Washington DC, US
Reuters
US President Donald Trump on Monday rejected the Democratic-led House of Representatives’ impeachment charges and called for their immediate dismissal by the Republican-led Senate in a memo offering a legal and political case against his removal.
The 116-page Trial Memorandum sought to undercut charges that the Republican President abused his power and obstructed Congress, and constituted Trump’s first comprehensive defence before his Senate trial begins in earnest on Tuesday.
US President Donald Trump speaks at the American Farm Bureau Federation’s Annual Convention and Trade Show in Austin, Texas, on 19th January. PICTURE: Reuters/Kevin Lamarque
“The Senate should reject the Articles of Impeachment and acquit the president immediately,” the memo concluded.
Trump, only the fourth of 45 American presidents to face the possibility of being ousted by impeachment, is charged with abusing the powers of his office by asking Ukraine to investigate a Democratic political rival, Joe Biden, and obstructing a congressional inquiry into his conduct.
WHAT HAPPENS NEXT?
Here is what to look out for next as the proceedings advance in US President Donald Trump’s impeachment trial in the Senate:
20TH JANUARY
• The House filed its reply to Trump’s response to the Senate trial summons.
• Trump filed a trial brief that called for an immediate dismissal of the House of Representatives’ two articles of impeachment.
STARTING 21ST JANUARY
• The House has until noon to file a rebuttal brief to the White House trial brief, if it so chooses.
• The trial resumes at 1pm and is expected to continue six days a week, with the exception of Sundays.
• A vote could be held sometime during 21st January on Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell’s proposed rules governing the first phase of the trial, which would leave open the option of voting later on whether witnesses would testify and new evidence could be introduced.
• Democrats are expected to try to amend McConnell’s rules to stipulate that witnesses must be called, possibly leading to extended debate over the rules of the trial.
• Once the rules have been adopted, Democratic House “managers” who form the prosecution team would begin to present their case against Trump. It is unclear whether that will start on 21st January or the next day. When the House managers have finished, the President’s team will respond with its opening arguments. The arguments are expected to take several days to present, with the senators, sitting as jurors, listening. Two sources have said that each side could get a maximum of 24 hours to present their cases. The 48 hours would be further divided into four 12 hour sessions, the sources said.
• Following the opening arguments, senators would be given time to submit questions to each side.
LATE JANUARY TO EARLY FEBRUARY
• Democrats are expected to continue pushing to hear from witnesses during the trial. If McConnell’s resolution on initial trial rules is adopted, as expected, senators would likely vote some time after the trial has started on whether to introduce witness testimony sought by the Democrats.
• That could be followed by votes to present final arguments if witnesses are not approved by a majority of the Senate.
4TH FEBRUARY
• Trump is scheduled to deliver the annual State of the Union address to a joint session of Congress.
– SUSAN CORNWELL, JAN WOLFE, DAVID MORGAN and RICHARD COWAN/Reuters
Democrats say Trump abused his power by withholding US military assistance to Ukraine as part of a pressure campaign and obstructed Congress by refusing to hand over documents and barring administration officials from testifying, even when subpoenaed by House investigators.
Trump’s defence argued neither charge constituted a crime or impeachable offence, that he was within his rights as president to make decisions about foreign policy and what information to give Congress, and that the House pursued a flawed and one-sided process before impeaching him on 18th December.
“House Democrats settled on two flimsy Articles of Impeachment that allege no crime or violation of law whatsoever – much less “high Crimes and Misdemeanours,” as required by the Constitution,” it said. “They do not remotely approach the constitutional threshold for removing a President from office.”
The memo’s executive summary asserted that the House Democrats’ “novel theory of ‘abuse of power'” was not an impeachable offence and supplanted the Constitutional standard of “Treason, Bribery, or other high Crimes and Misdemeanours.”
It rejected the obstruction of Congress charge as “frivolous and dangerous,” saying the president exercised his legal rights by resisting congressional demands for information, also known as subpoenas.
It also accused the House Democrats of conducting a rigged process, said they succeeded in proving only that Trump had done nothing wrong and argued, as the White House has repeatedly, that this was an effort to overturn Trump’s 2016 election victory and to prevent his re-election in November.
While the Republican-controlled Senate is highly unlikely to remove Trump from office, it is important for him to try to diminish the Democratic accusations to limit political damage to his bid for a second term.
In part of his legal filing, Trump’s lawyers cast their arguments in unabashedly political terms.
“They want to use impeachment to interfere in the 2020 election. It is no accident that the Senate is being asked to consider a presidential impeachment during an election year,” the memo said.
“Put simply, Democrats have no response to the President’s record of achievement in restoring prosperity to the American economy, rebuilding America’s military, and confronting America’s adversaries abroad,” it added.
In their own filing with the US Senate on Monday, the House impeachment “managers” who will make the Democrats case for Trump’s removal to the Senate said he had “jeopardized our national security and our democratic self-governance.”
“President Trump maintains that the Senate cannot remove him even if the House proves every claim in the Articles of impeachment. That is a chilling assertion. It is also dead wrong,” they wrote, arguing that despite Trump’s “stonewalling” the House had amassed “overwhelming evidence of his guilt.”
Trump’s team says he was well within his constitutional authority to press Ukraine President Volodymyr Zelenskiy last year to investigate Biden and his son Hunter as part of what Trump says was an anti-corruption drive. The Bidens deny any wrongdoing and Trump’s allegations have been widely debunked.
While Trump’s legal papers laid out extensive arguments as to why Trump did not commit a crime, the General Accounting Office, the watchdog arm of Congress, said last week that Trump did commit a crime by withholding US military assistance to Ukraine, money that was ultimately sent after a brief pause.
Seeking to show he is still conducting presidential business despite the trial, Trump is scheduled to leave late Monday for Davos, Switzerland, to join global leaders at the World Economic Forum. Some advisers argued against his making the trip, where he will meet Iraqi, Pakistani, Swiss, Kurdish and EU leaders.
As a result, he will be in the Alps when the Senate on Tuesday engages in a potentially bruising battle over whether witnesses should be allowed to testify in the trial and whether new documents could be introduced, as Democrats wish.
No president has ever been removed as a direct result of impeachment. One, Richard Nixon, resigned before he could be removed. Two, Andrew Johnson and Bill Clinton, were impeached by the House but not convicted by the Senate.
