Here’s the last installment on impeachment, as the Senate votes to acquit almost right along party lines. The only dissenter from the GOP is Mitt Romney, who after a stirring speech, votes to remove on the first article of impeachment. I’m sure there will be more impeachment news still to come, but I’ll include it in my regular recap going forward. I’ll leave you with this trove of all the publicly available documents related to the impeachment, including those released from FOIA requests: https://www.justsecurity.org/67076/public-document-clearinghouse-ukraine-impeachment-inquiry/#RelatedLitandFOIA

Here’s what happened on the impeachment front for the week ending February 9…

General Happenings:

1. Here’s a good round-up of the House managers’ arguments for impeachment and the legal defense’s arguments against.
2. On Monday, House managers and Trump’s defense give closing arguments in the impeachment trial, and senators debate the issue.
3. On Tuesday, Trump gives the State of the Union on Nancy Pelosi’s invitation.
4. On Wednesday, the Senate votes to acquit with nearly all senators voting along party lines (with the exception of Mitt Romney, who breaks ranks with Republicans to vote to impeach on the first article).
5. The acquittal was widely expected, as there was no way the needed number of Republicans would vote to remove (I think 20 Republicans would’ve needed to vote for that).
6. Moderate Senator Joe Manchin (D-WV) proposes that the Senate censure Trump as a way for the body to unite across party lines and formally denounce Trump’s actions around Ukraine.

• • That proposal doesn’t pick up any steam, so Manchin does vote to remove in the end.
  • This would’ve been a way out for moderate Republicans and Democrats both, but even the Senate is too divided to support it.

7. Recently released court documents reveal that in October, an Arizona man was indicted for issuing a death threat to Adam Schiff. He left this message on Schiff’s voicemail: “I’m gonna fucking blow your brains out you fucking piece of shit.”
8. Remember last week when Chief Justice Roberts did the right thing by refusing to read Rand Paul’s question that named the alleged whistleblower? Well, apparently Rand Paul is super eager to get the name into the Senate record because he uses his debate time on the Senate floor to read the name aloud. Most Republicans say they’re fine with that; a handful of Republican senators say it wasn’t right to name him.

• • I shouldn’t have to remind anyone that the person who’s alleged to be the whistleblower by the right has been receiving threats of death and violence since they started outing him.
  • Trump’s son Donald Jr. has tweeted out the name.
  • Rand Paul believes there was a government plot to bring the president down, ignoring that, according to Mueller’s report at least, Trump has been committing impeachable offenses since a few months after he took office.

9. Fox contributor Andrew Napolitano says the acquittal is a “legal assault on the Constitution.”
10. John Bolton’s book alleges that Trump tried to pressure Ukraine starting in early May 2019, and that White House Counsel Pat Cipollone is a fact witness. Unsurprisingly, the White House is trying to prevent Bolton’s book from being published.
11. Ukraine requests its money back because we’ve delayed $30 million worth of arms transfers to the country for nearly a year.

What Senators Are Saying:

1. Here are a few quotes from those august senators who know what Trump did and are letting it slide:

• • Lamar Alexander: “There is no need for more evidence to conclude that the president withheld United States aid, at least in part, to pressure Ukraine to investigate the Bidens; the House managers have proved this with what they call a “mountain of overwhelming evidence.””
  • Ban Sasse: “I believe that delaying the aid was inappropriate and wrong and shouldn’t have happened. A number of us have said that.” Sasse also thinks removing Trump from office would tear America apart.
  • Lisa Murkowski: “The President’s behavior was shameful and wrong. His personal interests do not take precedence over those of this great nation… The President has the responsibility to uphold the integrity and the honor of the office, not just for himself, but for all future presidents. Degrading the office by actions or even name-calling weakens it for future presidents and it weakens our country.” She also says, “I don’t think any of us are challenging [Trump] enough.”
  • Susan Collins: Always one to shirk her duty, Collins says, Trump’s call with Zelensky was “improper and demonstrated very poor judgment.” But she will acquit because “we should entrust to the people the most fundamental decision of a democracy — namely who should lead their country,” and Trump “learned from this case” and he’ll “much more cautious in the future.”
  • Marco Rubio: Rubio has always assumed the charges were true but he says, “Just because actions meet a standard of impeachment does not mean it is in the best interest of the country to remove a President from office.”
  • Mike Rounds: “The framers did not intend impeachment proceedings to be brought every time an abuse of power is alleged.” Wow… I’m pretty sure that’s what they did intend.
  • Cindy Hyde-Smith: “Rejecting the abuse of power and obstruction of Congress articles before us will affirm our belief in the impeachment standards intended by the founders.” I’m wondering if she’s read the impeachment clause?
  • Rob Portman: “While I don’t condone this behavior, these actions do not rise to the level of removing President Trump from office and taking him off the ballot in a presidential election year that is already well underway.” He’s also said for months that Trump’s actions were inappropriate.
  • Joni Ernst: Irony alert. Remember how just last week Ernst bragged about how Trump’s requests for investigations into the Bidens are already succeeding in the political aim of hurting Joe in the Iowa caucuses? She says, “This process was fraught from the start with political aims and partisan innuendos that simply cannot be overlooked.”

2. Numerous senators claim that impeachment was an attempt to overturn the 2016 election, which is an argument I simply don’t understand. Trump has been in office for three years—you can’t overturn that. And even if he’s removed from office, his duly elected Vice President, Mike Pence, would take office.
3. After a bunch of Republicans senators who think what Trump did was inappropriate but rationalize their vote to acquit because they think Trump learned from this and will behave better, Trump says he did nothing wrong and “it was a perfect call.”
4. Mitt Romney delivers a heartfelt speech about why he is voting to impeach and how he came to that decision. It’s definitely worth a listen. It’s notable that there were only FOUR senators in the room while he spoke. No one in the Senate did their job.
5. Adam Schiff closes his case with this:
   “It is midnight in Washington […] You can’t trust this president to do the right thing, not for one minute, not for one election, not for the sake of our country, you just can’t. He will not change and you know it. […] A man without character or ethical compass will never find his way.”

Aftermath:

1. Lindsey Graham says a counteroffensive is “going to happen in the coming weeks,” including investigations into Burisma and Biden, as well as pursuing the whistleblower.
2. House Democrats consider picking up the investigation where they left off, calling new witnesses, like John Bolton and Lev Parnas, to testify.
3. An hour after the vote to acquit, Chuck Grassley announces a review of Hunter Biden’s activities during Obama’s administration, and the Treasury is fully cooperating with requests for information without requiring subpoenas. 
It turns out the inquiries were opened last fall.

• • The Treasury has handed over the highly confidential material requested.
  • The Treasury has been non-compliant in all requests and subpoenas for information about Trump. Those requests are still tied up in court.

4. Trump’s press secretary says that Trump’s impeachment opponents should pay a price. And then Trump starts firing some of the folks who testified:

• • He doesn’t just remove Lt. Col. Alexander Vindman from his White House job; he also fires Vindman’s twin brother who was legal counsel at the White House. And he doesn’t just remove them, he has them very publicly escorted out, a move obviously designed to embarrass the two decorated war veterans.
  • He fires Gordon Sondland, U.S. Ambassador to the EU. Sondland said during testimony that Trump requested a quid pro quo and that everyone was in the loop.
  • This whole thing causes a fight among people who don’t know better over whether government employees are “at-will” employees. They aren’t, but both Sondland and Vindman served at the pleasure of the president. But still, some legal experts argue that the firings are illegal retribution.
  • A group of Republican senators tried to stop Trump from firing Sondland—not because it was wrong, but because they thought it would look bad. Some of the senators who reached out are the same ones who previously said they thought Trump learned his lesson.
  • Here are the other witnesses who left their jobs for various reasons: Marie Yovanovitch (recalled from her post early and then left the foreign service completely last week), Bill Taylor (recalled from his post early), Jennifer Williams (returned to DOD), Fiona Hill, and Kurt Volker.
  • Several former employees are beginning to give interviews, and some are exploring book options.

5. Trump backs the idea of having his impeachment expunged if the GOP takes back the House this year.
6. At the National Prayer Breakfast following his acquittal, Trump lambasts the impeachment process calling it corrupt and evil. He calls his political opponents dishonest and corrupt.

• • The prayer breakfast is typically a time for bipartisanship. His speech was preceded by scripture readings and calls for unity.
  • Trump goes on to criticize Mitt Romney, saying, “I don’t like people who use their faith as justification for doing what they know is wrong.’’ I redirect you to Romney’s speech above.
  • He accuses Nancy Pelosi of lying when she says she prays for the president.
  • Trump boasts about the economy and his approval rating and urges the audience to vote.
  • Pelosi, in contrast, speaks about the poor and persecuted.
  • The person who spoke right before Trump says, “Ask God to take political contempt from your heart. And sometimes when it’s too hard, ask God to help you fake it.” When Trump gets up to speak, he says he disagrees with that speaker.

7. And then in a speech that rambles on for more than an hour, Trump :

• • Takes credit for the rising stock market under Obama.
  • Calls this a celebration because impeachment worked out for him.
  • Says he and his family went through hell.
  • Says the Russia investigation was all “bullshit” and that he won on that investigation. (Might be good to point out here that, so far, eight people pleaded guilty or were convicted in that investigation.)
  • Says the Mueller report ruined people’s lives. (Um, they ruined their own lives when they decided to break the law.)
  • Talks about his 2016 campaign.
  • Calls Adam Schiff corrupt, and calls Pelosi, Schiff, and Comey vicious and mean.
  • Defends the transcript of the Ukraine call. (It’s a summary, not a transcript.)
  • Calls out a bunch of Republican senators to praise them.
  • And oh-my-goodness I’m really trying to read this whole thing, but it’s a stream of consciousness. You can give it a shot here.

8. Let’s compare all this to what Clinton said following his impeachment trial:
   “I want to say again to the American people how profoundly sorry I am for what I said and did to trigger these events and the great burden they have imposed on the Congress and on the American people.’’

Words of Wisdom:

I leave you with these words from former Ambassador to Ukraine Marie Yovanovitch:

“The events of the past year, while deeply disturbing, show that even though our institutions and our fellow citizens are being challenged in ways that few of us ever expected, we will endure, we will persist and we will prevail.”

None of us should be surprised to hear that former Ambassador to Ukraine Marie Yovanovitch is retiring from the foreign service. I applaud her for sticking it out this long after all she’s been through with an agency head who refused to support her against a months-long smear campaign bolstered by the president. Yovanovitch came into the department 33 years ago during Reagan’s administration and served multiple presidents of both parties in several hardship posts. She’s widely respected among her peers, and is now another casualty of the administration’s conspiracy theories and lies.

Here’s what happened on the impeachment front for the week ending February 2…

Missed From Before:

1. I think I missed this when it was first reported back in December. Olena Zerkal, a former deputy foreign minister for Ukraine, says that she received a cable in July saying that the U.S. had frozen the military aid. The cable came from Ukrainian officials in Washington.

• • This corroborates Laura Cooper’s testimony from the impeachment inquiry that Ukraine knew before the end of August about the hold on aid.
  • Trump’s legal team and supporters argue that Ukraine officials didn’t know until late August.
  • Zerkal also says Zelensky didn’t want the news to become public; he wanted to avoid getting pulled into a political debate.

General Happenings:

1. As Trump’s impeachment trial gets underway, there is pretty much no one who really thinks Trump will be removed from office.
2. According to a draft of John Bolton’s book, Trump told Bolton in August that he’d continue to withhold aid to Ukraine until Ukraine officials agreed to investigations into the Bidens. Trump also asked Bolton to help him with his pressure campaign against Ukraine by calling Zelensky.

• • The book implicates high-level officials who have tried to avoid being pulled into the scandal, including Mike Pompeo, Bill Barr, and Mick Mulvaney (though in fairness, Mulvaney did admit to the quid pro quo in a public press conference).
  • Bolton had concerns about Trump giving favors to autocrats involved in federal investigations.
  • It turns out the White House has had a copy of Bolton’s book since December 30, but failed to let congressional Republicans know about it and about what the book alleges. And here Mitch McConnell thought he was working in “total coordination” with the White House.
  • It’s standard practice for former officials to provide their manuscripts to the White House for review.
  • Former White House Chief of Staff John Kelly says he believes what John Bolton said in his book. Kelly says Bolton always gave Trump the unvarnished truth—probably one of the reasons Trump and Bolton didn’t get along so great.
  • Kelly also says that an impeachment trial without witnesses is only half done.

• • On the day that Bolton’s allegations come out, Lindsey Graham skips a scheduled press conference.
  • GOP senators suggest that senators be allowed to read Bolton’s manuscript in a secret room.
  • The White House issues a formal threat in a letter to Bolton’s lawyer to prevent him from publishing his book. They say the book includes top secret and classified information.
  • Trump’s tweets about Bolton suggest he knows the contents of the manuscript.

3. Representative Eliot Engel (D-NY) says Bolton told him in a private conversation last year that his committee should look into the recall of former Ambassador to Ukraine Marie Yovanovitch (Engel is chair of the Foreign Affairs Committee).
4. Trump tweets that Adam Schiff hasn’t paid the price yet [for impeaching him]. Meanwhile, right-wing outlets spread stories that Schiff’s daughter is dating the whistleblower (she’s not) and they spread pictures purporting to be the whistleblower with several prominent Democrats. None of the pictures are of who they think the whistleblower is; instead, they are of George Soros’ son.
5. GOP Senator Joni Ernst suggests that the impeachment proceedings might hurt Joe Biden in the Iowa caucuses, accidentally letting slip that the smears against him by Giuliani, Trump, and other conservatives were actually intended to harm his chances in the 2020 presidential race.
6. Some current GOP senators attended a Senate Foreign Relations Committee hearing in 2016 about ousting former Ukraine general prosecutor Shokin. These senators knew that Biden was working on removing Shokin, and didn’t bring up any objections to it during the hearing.

• • The GOP senators in attendance who are still in office today include John Barrasso (WY), Cory Gardner (CO), James Risch (ID), and David Perdue (GA).
  • The effort to oust Shokin was also included in testimony at a 2015 hearing of the same committee. What changed between 2015 and now?

7. The DOJ submits a court filing that shows they’re holding back around two dozen emails about Trump’s involvement in withholding aid from Ukraine. It’s the first acknowledgment that this type of evidence exists.

Trump’s Defense Arguments (cont’d from last week):

1. Trump’s legal team continues with its opening arguments. Their biggest arguments seem to be about the process instead of how Trump didn’t do it. They didn’t spend time defending what Trump did.
2. Jay Sekulow shows a video of Nancy Pelosi handing out commemorative pens to signers of the articles of impeachment. This is standard operating procedure for historic legislation.
3. The legal team says that Trump was cut out of the impeachment process, and that the House process was invalid, secret, and rushed. They say it was illegitimate from the beginning.
4. The team falsely claims that the House ignored Trump’s right to due process and executive privilege.
5. They also argue that it was legal for Trump to ignore House subpoenas for the impeachment and to order his staff to do the same.

• • That same day, DOJ lawyer says that the House can use its impeachment powers to enforce its subpoenas, shooting holes in the argument that he can’t be impeached for ignoring subpoenas.

6. In the middle of their presentations, we hear about Bolton’s claims that Trump really was conducting a pressure campaign against Ukraine. Trump’s legal team dismisses the new revelations, and Sekulow argues that Bolton’s information is inadmissible.
7. The legal team continues to assert that there isn’t any evidence that ties the security aid hold to the investigations. Dershowitz says that nothing Bolton alleges would rise to abuse of power.
8. Kenneth Starr basically argues against impeachment in general. This is the guy who spent five years Investigating Bill Clinton in order to see him impeached over lying about an extra-marital affair.
9. Michael Purpura argues that Zelensky did get his meeting with Trump. But Zelensky wanted a White House meeting and all he got was a side meeting at a UN gathering.
10. The legal team falsely asserts that the House never subpoenaed Bolton during the impeachment proceedings.
11. Jane Raskin tries to delegitimatize Rudy Giuliani by calling him a colorful distraction.
12. Pam Bondi talks about what she thinks are Hunter and Joe Biden’s corrupt conflicts of interest around Burisma.
13. And then the coup de gras. Eric Herschmann says Obama should’ve been impeached for the same abuse of power charges as Trump. Because what argument would be complete without bringing Obama into it?
14. In the end, the legal team didn’t provide any support for the investigations Trump was looking for, nor did they mention CrowdStrike or the supposed server that’s allegedly being hidden in Ukraine.
15. The legal team even says that Trump did what the House managers said he did, but it wasn’t wrong and it definitely isn’t impeachable.
16. In closing, the legal team doesn’t address the charges against Trump, but does attack a litany of Trump’s perceived enemies, whether they were involved in the impeachment or not (most aren’t). They attack Joe and Hunter Biden, Obama, James Comey, Robert Mueller, Lisa Page, and Peter Strzok, among others.

Senator’s Questions:

1. Following Trump’s legal team’s presentations, senators have two days to ask questions. They write the questions on pieces of paper that a page must go retrieve and bring down to Chief Justice Roberts to read. It makes for a lengthy process with long silences.
2. Mostly senators feed prompts to their own side to give them more space to make their arguments.
3. Rand Paul sends down a question that includes the alleged whistleblower’s name. Roberts refuses to read it on the Senate floor. But that’s OK because then Rand Paul goes out and does a press conference where he names the person that right-wing sources are alleging to be the whistleblower.

• • The alleged whistleblower has, of course, been receiving death threats and threats of violence. Members of Adam Schiff’s staff have received threats as well.

4. In the Q&A period, Trump’s legal team pushes the idea of “mixed motives.” They say that it doesn’t matter if Trump had an ulterior, personal motive behind withholding the aid as long as he also had national security interests in mind. They say there’s a little of that in every political decision.
5. Alan Dershowitz argues that anything the president does to get re-elected is A-OK because every president thinks that getting re-elected is in the public good so therefore it must be constitutional.
6. Patrick Philbin says that the burden of proof for impeachment is “beyond a reasonable doubt.” Even the law professor cited by Trump’s legal team says that’s completely made up.
7. Philbin also says that a president can’t defy his foreign policy because he makes foreign policy.

Witness Debate:

1. The Senate and legal teams debate the need for additional witnesses in the trial.
2. After leaks of Bolton’s book manuscript, some Republicans appear to be leaning toward subpoenaing Bolton.
3. Just when it looks like there are enough votes to force McConnell to allow witnesses, Lamar Alexander pulls the rug out and says he’ll vote against witnesses.
4. Lindsey Graham says Bolton should hold a press conference so senators can hear what he has to say. Except that would always be under question since Bolton wouldn’t be sworn in. You know who could vote to get his testimony under oath? The senate.
5. In the end, the senate votes 51-49 not to bring in new witnesses or evidence. Only two Republicans vote for witnesses.
6. Senators start offering rationalizations for not voting for witnesses, and also for acquitting. I’m saving them all up for next week.
7. After voting against witnesses, the senate passes a resolution defining the rules for ending the trial. Closing arguments will be on Monday, Trump will give the State of the Union on Tuesday, and the Senate will likely vote to acquit on Wednesday.
8. 75% of voters think witnesses should be allowed, yet Republicans voted against it. Republicans also argue that what Trump did was wrong, but the voters should decide whether to remove him from office. But they don’t listen to voters on this one basic thing?
9. This is the first Senate impeachment trial in history to not have witnesses.

More Trouble for Parnas, Fruman, and Giuliani:

1. Chuck Schumer gives tickets to Lev Parnas to attend the Senate impeachment trial, but he can’t go because he has an ankle monitor.
2. Lev Parnas sends a letter to Mitch McConnell discussing the evidence he wants to testify to and naming people like Mike Pence, Bill Barr, Lindsey Graham, Rick Perry, Devin Nunes, Derek Harvey, John Solomon, Rudy Giuliani, Joe diGenova, and Victoria Toensing as being complicit.

Fact-Checking Impeachment Claims:

There’s just too much misinformation out there about impeachment for me to tackle here, so here are a few fact checks. If you’re wondering why they seem so skewed against the defense instead of the House managers, even Republicans agree that Trump did what the House said he did—they just don’t think it rises to an impeachable level. It could also be because House managers presented the evidence they found, while it was up to the defense to cast doubt on that evidence.

• factcheck.org
• Politifact
• AP via US News
• USA Today
• AP via MSN
• NBC
• PBS

So much has happened since we first learned about Trump pressuring Ukraine for political gain, I’ve forgotten all the ways Trump and his administration have twisted the truth along the way trying to justify what went down. Here’s a pretty good, though incomplete, list of the ways we’ve been lied to. And if you’re one of those folks who thinks CNN isn’t a reliable source, they have the receipts. You can follow the links to their source material.

Here’s what happened on the impeachment front for the week ending January 26…

General Happenings:

1. As Trump’s impeachment trial gets underway, there is pretty much no one who really thinks Trump will be removed from office.
2. The Senate rules ban C-SPAN cameras from the Senate chambers. No audio recordings or still photography will be allowed except from the cameras controlled by the Senate Recording Studio.

• • They will only show the presenters and not any of the Senators.
  • Numerous media outlets send letters requesting C-SPAN cameras be allowed.

3. The following House Republicans join Trump’s legal team: Doug Collins, Mike Johnson, Jim Jordan, Debbie Lesko, Mark Meadows, John Ratcliffe, Elise Stefanik, and Lee Zeldin. They are only there to give guidance, not to present to the Senate.
4. Alan Dershowitz makes a point of saying that he didn’t sign on to the White House’s seven-page rebuttal to the House’s impeachment brief last week.
5. Adam Schiff says that the CIA and NSA are both withholding evidence relevant to the impeachment trial.
6. McConnell and the White House aren’t 100% certain they have all the votes they need to block witnesses, so they have a Plan B. Plan B is to move Bolton’s testimony to a classified setting. It’s an easy argument that since he was the national security adviser, he would have lots of classified info.
7. Republicans keep saying they’re trying to use the same format as the Clinton impeachment trial; but in that trial, the Democratic and Republican leaders in the Senate worked closely together to design the trial.
8. Talking to reporters at Davos about impeachment, Trump says, “But honestly, we have all the material. They don’t have the material.” House manager Val Demings says this means he just admitted to the obstruction of Congress he’s being accused of by withholding witnesses and material.
9. Trump also says he’d like to see Mulvaney and Bolton testify, though, so maybe they should. But then he backpedals on that, so maybe not.
10. A Trump confidant tells CBS News that GOP Senators were warned that if they vote against Trump in the impeachment trial, “Their heads will be on a pike.” That doesn’t play well when Adam Schiff repeats it on the Senate floor, and Senator Susan Collins breaks with decorum by saying loudly “That’s not true.” Schiff listens and responds, “I hope it’s not true.” But he was clear the entire time he was quoting a news story.
11. Trump defender and Republican Representative Matt Gaetz praises the House managers’ presentation and says Trump’s legal team’s presentation looked like an “eighth-grade book report.”
12. Senator John Kennedy (R-LA) says that the evidence presented by the House managers was news to most Senators. How is that even possible? Everybody in the Senate should’ve read the testimony by now.
13. House manager Jason Crow (D-CO) says that how the Senate votes on witnesses will reflect how seriously they’re taking this trial. He adds that all of the information will eventually come out, whether in books, FOIA requests, or a future administration.
14. Trump tweets and retweets 142 times on the first day of House managers’ arguments. And woke up the next day and did it all over again.
15. Trump says that Obama withheld aid to countries like Ukraine, Philippines, Egypt, and others. Representative Ruben Gallego (D-AZ) counters by saying that Obama did it “openly, not using a shifty lawyer and two Ukrainians with a business called ‘Fraud Guaranteed.” Gallego also says Obama didn’t do it for self-interest, but the interest of the country.
16. Each side accuses the other of trying to undermine the 2020 election. Republicans say Democrats are just trying to remove Trump from the ballot. Democrats say that Trump’s interference in the elections means we won’t have free and fair elections with him in office.
17. Senators from both parties view a classified document in a secure facility. The document is provided by Jennifer Williams. Some Democratic Senators say they don’t understand why it was classified. We don’t know what the document is, but we can surmise it’s about the phone conversation Mike Pence had with Zelensky that Pence ordered classified.
18. Republican attorneys general from 21 states call on the Senate to reject both articles of impeachment.
19. A Republican Senator breaks the “no bringing phones into the Senate chambers” rule and their phone goes off in the middle of a presentation.
20. The rest of the world thinks our Senators are playing games and taking naps during the impeachment. They’re acting like bored schoolchildren.
21. Documents indicate that Adam Schiff mischaracterized a text message between Parnas and Giuliani when he implied that “Mr. Z” referred to Zelensky. It actually referred to a Mykola Zlochevsky, the founder of Burisma.
22. Mike Pompeo defends his treatment of diplomats, including Marie Yovanovitch. He says he’s proud of the administration’s work in Ukraine.

Trump’s Defense Files A Brief:

1. Trump’s legal team submits their 171-page brief, which claims that the two articles of impeachment aren’t impeachable offenses.
2. The brief includes opinions from the DOJ Office of Legal Counsel to support their position that the White House didn’t illegals defy Congress in holding back witnesses and evidence form the impeachment committees.
3. The brief argues the following:

• • The impeachment hearings weren’t about finding the truth.
  • Even if Trump did abuse his power by holding up the aid to Ukraine, it’s not impeachable because there’s no crime. The brief calls the House Democrats theory of abuse of power “novel” and “made up.”
  • There’s no dispute that Trump did what he’s accused of—withhold aid, withhold a White House meeting, and request investigations into the Bidens. But just because Trump did that, it doesn’t mean he withheld one for another. The brief uses the same evolving reasons the White House gave in the weeks after the story first broke.
  • The aid was released and the meeting happened, all without an announcement of the investigations.
  • Trump did this all to root out corruption and to get other countries to help out more.
  • This is a political process, not a criminal one.
  • The impeachment process was rigged, and Democrats shut Trump out of secret hearings in their basement bunker.
  • The transcript of Trump’s call with Zelensky shows that Trump brought up corruption.

4. The brief includes a DOJ Office of Legal Counsel opinion supporting Trump’s right to block evidence and witnesses requested by the House committees investigating the administration’s activities around Ukraine.

A few rebuttals here:

1. The Pentagon had certified that Ukraine was in compliance with our anti-corruption conditions, and there’s no record of Trump approaching other national leaders to get them to beef up their contributions. So those don’t seem to have been at the top of his mind in regard to Ukraine.
2. The Constitution was written before our criminal code, so when they defined impeachment, there wasn’t anything in the criminal code to tie it too. It has always been a political process, as it was designed to be. As such, even if a president were to be removed from office, there would be no criminal charges coming from Congress.
3. The “basement bunker” is actually a SCIF, a commonly used room where classified information might come out. People were deposed there. Depositions are typically not public. And after the depositions, the House held public hearings, where they invited Trump and his legal team to take part. They refused.
4. Also, even if the impeachment process were rigged, the Constitution gives the House complete control in how to run impeachment hearings. At the same time, McConnell isn’t breaking any rules by working with Trump’s legal team to design a trial that benefits Trump.
5. The White House meeting never happened—Zelensky was looking for a state visit, not a chance encounter at an international summit.
6. The aid was released only after the issue was publicized.
7. Zelensky was reportedly two days away from announcing the investigations on Fareed Zakaria’s CNN show when the military aid was released.
8. There’s no mention of corruption in the transcript; only the investigations into the Bidens and Crowdstrike.

Debating the Rules:

1. The Senate debates for more than 12 hours over the procedural rules of the trial, delaying opening arguments.
2. Mitch McConnell proposes a condensed impeachment trial schedule, with two days of opening arguments per side, not to exceed 24 hours, followed by four hours of debate.
3. Maybe after that, they’ll call witnesses.
4. This could mean 12 hours of opening arguments per day, starting after a full morning of regular Senate work (so 16-hour days for the Senators and for Chief Justice Roberts).
5. Both Democratic and Republican Senators pressure McConnell to extend it to three days each, giving them the option of three eight-hour days.
6. Both Democrat and Republican Senators also pressure McConnell to allow the House managers to present the evidence they gathered at the beginning of the trial.
7. McConnell is working on a rule that would let Trump’s legal team move to dismiss as soon as the arguments are complete. Kind of like a kill switch in case the trial goes on too long.
8. Republicans vote over and over again to defeat Democratic amendments to subpoena new witnesses and evidence,
9. The Senate rules include the option of refusing to hear new evidence or testimony. They also have provisions to prevent certain people, like Bolton, from testifying in public.
10. According to McConnell’s rules, if any witnesses are called, they would have to first be deposed by both sides.
11. Despite the rules that Senators must remain seated and quiet during the proceedings, they’re already walking around when they’re supposed to be seated, and they’re talking when they’re supposed to be quiet. This despite the punishment being imprisonment.
12. During the rules debate, Pat Cipollone was given an hour to make a case in his opening statement—he spoke for three minutes, saying Trump has done nothing wrong.
13. Adam Schiff took 50 minutes of his hour to lay out their entire case, accusing Trump of trying to manipulate the 2020 elections by pressuring Ukraine to announce investigations into Biden.
14. Members of Trump’s legal team repeated some of the misinformation included in their brief, including that Republicans weren’t allowed in the House SCIF during depositions and that Schiff didn’t tell us he was making a parody of Trump’s phone call with Zelensky during his now-infamous paraphrasing of the call.
15. Jay Sekulow claims that Trump was cleared of obstruction of justice in the Mueller report. In actuality, Mueller outlined around a dozen cases of possible obstruction of justice, and he said it’s up to Congress to decide whether to pursue impeachment on them. Legal analysts agree that most of these meet the criteria for obstruction.
16. Sekulow also says that Trump was denied the right to cross-examine witnesses. In fact, Trump and his team declined to participate. How many times must this be debunked?
17. For some reason, Trump’s legal team keeps exaggerating the number of days the House waited to send the articles of impeachment to the Senate. It was 28 days, but the team says it was 33. That’s just a useless and weird lie.
18. Trump’s team says the aid to Ukraine got out on time anyway. In reality, because of the delay, $35 million didn’t get out in time and Congress had to extend the deadline.
19. Sekulow gets worked up over a House manager talking about “lawyer lawsuits” and delivers an indignant rebuke to Val Demings. No one knows what he was talking about. Demings had talked about FOIA lawsuits, and she actually introduced the term as “Freedom of Information Act, a.k.a. FOIA lawsuits.” The White House backs up Sekulow and says the transcript has Demings saying lawyer lawsuits. The Federal Document Clearing House transcript includes no mention of “lawyer lawsuits” except Sekulow’s. Why is this a big deal? It shows a continued pattern of lying and not correcting the record even when provided with hard evidence. Also, we can all watch the video of Demings’ presentation.
20. The rules debate goes on past midnight, and Jerrold Nadler at one point raises his voice and accuses Republicans of “treacherous” behavior if they don’t allow witnesses. One of Trump’s lawyers responds angrily. The whole thing leads Chief Justice Roberts to remind both sides to be polite and remember where they are.
21. There’s debate about a trade for witnesses. Republicans could call people like the Bidens if Democrats could call John Bolton. The deal is dropped. Joe Biden says he refuses to part of an impeachment deal.
22. It’s pretty notable that 3/4 of Americans want new witnesses and evidence.
23. Senator John Cornyn (R-TX) quotes a Wall Street Journal editorial claiming that what Trump did was legal. This despite the GAO finding the opposite and despite the fact that Cornyn just took an oath to be impartial.

House Managers Arguments:

1. Adam Schiff opens up the House managers‘ presentation by outlining their arguments. He says Democrats aren’t overstepping by impeaching; it’s part of Congress’s Constitutional mandate. Here’s the gist of their argument:

• • Trump solicited foreign interference to cheat in an election.
  • He did so by abusing the powers of his office to pressure a foreign country to get involved in our elections.
  • When Trump was caught, he continued to use the powers of his office to obstruct the investigation.

2. Schiff urges Republicans to “protect our democracy” by joining Democrats in voting to remove Trump from office.
3. Schiff presents the facts of the case:

• • Trump mentioned the Bidens and Burisma but not corruption when he talked to Zelensky (you can check it out for yourself).
  • According to Gordon Sondland’s testimony, Trump followed up on whether the investigations he wanted were going to happen.
  • Kurt Volker texted Andriy Yermak, less than 30 minutes before that call to say that if the investigations were announced, they could set up a White House meeting.
  • Trump told reporters that he wanted both Ukraine and China to investigate Biden, which appears like he’s just looking for foreign countries to smear Biden.
  • Sondland and Giuliani rewrote a Ukraine statement announcing investigations into corruption investigations. They specifically added investigations into Burisma and the 2016 elections.
  • When U.S. officials asked Ukraine not to investigate their political opponents, Yermak threw back, “You mean like asking us to investigate Clinton and Biden?”
  • Ukraine faced the possibility of being cut off from vital aid in the middle of a war.
  • The aid was only released after Trump was caught.

4. And then Schiff addresses whether abuse of power is impeachable:

• • Bill Barr and Jonathan Turley have both argued that abuse of power is impeachable.
  • The framers of the Constitution made it clear that they were trying to prevent political crimes.
  • If abuse of power isn’t impeachable, then we don’t have a president, we have a king.

5. Trump’s re-election campaign and the White House both tweet running commentaries during the presentation refuting House managers’ arguments.

• • They say that Trump didn’t withhold a White House meeting with Zelensky; he invited the Ukraine president three times. The UN was their first opportunity to meet.
  • Zelensky himself has said that the UN meeting didn’t fulfill Trump’s promise of a White House meeting, and Trump never offered Zelensky a date.

6. House managers spend the first day of arguments describing Trump’s scheme to pressure Ukraine to open, or at least announce, investigations into the Bidens while withholding aid and a White House meeting to increase pressure.
7. Schiff walks the Senate through a timeline of the early events in the pressure campaign, and says Mike Pence canceling his trip to Ukraine in May was a pivotal moment.
8. Schiff includes new allegations from Lev Parnas in his presentation.
9. Senator Tom Cotton (R-AR) criticizes the House managers for being repetitive. I agree that they’re quite repetitive, but I think it’s to get the information to stick. Senator Mazie Hirono (D-HI) responds by saying, “It is hard to listen to things you don’t want to hear.”
10. An anti-abortion, pro-Trump protestor disrupts proceedings on the first day, shouting “Schumer is the devil!” and “They support abortion!” You could hear him screaming all the way down the hall as police removed him.
11. On the second day, they focus on the allegations of abuse of power, and Schiff explains it will be a little repetitive again today while they show how the facts they presented the previous day fit together.
12. Nadler speculates that Trump’s legal team won’t refute the facts of the testimony or evidence. (Spoiler for next week: they don’t.)
13. Nadler also says a crime isn’t necessary to impeach a president. Constitutional scholars largely agree. Nadler plays a video of Alan Dershowitz saying the same thing about the Clinton investigation. Dershowitz has done an about-face and will argue the opposite.
14. House manager Sylvia Garcia (D-TX) argues that the allegations against Joe and Hunter Biden are groundless. She goes into detail about how Biden’s efforts in Ukraine were done in the open to forward U.S. policy and were supported by our European allies.
15. Garcia also says there’s no factual basis for the conspiracy theory that Ukraine interfered in our 2016 elections. She says that theory only benefits Putin and Trump. Schiff goes on to show that the origin of the conspiracy theory was the Kremlin.
16. Here’s an incredible moment. Garcia brings up a letter signed by Senators Ron Johnson (R-WI), Rob Portman (R-OH), Dick Durbin (D-IL), Jeanne Shaheen (D-NH), and other members of the Senate Ukraine Committee in 2016. The letter urged Ukraine to fight corruption, including in the General Prosecutor’s office (the prosecutor at the time was Shokin, whom Biden helped oust).

• • Johnson, who has said he doesn’t remember the letter, gets upset, speaks to Portman, and leaves the Senate floor. He’s still agitated when he returned.
  • He later releases a statement saying that Garcia misrepresented the letter and it was about corruption in general. He must’ve missed the bit about the General Prosecutor.

17. Reporters spot Senator Marcia Blackburn (R-TN) reading a book during the presentation. The book is “Resistance (At All Costs): How Trump Haters Are Breaking America.”

• • The same day, Blackburn repeats an unfounded smear against decorated war veteran Alexander Vindman, and then doubles down with a second tweet calling him vindictive. Let’s remember he has a purple heart.
  • And then, Blackburn breaks the trial rules by giving a live TV interview to Laura Ingraham while proceedings were ongoing and her colleagues were seated in the Senate chamber.
  • Blackburn does not appear to take her job seriously. Maybe all ya’ll could vote her out?

18. Schiff reminds the Senate that Trump has said he can do what he wants under Article II. He argues that since Trump didn’t pay a price for Russian interference in 2016, he’s unrepentant and undeterred, and he’ll keep doing it.
19. Demings says that Senators know better than to think this is about one election. She says it’s bigger than any one election and bigger than any one president.
20. Hakeem Jeffries reminds Senators that, as Sondland testified, everyone was in the loop on the Ukraine operation and Trump directed the whole thing.
21. Sekulow says that the House managers opened the door for Trump’s legal team to go after Biden because House managers defended Biden as sort of a prebuttal to what the defense might say.
22. Jeffries reminds us that the administration did try to bury the transcript on the super-secure server, and that they ran a failed effort to cover the whole thing up.
23. Demings tells us that the State and Defense Departments, the Vice President, and the Office of Management and Budget have still not produced a single document in response to their 71 requests, five of which are subpoenas. So the argument of waiting for the courts to straighten this out is ridiculous on its face.
24. Schiff closes by saying that what Trump did is what our founders feared most—inviting foreign interference in our elections. He accuses Trump of putting his personal benefit over national security.
25. Schiff warns that if Trump isn’t removed, “the balance of power that our founders set out will never be the same.”
26. If you haven’t heard them, Schiff’s closing caused even Republicans to commend him. They’re worth a listen.

• • One of his most quoted lines is, “Why would anyone in their right mind believe Rudy Giuliani over [FBI Director] Christopher Wray?”

Trump’s Defense Arguments:

1. Trump’s legal team starts their arguments with only two hours on Saturday, so there’s more to come in next week’s recap.
2. They begin by working to cast doubt on the House managers’ case that Trump pressured Ukraine to investigate the Bidens and Ukraine interference in the 2016 elections in return for things of value—withholding aid and a White House meeting.
3. They refer frequently to the transcript (which is actually a summary, not a direct rendering of the call).
4. Here’s the gist of their argument:

• • There was nothing wrong with the call, and no meetings or withholding money were discussed. (The articles of impeachment don’t actually center on the call, though, they center on activities before and after.)
  • Democrats are trying to rig the election against Trump. They’ve always been trying to get rid of him.
  • Trump had valid reasons for withholding the aid. They don’t address that the DOD did certify Ukraine as compliant on fighting corruption.
  • House managers overlooked facts and didn’t speak to people with direct contact with Trump on the matter.
  • House managers haven’t met the burden of proof.
  • Zelensky himself said he didn’t feel any pressure.
  • Democrats want to overturn the election. They don’t mention that Pence, who was elected alongside Trump, would be president if Trump is removed.
  • It was Ukraine, not Russia, that interfered in our elections.
  • Biden tried to get the prosecutor who was investigating Burisma fired. (Except that prosecutor wasn’t investigating Burisma.)

5. The defense brings up Schiff’s paraphrasing of the call in a hearing. They leave out the part where Schiff says he’s paraphrasing.
6. The defense kind of made a case for allowing new witnesses and evidence.

More Documents Released:

1. The Office of Management and Budget releases another bunch of documents about the Ukraine aid, as required by a FOIA request.

• • The documents include email threads from late June, after an article about military aid to Ukraine appeared in the Washington Times.
  • Some are between the OMB’s Michael Duffey and Mark Sandy (Sandy testified in the House hearings).
  • They were figuring out the details of the Ukraine Security Assistance Initiative, a defense program for allocating money to Ukraine.
  • Remember Sandy testified that he learned in a July 12 email that Trump was directing the hold on aid, but he didn’t get a reason until September.

2. Emails with Pentagon officials who were questioning the legality of the freeze are heavily redacted.

More Trouble for Parnas, Fruman, and Giuliani:

1. Oh lordy, there are tapes. Among Lev Parnas’s evidence released to the House is an hour-plus audio recording of Trump dining with a group of political donors, Parnas, Fruman, and others. The dinner took place on April 30, 2018.

• • We can hear Parnas say that Marie Yovanovitch was saying that Trump would be impeached so we needed to get her out of there. Trump responds with, “Get rid of her! Get her out tomorrow. I don’t care. Get her out tomorrow. Take her out. OK? Do it.”
  • Parnas says Yovanovitch was left over from the Clinton administration, but she’s actually served since Reagan.
  • The recording highlights how inane dinner conversation can be.
  • One of the donors is a Canadian steel magnate who funneled money through his U.S. subsidies to donate to Trump. Which is perfectly legal.
  • This shows that the effort by Parnas and Giuliani to oust Yovanovitch went on for at least a year.

2. Trump continues to tell us he doesn’t know Parnas.
3. Giuliani promises he’ll release evidence to take down the Bidens this week. He goes on Fox & Friends to promote it.

• • It turns out it’s just a ploy to get ears on his new podcast.
  • He gives no evidence on his podcast, but on F&F he accuses Biden of taking multiple bribes totaling $8 million, and he accuses Democrats of collusion and profiteering. He says the crimes are shocking, including a poisoning.
  • Giuliani says that starting at noon on Friday, he would be rolling out his case. By the end of the week, it doesn’t sound like he’s got anything.

4. Parnas requests that Bill Barr recuse himself from the investigation of Parnas’s possible violations of election finance laws. He says Barr knew everything Parnas was working on with regard to Ukraine and they were basically on the same team.

Polls:

1. 75% of Americans want new evidence and testimony to be allowed in the impeachment trial.
2. A Pew Research poll finds that 63% of Americans think Trump has acted illegally. 51% think he should be removed from office.