Donald Trump’s legal team has delivered a fiery response to impeachment summons from the Senate, calling the two articles passed by the House “a dangerous attack on the right of the American people to freely choose their president”.
“This is a brazen and unlawful attempt to overturn the results of the 2016 election and interfere with the 2020 election, now just months away,” the lawyers said on Saturday, also claiming the charges against the president were invalid as they did not concern a crime.
Impeachment is a political process, not a criminal one. Under the US constitution, the president can be removed if found guilty of whatever lawmakers consider to be “high crimes and misdemeanors”. Trump is charged with abusing his power and obstructing Congress.
On Saturday, House impeachment managers outlined their view of the case against Trump in a 111-page legal brief of their own. It pulls together private and public testimony of a dozen witnesses, ambassadors and national security officials at high levels of government.
In a joint statement, the seven managers led by the Democratic intelligence committee chair Adam Schiff said their case was “simple, the facts are indisputable, and the evidence is overwhelming: President Trump abused the power of his office to solicit foreign interference in our elections for his own personal political gain, thereby jeopardizing our national security, the integrity of our elections, and our democracy”.
“And when the president got caught, he tried to cover it up by obstructing the House’s investigation into his misconduct.”
Trump’s legal team, led by White House counsel Pat Cipollone and Trump personal lawyer Jay Sekulow, is challenging the impeachment on both procedural and constitutional grounds, claiming Trump has been mistreated by House Democrats and that he did nothing wrong.
Trump will file a more detailed legal brief on Monday, and the House will be able to respond to the Trump filing on Tuesday.
The case hinges on a 25 July phone call with Ukrainian leader Volodymyr Zelenskiy, in which Trump asked his counterpart to do him a “favor” and investigate both a conspiracy theory concerning election interference and ties between former vice-president Joe Biden and his son, Hunter Biden, and the eastern European country.
Biden remains a possible Democratic candidate for president. At the time of the Ukraine call, Trump was withholding from Kyiv nearly $400m of military aid and the prospect of a White House meeting for Zelenskiy.
Trump’s legal team for the Senate trial, starting on Tuesday, will also include Ken Starr, whose investigation led to the impeachment of Bill Clinton, and former Harvard professor, Alan Dershowitz.
Both have been fixtures on Fox News. Some in the administration have echoed warnings from Senate majority leader Mitch McConnell that the lawyers must be sensitive to staid Senate traditions and not use the sharp rhetoric exhibited during House proceedings last year.
Many observers suggest the slow nature of the trial will prove a turnoff to the American public, boosting Trump’s hopes of surviving unscathed. Others report that the president wants to add fire and TV knowhow to the team mounting his defense.
White House lawyers succeeded in blocking Trump from adding House Republicans to his team, the AP reported, but also advised against picking Dershowitz. They are concerned about the professor’s association with Jeffrey Epstein, the financier who killed himself in a New York jail last summer while awaiting trial on sex trafficking charges.
Dershowitz has said he will deliver constitutional arguments defending Trump from allegations he abused his power and obstructed Congress.
Former New York mayor and current Trump lawyer Rudy Giuliani told the AP the president had a “top-notch” team and insisted he was not disappointed to be excluded. Giuliani, who many in the White House blame for leading Trump to impeachment over Ukraine, said his focus would be on being a potential witness.
