Defusing Their Defenses

“SO WHAT? GET OVER IT.”

Topline: The President demanded that a foreign president dig up dirt on Joe Biden—something both Republicans and Democrats agree was wrong—and then refused to provide Congress any of the witnesses or evidence it asked for to investigate. Our Constitution forbids this kind of self-dealing by a President, and no previous President has ever done it, nor has a President ever so disregarded the checks and balances set out by our Founders.

They say: The money was released and Trump met with Zelensky without Ukraine announcing an investigation, so there was no harm.

If the hostage is found and released before the ransom is paid, does that mean there was no kidnapping? The President held back the aid to Ukraine in defiance of the bipartisan direction of Congress, even as people at the U.S. State and Defense Departments were unanimously saying it was in United States’ national security interest, as well as their legal duty, to send the assistance. He didn’t release the aid until after the whistleblower complaint was made public, a delay that necessitated a second act of Congress to make sure the funds reached Ukraine. And by the way, as of December 2019, millions of dollars of the aid money of the money STILL hasn’t reached Ukraine, and Zelensky still hasn’t gotten the White House meeting he was promised.

They say: “Abuse of power” is not an impeachable offense. Impeachment should require a higher and more concrete standard than conduct that “ignored and injured the interests of the Nation.”

What higher standard could there be?  Abuse of power is exactly what our Founders warned us about, and precisely what the Constitution was written to prevent. Our leaders are supposed to put the country’s interests before their own, not use their position to extract personal “favors.” Even Republican’s own witness, Professor Turley, agreed that the president could be impeached for abuse of power.

They say: This was wrong/“not a great idea,” but not impeachable.

President Trump held up vital military aid to Ukraine in its war against our top enemy, Russia, in order to extort an investigation of an American citizen. His own handpicked EU ambassador testified under oath that it was a quid pro quo. This is far closer to ordering a political break-in than it is to lying about an affair—both of which were impeachable offenses. If Congress fails to impeach on these facts, what message are we sending to future leaders from either party?

They say: The entire system is corrupt. This is just business as usual.

The overwhelming testimony of career public servants was that while this may be business as usual in Russia or Ukraine, it most definitely is not in the United States. We have never before seen U.S. military leaders abruptly resign, the President’s handpicked National Security Advisor tell staff to summon White House lawyers, or associates of the President’s personal lawyer arrested trying to flee the country. This is not business as usual. No President has used the powers of his office to coerce a foreign power into helping him with his re-election. Even Nixon, who was implicated in a burglary of his political rival, didn’t try to coerce a foreign power to help him.

If you truly think everyone does it, are ok with that? Or does America deserve better? Does your representative do it? Should your representative condone it?

They say: Everybody does it.

If there is any good news in this debacle, it is that this is not true. No American leader has ever attempted anything close to Trump’s abuse of power. Presidents may horse trade in negotiations to benefit the nation, but there’s a difference between acting in the national interest and in acting in your personal interest. To use foreign aid—military aid—for purely personal gain has never happened before. And we need to decide now whether we should ever let it happen again.

They say: All presidents do this—Trump just said out loud what everyone else hid.

The witnesses have been clear and unanimous in their testimony: over their long careers in service to the nation for both Republican and Democratic administrations, no previous President has ever traded the nation’s foreign policy interests for his personal political benefit. There’s a reason no one does this—because it’s illegal. The Governor of Illinois went to jail for scheming to use an official act for personal benefit.

They say: Other presidents refused to comply with congressional investigations, including President Obama.  It is not fair to impeach Trump for doing what other presidents before him have done.

President Trump is not doing the same thing as other presidents.  He has issued an administration-wide ban on any official cooperating with Congress and refused to produce any documents subpoenaed by Congress.  This is more than a disagreement about where the balance of powers lies between branches of government; it is a declaration that the executive branch has the power to prevent Congress from doing its job.  The President is not a king, and should not act as one.

They say: The Mueller report proves that Trump didn’t collude with Russia in the 2016 election, so it is ridiculous to think he would ask for help from another country in the 2020 election.

It is true that the President’s actions on July 25 are especially breathtaking when you think that just the day before, Robert Mueller testified in Congress about the crime of asking a foreign power for personal help in an election.  The Mueller report states affirmatively that Russia did interfere in the 2016 election on behalf of President Trump—people went to jail for this—though it didn’t find that the Trump campaign coordinated with Russia.  Here, by contrast, you have the President’s own people ordered by the President to coordinate with Ukraine to force the new government to announce an investigation into Trump’s most-feared political rival.   

They say: It is terrible to put our nation through this because of one little phone call.

If you’ve paid any attentions to the actual hearings—not the spin, but the testimony—you know that this isn’t about a single phone call. It was about Trump’s months-long effort to divert taxpayer dollars from helping an ally at war with Russia and using the funds instead to pressure a foreign country to falsely smear his political rival. It is about nearly $400 million in vital aid.  It is about our president putting self over country.  It is about what America stands for, and whether that still means anything at all.

They say: These hearings are taking committee members from important official duties.

Holding elected officials to their sworn duty to honor the Constitution and put country over self is one of Congress’s most important responsibilities.  Most members of Congress do not have a role in the current investigation, and all members of Congress are still able to vote on bills before the House, including next year’s budget.  During the impeachment investigation, the House has passed the USMCA (the new NAFTA), approved a new spending package to avoid a government shutdown, and heard testimony on everything from farm aid to small business loans.  In fact, under Democratic leadership the House has passed nearly 350 bills and more than 150 resolutions in 2019.

“THERE’S NO CRIME HERE. TRUMP WAS JUST DOING HIS JOB. THE CALL WAS ‘PERFECT.’”

Topline: The Ukraine call immediately raised alarm bells throughout the Trump White House because the President’s closest advisors knew that what had happened was scandalous and cut at the heart of our constitutional system. 

They say: The President committed no crime.

The President violated the Constitution, our founding legal document.  He abused the powers of his office for personal gain, put himself before the people he is meant be serving, and used the taxpayer dollars of hardworking Americans to extract a personal “favor” from a foreign power.  He attacked two of the most fundamental principles of American democracy:  checks and balances and honest public service.  Impeachment is a political process meant to protect these constitutional foundations.  The House chose to impeach on the grounds that present the most clear and present danger to our system of government.  This keeps the focus on his actions against the American people, not on overly legalistic wrangling over court interpretations of the many laws he may have also broken.

They say: Democrats are ignoring exculpatory evidence.

The only “exculpatory evidence” Republicans can point to is that President Zelensky has publicly denied that he felt pressured by President Trump. This is the same world leader who agreed to go on CNN to announce “investigations” and canceled after some of the money was released and the same leader who linked the White House visit to investigations on his phone call with President Trump. In order to maintain bipartisan support in the U.S. and keep aid money flowing, President Zelensky knows he must avoid getting enmeshed in U.S. domestic politics. What else is he supposed to say?

They say: President Zelensky has publicly denied that he felt any pressure from President Trump.

President Zelensky does not want to be seen as a pawn in American politics at home, and he has no interest in getting on the wrong side of one of his country's biggest allies. Of course he will say that. Records of conversations between U.S. and Ukrainian officials in July, August, and early September tell a different story.

They say: None of the witnesses used the words “bribery” or “extortion” to describe President Trump’s actions.

In case you missed it, Gordon Sondland said unequivocally that this was a quid pro quo, and that these orders came straight from the President. The witnesses are not lawyers, and it is not their job to draw legal conclusions. It is their jobs to tell the facts truthfully and completely.

They also didn’t say the word “emoluments.” But Trump was still asking a foreign power to do him a personal “favor” and interfere in our elections.

They say: This was just about a policy disagreement over how President Trump should proceed on Ukraine policy.

Is that what we’re calling a decision to break the law and abuse one’s office now?  Every single member of the national security community supported immediate release of the aid. Multiple high-level government officials reported Trump’s actions to White House lawyers almost as soon as they happened. Kurt Volker resigned the day after the call transcript was released. These aren’t signs of a “policy difference” among reasonable people; they’re signs of historic corruption. 

They say: The President was doing the right thing; he just didn’t do it very well.

What is the “right thing?” the president was trying to do?  Make sure our money was being spent well?  That’s Congress’s job, and the executive branch, via the Departments of State and Defense, had already confirmed that Ukraine had taken steps to fight corruption required to release the aid before the President froze the aid. Combat corruption in Ukraine? The President’s staff prepared talking points on corruption for his conversation with President Zelensky, but Trump ignored these.  Make sure his political rival hadn’t broken the law?  The President has multiple U.S. agencies that could investigate that claim if it were credible.  But it wasn’t. He wasn’t trying to do the right thing; he just got caught.

They say: The Ukrainian president wasn't aware of the hold during the July 25 call.

Not true. One of the things we learned in the hearings was that Ukraine was asking the U.S. about the aid as early as July 25.  Laura Cooper, a deputy assistant secretary of defense, received three emails that day indicating that the Ukrainians were aware the aid was held up.  And remember, there were not one, but TWO things conditioned on Ukraine starting these corrupt investigations: the military aid and the White House visit. Thanks to testimony from several witnesses, we know that by at least July 10, Ukraine knew the White House meeting was dependent on “investigations.” EU Ambassador Sondland later told the Ukrainians that the aid wouldn’t flow unless the investigations were announced. This was a months-long coercion campaign by President Trump and his aides.

They say: The transcript of the call does not show the President asking for a quid pro quo.

On the call, the President says, “Do us a favor, though” and talks about both Crowdstrike, Burisma, and the Bidens. That he doesn’t spell out exactly the terms of the deal shouldn’t surprise you. In organized crime, the boss never gets his hands dirty. He leaves it to his underlings to set the explicit terms and do the heavy lifting. That’s why you have to look at the side conversations that Sondland, Volker, and Giuliani were having with the Ukrainians to understand how the bribery scheme worked. Trump’s own political appointee, Gordon Sondland, confirmed that there was a quid pro quo.

They say: Trump told Sondland that it wasn't a quid pro quo.

Given what we now know about when President Trump learned about the complaint, he would have already been in coverup mode at the time he tried to deny that there was a quid pro quo. But the President also said that if the Ukrainians didn’t start the investigations they would be at a “stalemate” on the aid, and his hand-picked officials told Ambassador Taylor that Ukraine had to “pay up” before getting the money. Saying the sky isn’t blue doesn’t make it so, and yelling “no quid pro quo” doesn’t change the fact that if you won’t give me what I want until I give you what you want, you’re asking for a quid pro quo. As Ambassador Sondland said, two plus two equals four.

They say: The conversation with the Ukrainian president was legitimate. There’s no quid pro quo. The conversation/call was “perfect.”

It may have been a perfect shakedown from the President’s point of view, but others on the call testified that they were immediately alarmed. They heard the President try to coerce a foreign power into manufacturing an investigation to harm his most feared political rival for his personal benefit. We’ve seen the call record, and we’ve heard from witnesses who were there. The President’s lawyer admitted it. The White House Chief of Staff admitted it. Senior officials heard it. The President asked for a personal favor while his aides were telling Ukrainians that a White House visit depended on publicly-announced “investigations” and the Ukrainian Embassy was learning that aid the country desperately needed was being mysteriously held up. The Ambassador to the EU, a handpicked political appointee, told Congress that he understood the President held back the military aid to coerce the Ukrainian president to act.

They say: It is normal for presidents to send non-governmental emissaries to carry their message to foreign governments.

A public good-will ambassador is very different than a personal lawyer cutting side deals with shady businessmen, denigrating U.S. public servants, and pushing a foreign government to take actions at odds with U.S. policy and our national security interests.

They say: Ambassadors serve at the will of the President, and the President can recall any Ambassador at any time.

Completely true. But it is unheard of for a President to recall an ambassador who was doing her job representing U.S. interests—and doing it well—because he was urged to do so by two shady businessmen who have since been arrested for making huge illegal campaign contributions to Trump and Republican election committees. And while the President may not need a reason to recall his ambassador, there is no excuse for his decision to publicly disparage Marie Yovanovitch.

They say: If the President wanted to replace Ambassador Yovanovitch because she was too strong on corruption, why did he replace her with Bill Taylor?

We don’t know how the decision was made or who suggested Taylor. The President may have hoped for a yes man in Bill Taylor, or he may have simply hoped for someone who would take a while to get up to speed. Removing the ambassador gave the President’s conspirators several weeks to operate their corrupt shadow diplomacy without having to answer for how it ran counter to U.S. national interests. He essentially pulled the referee. And recall that Ambassador Yovanovitch still has not been replaced; Ambassador Taylor is in an acting position.

They say: Trump did nothing wrong.

This argument doesn’t just ignore the overwhelming weight of the evidence and ask members of the public to jettison their common sense; it also plays right into the hands of Russia, which wants nothing more than to fan a disinformation campaign to undermine American’s faith in public institutions. Read the transcripts and watch the testimony for yourself. Based on the evidence so far, Trump did at least five things wrong:

• He told a foreign government to manufacture an investigation into his political rival—and has also encouraged other governments to do the same;
• He withheld military aid appropriated to protect U.S. national security interests and conditioned its release on Ukraine agreeing to investigate his political rival;
• He tried to cover up his phone call with the Ukrainian president;
• He and his aides tried to prevent the whistleblower complaint from reaching Congress—and it they have threatened and retaliated against other diplomatic officials involved in this case; and
• He ordered his administration to stonewall Congress as it performs its constitutional duty of oversight—and had the audacity to then argue that Congress couldn’t make its case because it hadn’t heard from some of these witnesses.

They say: President Trump was right to investigate corruption in Ukraine.

This doesn’t pass the smell test. If Trump was truly interested in fighting corruption, he would’ve worked through his own government—his own State Department, his own National Security Council—on the issue. He would have mentioned corruption on his calls with Ukraine’s president. Instead, he used a private citizen and his own personal lawyer, Rudy Giuliani, to create a backchannel to normal U.S. diplomacy. He asked the Ukrainians to target just one family—the Bidens. His EU ambassador told Congress that Trump didn’t care about the investigation actually happening, just in it being publicly announced.  He wasn’t fighting corruption; he was engaged in corruption.

They say: President Trump gave Ukrainians weapons that President Obama withheld; President Trump truly cares about the Ukrainian people.

If he truly cared, it is odd that he held up the aid overwhelmingly appropriated by Congress. Reporting shows that it was American business interests, not a concern for the Ukrainian people, that led President Trump to send lethal weapons such as Javelin missiles to Ukraine. Trump originally insisted that Ukraine should pay for the weapons and only agreed to authorize the aid when someone said that the gift would cause Ukraine to purchase more weapons in the future. 

They say: Joe Biden did do something wrong.

Not a single witness, including the President’s own handpicked representatives, agreed with this argument. In fact, Kurt Volker went out of his way to describe the former vice president as a “man of integrity and dedication to our country.” Joe Biden was acting in the interests of the U.S. and justice when he helped remove a corrupt prosecutor in hopes of seeing stronger, not weaker, corruption prosecutions.

They say: Hunter Biden was not qualified to have this board seat. Democrats support nepotism.

If his name was Hunter Smith, he would not have been on that board. Democrats and Republicans agree on that. But being underqualified is not a crime, and Hunter’s position was a private one. Democrats and many Republicans also agree that what President Trump did was wrong. Withholding military aid needed to defend against a Russian invasion in order to coerce Ukraine into manufacturing an investigation to hurt Biden was a shocking abuse of power that violates basic constitutional norms.

They say: Even the State Department was concerned about Hunter Biden’s role on the Burisma board.

If President Trump cared about the appearance of corruption, he wouldn’t employ his children in the White House, try to get the G7 to meet at a property he owns, or encourage foreign delegations to stay at the Trump Hotel in Washington, DC. As we saw over and over again in the hearings, State Department is staffed with nonpartisan individuals who care about the rule of law and have worked to advance U.S. foreign policy under both Democratic and Republican presidents. Some were concerned that Hunter Biden’s role would be bad optics, but no one ever suggested that that any Biden actually did anything wrong. Here not only are the optics far worse—a terrible appearance of acting corruptly that undermines our standing in the international community—but so are the facts, which show that the President abused his power when he tried to bribe a sovereign nation to open a sham investigation into his political rival.

“THEY’VE ALWAYS BEEN OUT TO GET TRUMP.”

Topline: This is about actions Trump took while President to extort a foreign power into interfering in the next election, not what happened the last one.

They say: This is part of a longstanding attempt to undo the 2016 elections.

This isn’t about 2016, and Hillary doesn’t become President if Trump is impeached. This is about what happened this year, how the American President pressured a foreign power to interfere in next year’s elections, and what the consequences should be when the president puts his political interests over the nation’s security interests.  

They say: For most of 2019, the Judiciary Committee conducted various “impeachment” hearings outside of their authority under House Rule X.

The hearings through most of the year were oversight hearings, not impeachment hearings. The impeachment inquiry was opened on September 24, 2019, the Judiciary Committee’s role was set out in House Res. 660 on October 30, 2019, and Judiciary Committee hearings on the impeachment investigation didn’t begin until December.

They say: This is part of an ongoing deep state conspiracy to bring down the President that started with the discredited Steele Dossier.

Trump is the one who made this about 2016, with his focus on conspiracy theories about Ukraine. This inquiry is about the President’s actions in office to coerce a foreign power to help him take down his most-feared rival in the 2020 election. This isn’t about 2016 or the Steele Dossier, but about whether this or any political leader should invite a foreign power to interfere in the 2020 American elections.

They say: This is a distraction to not investigate Hillary Clinton’s emails.

We all know this has nothing to do with Hillary’s emails.

This is about the President’s actions. He’s in the White House, not Hillary. He’s the one who pressured Ukraine on the call for his own personal benefit. And that’s the evidence the American people will hear.

They say: Ukraine was behind the 2016 election hacking/has the server.

That was always a conspiracy theory that had little support then, and it has even less support today. As Fiona Hill told Congress, those who continue to peddle this theory are abetting a Russian disinformation campaign. This is about how Trump has abused the powers of his office for his own personal gain, and this scandal came to light when Trump’s hand-picked people inside his own Administration were alarmed by his actions. He should be held accountable for what he did.

They say: Democrats know they cannot win the election, so they are trying to remove Trump this way.

It sounds like President Trump is the one who is most worried about the next election, because he asked for foreign help against his top-polling political rival. No one can predict the impact the impeachment inquiry will have on elections, but Trump shouldn’t get to break the law and then serve out his term. The Constitution is clear that in cases like this, it is Congress and impeachment, not distant elections, that should remove him from office.

American elections are for Americans. Trump should be able to compete without foreign help.

They say: Democrats want a long drawn-out process to help them in the election.

The House process shows just the opposite—Democrats want to get this done well before the election.  Delay cuts both ways—it also keeps Democratic Senators off the campaign trail. But no one is dragging their feet on this. The investigators have been working through the weekends, and the House plans to vote on impeachment before Christmas. Let’s get to the truth quickly, fairly, and openly. Then the American people can see the facts for themselves.

“THIS IS VERY UNFAIR.”

Topline: The first rule of politics is that when you are desperate, say the process is unfair. Republicans and Democrats agree that what the President did was wrong, and even some Republicans say it’s indefensible. The Constitution gives Congress its authority here, everything has proceeded according to House rules, and Republicans have been in the room every step of the way. [Note: Process is red meat for Dems; don’t take the bait. Focus on what the president did.]

They say: There is no direct evidence against the President. The allegations against him are based on presumptions, assumptions, hearsay, and inferences. All we’ve heard from witnesses is conjecture by people who weren’t actually in contact with the President.

Every witness we have heard from, including many that were hand-picked by the President, presented remarkably consistent testimony.  The President has blocked most of the people closest to him—including the Vice President, Secretary of State, National Security Advisor, and Energy Secretary—from testifying.  But we did hear from Gordon Sondland, who confirmed he had multiple conversations with the President directly about Ukraine, and that there was a quid pro quo.  We read the texts doctoring the announcement of investigations to add in specific references to Burisma and the Bidens.  We heard from a senior State Department official who heard the President asking about the “investigations” withAmbassador Sondland, who then told the official that the President “doesn’t give a shit” about Ukraine beyond its ability to manufacture a smear campaign against his leading political rival.  The evidence paints a clear picture of a shake-down, and anyone who argues otherwise is playing the American public for fools.

They say: The Democrats have not presented clear and convincing evidence.

Unlike Republicans, who are insisting that all members of their caucus must vote against impeachment, Nancy Pelosi has instructed members of her party to review the evidence and vote their conscience. The evidence presented in the House about the White House efforts to shake down a struggling ally for the President’s personal gain has been clear, consistent, supported by contemporary texts and memos, and aligns with testimony given by the President’s longtime “fixer” Michael Cohen about how Donald Trump conducts business.

They say: Some of the Democrats' witnesses did not personally speak with President Trump about Ukraine.

Many of the witnesses did have personal conversations with the President, including several of his handpicked advisors and his EU ambassador. Those that didn’t helped to set the scene. They let the American people know what U.S. policy goals were—and, supposedly, still are—regarding Ukraine: to support the country through military aid and to help its leaders battle corruption. And all witnesses told us why diverging from that policy—a divergence that every witness understood to be at the President’s direction—was so very wrong.

They say: Democrats are engaging in this process in bad faith.

Democrats have done everything by the book so far. The allegations they are investigating cut to the heart of our constitutional system, and Republicans would do well to remember that they work for the people, not the President.

They say: They shouldn’t impeach the President in an election year.

There’s no time-out period in the Constitution. If the President abuses his office, he should be held accountable, and impeachment—not elections—is the constitutional process for doing so. If the president solicited foreign interference in our elections, we have a duty to protect the integrity of our constitutional system of government.

They say: Trump has no due process in how the Dems are doing impeachment.

The House is like a grand jury and the Senate is like a trial. But unlike a criminal grand jury, the proceedings in the House are being made public, and President Trump has been able to see the witnesses testify for themselves andread the transcripts. Unlike in a criminal grand jury, he was invited to participate, and his allies were able to question the witnesses. And once the case moves to the trial in the Senate, the President and his lawyers will be able to mount a defense. The impeachment process gives the President more rights than a criminal defendant would get.

They say: The Judiciary Committee didn’t give Republicans the hearing date they were promised.

Democrats did one better:  they invited President Trump to participate in the hearings, mount a defense, and present evidence.  He refused to even send a representative.  Democrats also allowed Republicans to invite their own witnesses to proceedings in front of both the Judiciary and Intelligence Committees, and 4 of the 16 of those who appeared were Republican witnesses.  What Democrats declined to do was allow Republicans to turn a narrow inquiry into the events surrounding President Trump’s efforts to get Ukraine to interfere in our election into a far-flung witch hunt in search of a narrative to distract from the president’s actions.  None of the witnesses Republicans wanted to call had any first-hand knowledge of the events surrounding President Trump’s July 25 call with the Ukrainian president.  At the end of the day, though, the President’s impeachment trial will take place in the Senate, where Republicans will run the show.

They say: Democrats are pushing this impeachment through with no regard to history or precedent.

What is truly ahistoric are President Trump’s actions—there is no precedent for a sitting president using his office to shake down a foreign ally for his own personal gain.  That is why so many of the President’s hand-picked advisors, like John Bolton and Fiona Hill, reacted with alarm to his July 25 call.  Impeachment, on the other hand, is something we have seen before, and the House proceedings so far are completely in line with history and precedent.  The House has already taken longer than the Clinton impeachment proceedings and Republicans have been given equal time to question witnesses and call witnesses. Chairman Nadler sent a personal invitation participate in the proceedings to President Trump, and we have heard testimony from a range of fact witnesses, legal scholars, and attorneys—including Republican witnesses.  As with so many things in this impeachment inquiry, saying something is so doesn’t make it true.   

They say: The Judiciary Committee shouldn’t have relied on the investigation conducted by HPSCI (the House Permanent Select Committee on Intelligence) instead of conducting its own.

The fact that one of Republican’s leading talking points is that the President shouldn’t be impeached because the public testimony was before a different committee than in previous impeachments tells you everything you need to know about their case.  The Constitution does not require the House to follow any particular process for impeachment, and here the rules were established appropriately, Republicans got to call witnesses and had equal time to question all witnesses, and the Judiciary Committee was able to review all the evidence in the case.

They say: Democrats are not following precedent of previous impeachments (they should have to follow the rules of ’74 and ‘98).

Under the process the House has approved, Trump actually has the same or more rights as Presidents Nixon and Clinton. Remember that before last two impeachments we had investigations by independent counsels, closed-door grand jury proceedings, and lengthy reports detailing their findings. If the Republicans would like to stick to past precedent, then they should have insisted on an independent prosecutor, appointed by a panel of federal judges, who could not be fired by the Attorney General. But they’re not genuinely interested in following precedent or any other process argument. You complain about the rules when you’re desperate. They’re desperate because they know the facts aren’t on their side.

They say: The closed-door hearings violated the President’s rights.

Proceeding behind closed doors while facts are gathered protects the process and the President. This is routine for House investigations and for grand jury proceedings. Any differences benefited Trump: witnesses could have their lawyers present, Republican lawmakers had the same rights to ask questions and read transcripts as their Democratic colleagues, and all Republican committee members—including Rep. Greg Pence, the vice president’s brother—could attend the hearings.

After complaining for weeks about closed-door hearings, when Republican members were given the chance to vote for public hearings, they voted no. No matter what the process is, they will complain about it. 

They say: The process is secretive and not transparent.

Actually, at this point we have heard more than 30 hours of public testimony, and all of the transcripts of the hearings—both public and private—have been released. For those defending President Trump, beware of what you wish for. The transcripts have been a disaster for the President. Everyone should read them.

At the end of October, the House voted to open up much of the process and release redacted transcripts of hearings to date. In November, the Intelligence Committee heard from a dozen witnesses in public, televised hearings. Under the new House rules, Trump has been granted more rights than Clinton or Nixon were offered. Nevertheless, Republicans voted against the measure because they don’t want to have to address the substance of the allegations: that President Trump abused his powers and bribed a foreign government for personal gain.

They say: Republicans were kept out of the hearings.

Not true. It’s all there in black and white if you read the transcripts. In the initial stages, the investigation was held behind closed doors and limited to Republicans and Democrats on three committees. The Republicans did the same in the Benghazi investigations—and former Chairman Trey Gowdy told Face the Nation he "100 percent" agrees with Democrats holding closed-door impeachment hearings.

They say: This is the fastest impeachment in history.

The House proceedings have already taken more days than the House took in 1998 to impeach President Clinton.  The House, then, opened its impeachment proceedings on October 9 and impeached him 72 days later, on December 19.  And while it was a long time ago, President Johnson was impeached by the House in 5 days. 

They say: The minority has been given no subpoena power.

Under the House impeachment procedures, Republicans are authorized to issue subpoenas, and in fact about a quarter of witnesses before the Intelligence and Judiciary Committees were Republican witnesses.  This is especially noteworthy because when they were in power in 2015, Republicans dramatically changed historic committee rules to allow the majority party to ignore the minority when it came to subpoenas. The only witnesses Democrats have rejected from Republicans are those who have no first-hand knowledge of the White House shake-down effort. At every stage of the impeachment inquiry, Republicans have fully participated in the investigation and were given equal time to question all witnesses. Democrats are following House rules, unlike President Trump, who has missed more than a dozen subpoena deadlines and is refusing to cooperate with the investigation.

They say: President Trump doesn’t have to cooperate with Congress when its investigation is illegitimate.

Chief Judge Beryl A. Howell of the Federal District Court in Washington found that the impeachment investigation is legitimate, so this argument is essentially saying that President Trump has the power both to decide if something is legitimate and to overrule the courts.  That is a scary proposition and antithetical to our founding principles.  Neither the Constitution nor any legal precedent supports this argument.  Imagine what our society would look like if everyone could decline to participate in legal proceedings that they alone deem “illegitimate.”          

They say: Democrats should wait for courts to rule on their subpoenas.

How long do you want this impeachment drama to play out? How long do you want this impeachment drama to play out? On November 25th 2019, US District Judge Ketanji Brown Jackson ruled that Don McGahn must comply with a congressional subpoena to testify.   Likewise, President Trump, his advisors, and his administration officials have lost every court case they have filed challenging subpoenas.  But those rulings are being appealed, and then those appellate court rulings would almost certainly be appealed to the Supreme Court, a process that would take us up to or past the 2020 election.  We heard strong, consistent testimony across more than a dozen witnesses, and—despite what Republicans say—Democrats don’t want impeachment tangled up in the 2020 election.  They decided to move forward with the evidence they have and spare the nation a drawn-out process.

The Supreme Court has recently agreed to hear three appeals from rulings against President Trump’s efforts to avoid subpoenas.  But none of those cases deals directly with subpoenas arising from the impeachment investigation, and the Court is unlikely to rule before June, which would mean the impeachment trial would be happening in the final months leading up to the election.  Democrats have enough evidence to move forward without the subpoenaed information, and by moving forward now they avoid making the election all about the impeachment—which is exactly what Republicans say they want to avoid, too.

They say: House Democrats broke rules when they didn’t give House Republicans on the Judiciary Committee their own hearing day.

This argument is almost entirely for show, because the impeachment trial is going to be held in the Republican-controlled Senate, and they will be setting the rules for calling witnesses. The rule in question—clause 2(j)(1) of House Rule XI—gives the minority party the right to call witnesses to “testify with respect to that measure or matter” before the committee, and every day of testimony before the Judiciary Committee featured at least one Republican witness. The rule doesn’t authorize the minority to rebrand the hearing into an investigation of their choosing, as House Republicans attempted to do.

They say: The documents are classified/qualify for executive privilege.

Either you want transparency, or you don’t. President Trump has already lost on this issue in a related case, but that hasn’t stopped them from using every tool in the box to try to prevent the information from coming out. Every document released so far consistently shows that Trump abused his office, put his own interest over our nation’s, tried to coerce a foreign power into interfering with our elections, and then tried to cover it up. A federal judge ruled that Trump’s former White House lawyer cannot refuse a congressional subpoena, observing that “Presidents are not kings.”

They say: DOJ guidance states that the President cannot be indicted/investigated.

While the DOJ may take the position that it should not indict a sitting President—even for murder—the Constitution says explicitly that he can be impeached and removed from office. The Framers included impeachment because they wanted to be sure that no one—and especially not the President—was above the law.

They say:  The House has never impeached a president solely for a non-criminal abuse of power before.

This is only the fourth presidential impeachment in history, so there’s hardly a “norm” to observe.  Every legal scholar who testified, including Republican witness Professor Jonathan Turley, agreed that you don’t need to prove an underlying crime to impeach a president and that abuse of power is an appropriate basis for a presidential impeachment.  There is no question that our Founders would think that using taxpayer dollars to shake down another country for personal gain is far worse than lying about an affair. The President’s actions cut to the heart of our constitutional system.

They say: We need to hear from Hunter Biden, Joe Biden, and the Whistleblower.

This is about what the President did and his motives for doing so. The Bidens and the Whistleblower have never spoken to the President, and they were not a part of his scheme to coerce Ukraine into investigating them. Republicans complained about hearsay witnesses. These people aren’t even witnesses. Let’s not waste time with this circus.

“SHOOT THE MESSENGER”

Topline: When things are going badly, you start blaming the people reporting the bad news. No amount of whataboutism can change the core facts: a series of actions by President Trump that abused his power and that nearly everyone agrees was very wrong.

They say: The liberal media is driving the conversation.

The media is reporting what’s happening, but you can see the facts for yourself. Read the transcript summary of the phone call and witness testimony, watch Mick Mulvaney’s press conference, explain why two of Rudy Giuliani’s associates were arrested fleeing the country. Watch the 30+ hours of testimony from 12 witnesses and read their opening statements. It is wrong for a sitting president to demand that a foreign leader interfere in an American election. That’s not a liberal position. It’s a patriotic one.

They say: These witnesses are “Never Trumpers” or part of the deep state.

These are not “Never Trumpers.” These are people who served in Vietnam, Afghanistan, and Iraq. Some have been shot at; others have been wounded in service to our country. These are people who served Republicans and Democrats alike, and they chose to serve President Trump. Remember that this started when Trump’s own hand-picked people became so alarmed by his actions that they sought legal advice. They did their duty then, and they believe they are doing their duty now.

This argument smacks of a cult of personality. A decade ago, would you have taken the word of Donald Trump over a Purple Heart recipient? Why is it easier to believe that a dozen individuals—including someone who donated a million dollars to President Trump—are all lying with remarkable consistency instead of the much more obvious conclusion?

The say: Democrats are tearing this country apart.

Democrats are doing their job.  The majority of voters agree that Trump did something wrong.  What is tearing the country apart is the Republican’s attack on the truth.  1984 called, and it wants its plot back.

They say: Democrats shouldn’t further polarize the country with impeachment.

What is polarizing this country is Republicans failing to do their job and instead trying to act like President Trump’s defense counsel and crisis communications consultants all at once. Democrats are trying to bring facts to light, facts that now have been repeatedly corroborated.  Republicans don’t like those facts, so they are engaging in a circus of innuendo, whataboutism, and personal slander of national heroes to say black is white. History will not judge them well.

They say: This is not a real whistleblower.

The whistleblower’s complaint was deemed credible and a matter of urgent concern. Since then, everything the whistleblower said has been corroborated by other, first-hand witnesses. And let’s remember that this scandal began inside the Trump Administration when his own hand-picked people became so alarmed by his actions that they took action. The whistleblower was just the first to publicly do so.

They say: The whistleblower had second-hand information.

The whistleblowers complaint has been verified by first-hand accounts from the call record, the President’s personal lawyer, the President’s Chief of Staff, the President’s acting ambassador to Ukraine, and many other senior staff at the White House listening on the call.  

They say: Democrats are hiding the whistleblower’s identity.

Everything the whistleblower said has been confirmed by first-hand witnesses. The whistleblower took a tremendous risk by bringing this situation to light. This is about duty and patriotism. It couldn’t have been easy.  But you don’t need to know who called in the anonymous tip if you arrived at a crime scene, the suspect confessed, and all the people in the room confirmed it.

They say: Adam Schiff said we’d hear from the whistleblower, and now he’s going back on his word.

It would be deeply irresponsible and potentially dangerous to bring the whistleblower forward at this point. It is also unnecessary. Everything the whistleblower said has been corroborated by other witnesses, most of whom the public will be able to hear from themselves over the coming weeks. The President openly threatened the whistleblower after Chairman Schiff made this statement. Instead of setting up this straw-man argument, everyone should join together in condemning the President for calling the whistleblower a traitor and implying that he or she should be shot. 

They say: Adam Schiff met with or colluded with the whistleblower beforehand.

Even if this is true, what would its significance be?  Everything the whistleblower said has been confirmed, much of it by the President, his lawyer, and his Chief of Staff. The whistleblower took the lid off, but since then the evidence from other first-hand witnesses is overwhelming.

They say: Some say Democrats tampered with the hearing transcripts.

So now the stenographers are in on the “deep state” conspiracy? Not a single witness has said this. Not a single witness has said that what they told the committee has been misrepresented or misquoted.

“IT WASN’T ME”

Topline: They may try to point fingers, but we have the transcript.

They say: Rick Perry got Trump involved in this without his knowledge.

President Trump was the one who withheld the $400 million in funding, President Trump was the one who asked the Ukrainian president for a “favor,” and President Trump was Perry’s boss. At the end of the day, Trump is responsible.

They say: If anyone did anything wrong, it was Giuliani.

Two of his associates were arrested trying to flee the country, so Giuliani’s hands are probably plenty dirty. But President Trump was the one who withheld the $400 million in funding, Trump was the one who asked the Ukrainian president to investigate his main political rival as a “favor,” and Giuliani was working for Trump. At the end of the day, Trump directed the action, and he was its sole beneficiary.

They say: Trump was too inept to actually engage in a quid pro quo.

President Trump withheld desperately-needed military aid from a foreign ally while asking its new president to do him a “favor” and announce an investigation into his political rival. That’s textbook extortion. It’s also seeking a thing of value from a foreign power—something prohibited in the text of the Constitution. The President engaged in extortion; he’s just inept at mounting a credible defense to it.

They say: The Ukrainian government interfered in the 2016 election when some of its senior officials commented on Candidate Trump.

Some Ukrainian officials publicly expressed concern about Candidate Trump, and especially about his stated willingness to take a part of their country the size of Texas and give it to Russia.  But publicly stating a point of view is not election manipulation.  Unlike the Russians, the Ukrainians did not try to hide their identity, target and manipulate the American people via social media, sow discord over domestic issues, hack the DNC, or leak private emails and memos.