The House Democratic managers argue the Senate must “eliminate the threat that the President poses to America’s national security” in the 111-page legal brief they filed Saturday. The brief lays out their impeachment case against President Trump.
With opening arguments in the Senate trial to begin Wednesday afternoon, the seven House managers had until 5 p.m. Saturday to file their brief describing why Trump should be convicted and removed from office. The White House defense team has until noon Monday to file its argument why he should be acquited.
The House legal filing reiterates the findings of the House Intelligence and Judiciary panels, which, after hearing from witnesses and experts, settled on charging Trump last month with abuse of power and obstruction of Congress.
“The evidence overwhelmingly establishes that he is guilty of both,” the managers wrote in the brief. “The only remaining question is whether the members of the Senate will accept and carry out the responsibility placed on them by the Framers of our Constitution and their constitutional Oaths.”
Trump’s legal team released a seven-page response to the charges against Trump, which it filed shortly after the House made its brief public, dismissing the case as a “dangerous attack on the right of the American people to freely choose their president.”
Echoing the months-long criticism from Trump and his allies of the investigation, the White House said the charges were the result of a “lawless process” and assailed House Democrats for a “transparently political act.”
In the White House response, lawyers Jay Sekulow and Pat A. Cipollone said there was no basis for either article of impeachment. They argued that Trump did nothing wrong in his dealings with Ukraine and his release of a rought transcript of the July 25 call was “unprecedented transparency.”
“The articles of impeachment violate the Constitution. They are defective in their entirety,” the White House said.
The Democrats’ brief — which the House framed as an explanation of “why the Senate should convict and remove President Trump from office, and permanently bar him from government service” — reiterates and summarizes arguments that Democrats have put forth for months: that Trump’s alleged effort to trade nearly $400 million in military aid and a coveted White House meeting for Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelesnky for politically motivated investigations represents the height of constitutional malfeasance.
The Ukraine plot, the House managers argue, was compounded by Trump’s effort to obstruct the congressional probe to uncover it in what they portray as an effort to put off any consequences until after his re-election campaign.
“If the President could both avoid accountability under the criminal laws and preclude an effective impeachment investigation, he would truly be above the law,” they wrote. “But that is what President Trump has attempted to do, and why President Trump’s conduct is the Framers’ worst nightmare.”
The meat of the 111-page filing is a constitutional argument for Trump’s conviction and removal, one that frequently appeals to the nation’s founding fathers and their warnings about foreign influence on domestic matters.
“The Framers therefore would have considered a President’s attempt to corrupt America’s democratic processes by demanding political favors from foreign powers to be a singularly pernicious act,” the managers write, adding that “they would have viewed a President’s efforts to encourage foreign election interference as all the more dangerous where, as here, those efforts are part of an ongoing pattern of misconduct for which the President is unrepentant.”
Most of the brief, however, is a recitation of key “material facts” gathered in the four-month House investigation, citing the dozens of depositions and hearings the investigating committees conducted in from October into December but also media reports about Trump’s comments and actions relevant to the Ukraine affair.
The impeachment inquiry after an intelligence agency whistleblower reported the July 25 phone call between Trump and Ukrainian President Voldodmyr Zelensky in which Trump asked Zelensky to do him a “favor” and investigation former vice president Joe Biden, and his son, Hunter Biden.