politically motivated effort to weaken him in his reelection campaign. Republicans hold a 53-47 majority in the Senate, and acquittal is considered likely.
The Senate is heading next week toward a pivotal vote on Democratic demands for testimony from top Trump aides, including acting chief of staff
Mick Mulvaney and former national security adviser John Bolton who refused to appear before the House. It would take four Republican senators to join the Democratic minority to bring in witnesses, a number out of reach so far.
“This needs to end,” said Sen. Lindsey Graham, R-S.C., a Trump confidant. He said he doesn’t want to hear from Bolton or the Bidens.
With Chief Justice John Roberts presiding, Friday’s arguments opened with Democrats wrapping up their presentation on the first article of impeachment, abuse of power, before turning to the second, obstruction of Congress.
The Democrats relied on the words of the late Sen. John McCain, R-Ariz., to explain to senators why Trump’s decision to block the military aid to Ukraine was so “disturbing,” as Schiff put it.
It wasn’t just a policy dispute, Schiff argued, but “one hell of a Russian intelligence coup” as Trump chased “kooky” theories about Ukraine pushed by Trump lawyer Rudy Giuliani that benefited Russian President Vladimir Putin at U.S. expense.
“This is Trump first. Not America first,” Schiff declared.
On Thursday, the Democrats argued that Trump’s motives were apparent, that he abused power like no other president in history, swept up by the “completely bogus” Ukraine theory pushed by Giuliani.
Schiff made an emotional plea for senators to consider what was at stake.
“Let me tell you something. If right doesn’t matter, it doesn’t matter how good the Constitution is,” Schiff told a pin-drop-quiet room. “If you find him guilty you must find that he should be removed. Because right matters.”
Democrats argued that Trump’s abuse was for his own benefit ahead of the 2020 election, even as the nation’s top FBI and national security officials were publicly dismissing the theory that it was Ukraine, not Russia, that interfered in the 2016 election.
After both sides have concluded their arguments next week, senators will face the question of whether to call witnesses to testify. But that issue seems all but settled. Republicans rejected Democratic efforts to get Trump aides, including Bolton and Mulvaney, to testify in backto-back votes earlier this week.
As for the Ukraine connections, evidence has shown that Trump, with Giuliani, pursued investigations of Biden and his son Hunter, who served on a Ukrainian gas company’s board, and sought the probe of the debunked theory that Ukraine interfered in the 2016 U.S. election.