President Trump’s legal team issues briefs to Senate
President Trump's legal defense team filed its brief for the Senate impeachment trial. Those documents were handed over to the upper chamber Monday ahead of Tuesday's trial session. The brief states the articles of impeachment passed by the House are "an affront to the Constitution and fail to allege an impeachable offense."
The Senate side of the U.S. Capitol at sunrise on Monday, Jan. 20, 2020, in Washington. The impeachment trial of President Donald Trump will resume in the U.S. Senate on Tuesday. (AP Photo/Jon Elswick)
OAN Newsroom
UPDATED11:28 AM PT — Monday, January 20, 2020
President Trump’s legal defense team filed its brief for the Senate impeachment trial. Those documents were handed over to the upper chamber Monday ahead of Tuesday’s trial session. The brief states the articles of impeachment passed by the House are “an affront to the Constitution and fail to allege an impeachable offense.”
The House has already submitted its trial brief, which argued the president has abused his power and obstructed Congress. The White House has since responded, calling the impeachment trial “constitutionally invalid.”
Trump legal defense member Alan Dershowitz said he will argue that abuse of power is not an impeachable offense, even if proven true. He made the following comments regarding the defense:
“When you have somebody who, for example, is indicted for a crime — let’s assume you have a lot of evidence — but the grand jury simply indicts for something that’s not a crime, and that’s what happened here. You have a lot of evidence, disputed evidence, that could go both ways, but the vote was to impeach on abuse of power which is not within the constitutional criteria for impeachment and obstruction of Congress.”
FILE – In this Dec. 2, 2019 file photo, Attorney Alan Dershowitz leaves federal court, in New York. President Donald Trump’s legal team will include former Harvard University law professor Alan Dershowitz and Ken Starr, the former independent counsel who led the Whitewater investigation into President Bill Clinton, according to a person familiar with the matter. The team will also include Pam Bondi, the former Florida attorney general.(AP Photo/Richard Drew)
The upper chamber will review the White House documents before reconvening Tuesday.
There is no inconsistency between what I said during the Clinton impeachment and what I am saying now. I said then that there doesn’t have to be a “technical“ crime. I have said now there must be “criminal-like” conduct, or conduct “akin to treason and bribery.”
— Alan Dershowitz (@AlanDersh) January 20, 2020