President Donald Trump’s impeachment defense team launched its case on Saturday playing excerpts of the dramatization from the House impeachment proceedings delivered by Rep. Adam B. Schiff (D-CA) and arguing that removing a president by impeachment—as set forth in the constitution—is unconstitutional. Pat Cipollone, the White House counsel, told the Senate that the impeachment trial is “the most massive interference in an election in American history... They’re asking you to remove President Trump from the ballot.” He went on to say that impeachment “would violate our Constitution. It would violate our history. It would violate our obligations to the future.” Earlier in the week, Trump’s lawyers previewed their remarks in the Senate, claiming in a legal filing that “the articles of impeachment are constitutionally invalid on their face” and “violate the Constitution” because they “flagrantly denied the President any due process rights.”
Mike Purpura then took the floor and, using a series of slides, argued that the Ukraine did not even know that aid was deferred and, playing various excerpts from the House impeaching proceedings, said no one involved with the now infamous July 25 call between the president and Ukraine president Volodymyr Zelensky was at all concerned at the time.
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