President Donald Trump's lawyers opened their impeachment trial defence Saturday by accusing Democrats of striving to overturn the 2016 election, arguing that investigations of Trump's dealings with Ukraine have not been a fact-finding mission but a politically motivated effort to drive him from the White House.
They're here to perpetrate the most massive interference in an election in American history," White House Counsel Pat Cipollone told senators. And we can't allow that to happen." The Trump legal team's arguments in the rare Saturday session were aimed at rebutting allegations that the president abused his power when he asked Ukraine to investigate political rival Joe Biden and then obstructed Congress as it tried to investigate.
The lawyers are mounting a wide-ranging, aggressive defense asserting an expansive view of presidential powers and portraying Trump as besieged by political opponents determined to ensure that he won't be re-elected this November.
They're asking you not only to overturn the results of the last election, but as I've said before, they're asking you to remove President Trump from an election that's occurring in approximately nine months," Cipollone said. They're asking you to tear up all the ballots across this country on their own initiative."