Trump’s Legal Team Offered a Preview of Its Impeachment Defense
The United States’ third-ever presidential impeachment trial begins Tuesday. Over the holiday weekend, the Trump legal team released previews of the president’s defense, arguing that obstruction of Congress and abuse of power aren’t impeachable offenses—oh, and the president definitely didn’t obstruct Congress or abuse his power.
The charges against the president “allege no crime or violation of law,” reads a 11o-page brief released by the White House Monday, and “do not remotely approach the constitutional threshold for removing a president from office.”
“Abuse of power isn’t a crime,” one source working with Trump legal team told NPR, a line that truly amounts to damning with faint defense.
Of course, most legal experts agree that the Constitution outlines impeachment not just as remedy for criminality, but for, as the articles of impeachment filed against Nixon put it, broader offenses including “behaving in a manner grossly incompatible with the proper function of the office,” and “employing the power of the office for an improper purpose or personal gain.”
Though the brief didn’t refute charges that Trump withheld military funding from Ukraine in an attempt to press the nation to investigate his political rivals, it denied that this represented a misuse of power. “House Democrats’ concocted theory that the president can be impeached for taking permissible actions if he does them for what they believe to be the wrong reasons would...expand the impeachment power beyond constitutional bounds,” reads the brief.
In a Sunday appearance on CNN’s State of the Union, newly-minted Trump lawyer Alan Dershowitz sounded some of the same notes found in the document, saying that he plans to argue that “criminal-like conduct” is required for impeachment.
But he sang a different tune before the Clinton impeachment, during a 1998 appearance on Larry King Live. “It certainly doesn't have to be a crime if you have somebody who completely corrupts the office of president and who abuses trust and who poses great danger to our liberty,” he said at the time, “you don't need a technical crime."
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