After two hours, the card looked like this:
Some people heard #9, which I easily could have missed because I listened as I was doing other things, and I took a few quick breaks.
Rumor was that the defense spoke for only two hours because they were irritated that their day fell on a Saturday, when nobody watches. This is an example of McConnell-style stonewalling backfiring. McConnell insisted that all the motions be dealt with in a single day on Tuesday, which means that the hearing Tuesday went until after midnight. Had McConnell allowed the session to take place over two days (as the Democrats wanted, because it was insane to go until after midnight), Schiff’s electrifying closing would have happened on Saturday, instead of prime time Friday night.
Of course, I understand why Trump’s defense only wanted to talk two hours. When you have nothing to say, it’s kinda hard to talk for much more. Let’s see how long they go on Monday and Tuesday.
Here are the bogus defenses we heard this morning:
#1: The Call Was Perfect: When Trump’s defense insisted that the call was perfect, they including a lie: They said the House Managers didn’t show you the “transcript.” In fact, they spent much time on the transcript.
#2: Trump had valid concerns: Lots of these, including “concerned about corruption in Ukraine,” and “concerns that other countries were contributing equally.”
#3: No harm, no foul, combined with #15: The Ukrainians didn’t know the aid was withheld: They argued that because the Ukrainians didn’t know until after the Politico article was published, there was no foul. They ignored the evidence that the Ukrainians knew earlier. (One of my followers on Twitter summed this defense up as “The bank wasn’t robbed until the bank found out about it.”)
#6: It’s all hearsay: They played a tape of one of the witnesses saying that his conclusion came from his own presumption, leaving out the solid circumstantial evidence supporting this conclusion.
#7: The Democrats Hate Trump: This took the form of how everyone is biased against Trump and all that time on the Mueller investigation led to the conclusion that there wasn’t evidence of a criminal conspiracy. (Mueller concluded there wasn’t enough evidence to charge conspiracy; he found multiple “links/and or coordination” between the Trump campaign and Russians.)
#8: It was SO unfair! Lots of this: Trump could not cross-examining witnesses during the investigation (even though nobody ever gets to do this, etc. etc.)
#10: The record is unreliable (lots of this).
#11: Impeachment will undo the election. There were some clever twists. One was that impeaching and removing undermines the Constitution by undoing an election, even though impeachment and removal of a sitting president is included in the Constitution. The defense pointed out that a consequence would be that all the ballots would have to be reprinted. Wait. They’ve been printed already? We haven’t even had a primary yet.
#12: Schiff is a liar. They even played the clip of Schiff paraphrasing the call. They forgot to edit out the part where Schiff makes clear it was a paraphrase. Ooops. (Besides, Trump calling someone a liar is really something. Moreover, if that’s the only lie they could find on Schiff, I’d say Schiff is more of a saint than a politician.)
#14: Trump said there was no quid pro quo. This had a slight variation: Trump didn’t tell the witness that there was a quid pro quo, therefore, there wasn’t a quid pro quo.
#15: Ukraine didn’t know the aid had been held up until after the Politico article (in August). (See #3 above)
#16: Trump had good reasons. We had lots of this one: He was concerned about corruption (just typing that caused me to fall off my chair laughing), he wanted other countries to contribute, even though there was no evidence that he cared about any of these things during the shakedown, and there was lots of evidence he just wanted an investigation into the Bidens.
#17: The evidence fails. We saw lots of this one: The evidence failed to establish blah blah blah. You can’t make an argument that the evidence is inadequate while you are concealing evidence. Also, arriving at the conclusion that the evidence failed required cherrypicking the facts.
#18: Zelensky said there was no quid pro quo. This one was phrased as “Zelinsky never said there was a quid pro quo, therefore there wasn’t a quid pro quo.”
#21: Trump evoked valid privileges. Yes, they argued that Trump had legal grounds for refusing to comply with subpoena and other requests. There are not legal grounds.
I didn’t hear these: 4, 5, 9, 13, 19, 20, 22, 23, 24, 25.
But then, the presentation was only two hours!
Join me on Twitter Monday morning for more Bogus Defense Bingo as the defense continues.
