Donald Trump’s lawyers tell US Senate to reject impeachment ‘for the American people’
White House counsel Pat Cipollone called proceedings against President Trump unconstitutional, and said the Senate should reject them
Donald Trump’s lawyers rested their impeachment defense by telling the US Senate: ‘Reject these articles of impeachment for the country and for the American people.’
White House counsel Pat Cipollone said Tuesday afternoon that the charges against the president were unconstitutional and that senators should feel ‘compelled’ to reject them.
He urged senators to ‘end the era of impeachment for good,’ having echoed Trump’s line that proceedings are a stitch-up aimed at damaging his reelection chances in November.
Both Trump’s team and prosecuting Democrats were given 24 hours each spread over three days to present their case, with questions from senators to follow tomorrow.
That probing will last a total of 16 hours, with senators given five minutes for each question and answer.
The Senate will then vote on whether to hear from witnesses, including Trump’s former national security adviser John Bolton.
Bolton has written an unreleased book which appears to confirm the claims which form the basis of the case against Trump.
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Trump’s lawyers have branded the contents of that book, which was partly-leaked to the New York Times, inadmissible.
But the senate has a 57-43 Republican majority, with those Republicans considered highly unlikely to vote for anything that could potentially harm their own president.
If the Senate votes against hearing from witnesses, they will quickly proceed on a vote on whether to convict of acquit Trump.
At least two thirds of all senators must vote to convict Trump for him to be removed from office.
The president has been accused of abuse of office for political gain and obstruction of Congress.
Trump was impeached for using the prospect of a White House invite and $391million in military aid to try and force an investigation into his rival Joe Biden.
He wanted Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky to probe Biden’s son Hunter’s appointment to the board of Ukrainian natural gas firm Burisma.
John Bolton claims to have contemporaneous notes which prove Trump directly asked for the military aid to be withheld until his desired probe was opened.
The president himself insists he has done nothing wrong, and branded impeachment proceedings a ‘rigged witch-hunt.’