The final day of opening arguments from Donald Trump’s impeachment defense team (which will be closing arguments, too, if they have their way) is expected to be relatively brief. Guess they’ll have to increase their lies-per-minute to make quota.
Tuesday, Jan 28, 2020 · 7:56:04 PM +00:00 · Mark Sumner
That’s all folks. Cipollone’s closing speech was … there was no closing speech.
They’ll begin the question session on Wednesday for eight hours, alternating questions between Republicans and Democrats. Questions will be written and submitted to Roberts to be read.
Roberts indicates that he’s going to enforce a five minute rule on the response to each question.
That will wrap up the question period on Thursday. Unclear if the vote for possible witnesses would be held on that same evening.
Tuesday, Jan 28, 2020 · 7:49:10 PM +00:00 · Mark Sumner
Pat Cipollone up for the final Trump note. Starts off by saying that he believes they’ve “already made their case” and ends by playing old clips of Nadler and Lofgren during the Clinton impeachment.
Arguments that were clearly so convincing that Republicans didn’t take the articles out of the House and send them to the Senate. Except … umm.
Tuesday, Jan 28, 2020 · 7:50:39 PM +00:00 · Hunter
Trump defenders now going through past Democratic opposition to the Clinton impeachment, which was premised on lying about a sex act, to claim hypocrisy on Democrats now concerned about covering up the extortion of election help from a foreign power by illegally using the withholding of military aid as bargaining chip. To be fair Republican senators do seem to consider those two things equal.
Tuesday, Jan 28, 2020 · 7:51:17 PM +00:00 · Mark Sumner
That seems to be all Cipollone is going to do. Show the old clips and repeat the claim that impeachment means “tearing up every ballot across this country.”
As he has at several points, Cipollone is arguing that impeachment itself is unconstitutional.
Tuesday, Jan 28, 2020 · 7:52:44 PM +00:00 · Hunter
This talking point of ‘overturning the last election’ is false. The election would not be overturned. Pence would be placed in charge (shudder) due to Trump’s removal. And yet they still bleat on about this. If Trump can’t abide by the laws of the country, it is he who has betrayed his voters, not the Senate.