Trump impeachment: defense team cites debunked conspiracy theory – as it happened

Live coverage of Donald Trump’s impeachment trial continues on Tuesday’s blog:

Representative Doug Collins – a staunch Trump ally – is expected to run for Senate

Doug Collins, the Republican representative from Georgia you may remember as a leading defender of Donald Trump during the president’s impeachment, is expected to announce a run for Senate, according to multiple reports.

Collins would face off against the GOP senator Kelly Loeffler, complicating the Republican party’s efforts to hold on to the seat in what has become a battleground state.

Georgia’s Republican governor Brian Kemp appointed Loeffler to the Senate after Senator Johnny Isakson stepped down due to health concerns. Though Trump advocated for Collins as Isakson’s replacement, Kemp chose Loeffler, a finance executive, and major Republican donor who some strategists believed would be competitive in suburban areas where support for the GOP has waned.

Loeffler recently came under fire by conservative groups for sitting on the board of a hospital that performed abortions. She was in the news earlier today after she called out Mitt Romney, a Republican of Utah, for his openness to call witnesses to testify in the Senate trial.

Alan Dershowitz broached a topic that members of Trump’s defense team have largely avoided: John Bolton.

“Nothing in the Bolton revelations, even if true, would rise to the level of an abuse of power or an impeachable offense,” Derschowitz said, referring to reports that Bolton, a former national security adviser, had written a book in which he recounts that Trump told him in an August 2019 meeting that he did not want to send aid to Ukraine until that country delivered material relating to Joe Biden and to supporters of Hillary Clinton.

Until now, Trump’s legal team didn’t mention Bolton, though they attacked Democrats for failing to present a witness with a first-hand account of Trump’s thinking on Ukraine, The Guardian’s Tom McCarthy reported.

Arguing that abuse of power allegations are a “political weapon”, Alan Dershowitz claimed that George Washington, John Adams, Thomas Jefferson, John Quincy Adams, James Polk, Abraham Lincoln, Jimmy Carter, Ronald Reagan, George H. W. Bush and Barack Obama could all have been impeached by the standard.

“Lincoln had dueling motives”, Dershowitz added, noting that Abraham Lincoln was not so different than Donald Trump in that he wanted to advance his political career.

In his constitutional argument against impeachment, Alan Dershowitz is arguing that nothing short of a “serious crime” is ground for impeachment. The House’s articles of impeachment against DonaldTrump — abuse of power and obstruction of Congress,— are “outside the scope of impeachment”, he said. It’s only, for example, “if a President committed extortion”, Dershowitz said, he could be impeached for it. It’s with nothing here that Congress’ abuse of power article lays out what could be described as an extortion scheme.

Dershowitz’s argument here contradicts the consensus of most legal scholars and lawmakers. Both the Richard Nixon and Bill Clinton impeachment arguments hinged on “abuse of power” charges.

Alan Dershowitz has taken the floor

Dershowitz began by noting he voted for Hilliary Clinton. “I would be making the same argument if Hillary Clinton, for whom I voted, stood accused of these same violations,” he said. “I am here today because I love my country and our constitution.”

He said he was there to “to present a constitutional argument against the impeachment and removal not only of this President but of all and any future presidents who may be charged with the unconstitutional grounds of abuse of power and obstruction of Congress”.

Biden campaign on Trump defense: ‘We didn’t realize that Breitbart was expanding into Ted Talk knockoffs’

Joe Biden’s campaign has responded to allegations by Trump’s defense team that he pushed for the firing of a Ukrainian prosecutor to benefit his son.

The Biden campaign’s rapid-response director Andrew Bates said in a statement to reporters that Trump’s defense was pushing a “conspiracy theory” that “has been conclusively refuted”:

The New York Times calls it ‘debunked,’ The Wall Street Journal calls it ‘discredited,’ the AP calls it ‘incorrect,’ and The Washington Post Fact Checker calls it ‘a fountain of falsehoods.’ The diplomat that Trump himself appointed to lead his Ukraine policy has blasted it as ‘self serving’ and ‘not credible.’ Joe Biden was instrumental to a bipartisan and international anti-corruption victory. It’s no surprise that such a thing is anathema to President Trump.

The Senate trial has reconvened and Robert Ray is delivering his opening arguments right now.

During the dinner break, Republican senators disparaged Joe Biden, suggesting the Trump defense will and should affect Democratic primary voters and caucus-goers.

Iowa caucuses are this next Monday evening and I’m really interested to see how this discussion today informs and influences the Iowa caucus voters,” said Joni Ernst of Iowa. “Those Democratic caucus-goers — will they be supporting Vice President Biden at this point? Not as certain about that.”

“The four people whose eyes were fully wide open were Elizabeth Warren, Bernie Sanders, Michael Bennett, and Amy Klobuchar — all leaning forward. I’ve never seen them so attentive as when this discussion was on Joe Biden.” echoed John Barrasso of Wyoming.

The State Department has removed an NPR reporter from the pool of journalists traveling to Europe and Asia with Mike Pompeo, following the Secretary of State’s public feud with the news organization.

In a statement, the State Department Correspondents’ Association president said it seemed as if the State Department was “retaliating against National Public Radio” after a contentious interview with NPR host Marie Louise Kelly.

Last week, Kelly revealed that Pompeo angrily asked her to find Ukraine on an unmarked map and used expletives in his conversation with her, after she questioned him about Ukraine.

Fact Check: What Trump’s defense mischaracterized about Barack Obama’s conversation with Moscow

Trump’s legal team tried to turn the tables, characterizing a conversation between Barack Obama and Russian leader Dmitry Medvedev as “unquestionable quid pro quo”.

The conversation they were referring to was caught on a “hot” microphone during what the two leaders believed was a private moment during a 2012 nuclear summit in South Korea. Obama asked Medvedev to tell incoming Russian president Vladimir Putin to give him time to negotiate contentious issues like missile defense: “This is my last election. After my election, I have more flexibility,” Obama said.

The former president wasn’t offering or withholding anything; at the time, Republicans criticized what they saw as a lack of resolve to keep Putin in check. But Obama never offered or withheld anything from the Russians in exchange for a personal favor, as Trump’s legal team tried to claim.

Speaking to reporters during the dinner break, Republican senators steered clear of the Obama allegations. “The point is: that we might have a Republican House and a Democratic president and in that situation, with this becoming a new normal in America, that Democratic president might be impeached,” said Mike Lee, a Republican of Utah.

Speaking to reporters outside the Senate chamber, Senator Ted Cruz of Texas said it’s unnecessary to call more witnesses. If any witnesses are to be called, he said, “The most important witness the Senate needs to hear from at this point is Hunter Biden”

Other Republican senators, including John Barrasso of Wyoming and Mike Braun of Indiana, indicated if the Senate does summon witnesses, they would back a “one-for-one” deal where each party got to call one person to testify.

The Senate is now taking a 45-minute dinner break.

It looks like some have Chick-fil-A on the way.

The Trump defense team has debuted a new tactic.

Lawyer Eric Herschmann has accused Barack Obama of soliciting interference in the 2012 election by asking Russia to give him “space” on missile defense. Herschmann characterized a 2012 communication between Obama and former Russian prime minister Dmitry Medvedev as “unquestionable quid pro quo”.

“It was President Obama, not President Trump, who was weak on Russia,” Herschmann said, arguing that Article 1 of Trump’s impeachment better applied to Obama.