The GOP's Attempts to Spin and Deny on Impeachment Have Hit Pathetic New Lows [View all]
WASHINGTON — Over the past several days, the president’s legal team and his allies in the Senate mounted a feeble and fact-challenged defense as part of the third impeachment trial in history. They pushed the ahistorical and widely mocked view that Trump shouldn’t be convicted because he committed no actual crimes. They then insisted the first of the two impeachment articles, abuse of power, was bogus because there was no connection between Trump’s decision to freeze congressionally-approved military aid for Ukraine and his demand that Ukraine announce investigations into the Biden family.
That argument, of course, suffered a major setback when The New York Times reported that former National Security Advisor John Bolton wrote in a forthcoming book that Trump conditioned the aid money on Ukraine pledging to go after the Bidens. The Bolton revelation provided a dramatic twist in what had felt like a low-stakes drama destined to end with Trump’s acquittal. Before the Bolton news, it was likely the Senate would not call any new witnesses to testify as part of the trial; now, Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell has reportedly said it’s likely a majority of senators will vote to call new witnesses.
For President Trump’s most loyal backers in the Senate, Bolton’s assertion has sent them into an overdrive of denial, deflection, and spinning. Here are the most absurd, desperate, and nonsensical efforts by Senate Republicans to defend Trump and ensure the impeachment trial ends with an acquittal.
The president can do basically anything he wants to get reelected if it’s in the “public interest”
Alan Dershowitz, the legal scholar and cable-news talking head who once defended Jeffrey Epstein, pushed perhaps the most expansive view imaginable of executive power during an appearance at the impeachment trial on Wednesday.
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https://www.rollingstone.com/politics/politics-news/trump-impeachment-trial-senate-republican-bolton-ukraine-hannity-fox-944868/
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