Washington Examiner - Political News and Conservative Analysis About Congress, the President, and the Federal Government President Trump’s legal team raised the Steele dossier and dismissed new claims by former national security adviser John Bolton during final arguments against two articles of impeachment that call on the president to be removed from office.
Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell, a Kentucky Republican, told lawmakers Tuesday the trial would run “several hours,” but not as long as Monday’s proceedings, which lasted far into the evening.
When the defense concludes, lawmakers will take up to 16 hours to question in writing both the defense team and the House impeachment managers.
Trump is charged with abuse of power and obstruction of Congress.
Jay Sekulow, who is Trump’s personal lawyer and leader of his defense team, defended the president’s desire to investigate efforts by Democrats to hurt his 2016 presidential campaign by raising the Steele dossier, an unverified opposition research brief paid for by Hillary Clinton’s campaign that contained salacious charges against the president. It was used by the Justice Department to justify a yearslong federal investigation into Trump’s campaign.
“You can’t view this case in a vacuum,” Sekulow argued. “Put yourselves in his shoes.”
Sekulow urged senators to ignore the latest news about Bolton’s manuscript. Nobody has seen it, but a source leaking to the New York Times claims Bolton writes that Trump wanted to withhold critical security aid in order to get the government to investigate Democrats, including the Bidens.
“You cannot impeach a president on an unsourced allegation,” Sekulow said. “Even if everything in there was true, it does not amount to an impeachable offense.”
He urged senators to ignore the string of information coming from the book.
“It is not a game of leaks and unsourced manuscripts,” Sekulow said of the impeachment trial. “Put yourselves above the fray.”
The defense team opened with arguments from lawyer Patrick Philbin.
Philbin told senators the president has a unique level of power to make decisions, not the aides who have come forward to complain about the president’s actions in the House impeachment investigation.
“They are there to provide information and recommendation, not to set policies,” Philbin said.
Philbin also challenged the House impeachment articles for assigning “illicit motives” to Trump’s decision to block aid to Ukraine temporarily.
“Something that they ferret out and decide is wrong, becomes impeachable,” Philbin said. “It’s not standard at all. It ends up becoming infinitely malleable.”