The NPR Politics Podcast - Trump's Legal Team Begins Impeachment Defense, Says The President Did 'Nothing Wrong'

Episode Date: January 25, 2020

President Trump "did absolutely nothing wrong," White House counsel Pat Cipollone said Saturday, as lawyers representing the president got their first shot to poke holes in the impeachment case made this week by Democrats.Saturday's proceedings, which lasted a little more than two hours, set up the White House arguments in the impeachment trial. The president's team told senators that the House managers selectively withheld evidence in their arguments against the president.This episode: White House correspondent Tamara Keith, Congressional correspondent Kelsey Snell, and justice correspondent Ryan Lucas.Connect:Subscribe to the NPR Politics Podcast here.Email the show at [e-mail] the NPR Politics Podcast Facebook Group.Subscribe to the NPR Politics Newsletter.Find and support your local public radio station.Learn more about sponsor message choices: podcastchoices.com/adchoicesNPR Privacy Policy

Hey there, it's the NPR Politics Podcast. It is 12.48 p.m. Eastern Time on Saturday, January 25th. I'm Tamara Keith. I cover the White House. I'm Kelsey Snell. I cover Congress. And I'm Ryan Lucas. I cover the Justice Department. Hey, colleagues, why don't we take our seats? And day five of the impeachment trial of President Trump opened like the last four days. The Senate will convene as a court of impeachment.

But today was a new chapter because the president's legal team began laying out his defense. White House counsel Pat Cipollone started them off. We believe that when you hear the facts, and that's what we intend to cover today the facts you will find that the president did absolutely nothing wrong so today was sort of like the start of this and it was really a preview they had said that it would be like a trailer it was like a trailer because they only went for about two hours, but we got a pretty decent preview of the arguments that we can expect to hear in much more depth over Monday and Tuesday. Kelsey and Ryan, what stood out to you? I think one of the themes that they were starting to establish was that Democrats did not show the entirety of the facts available and that their case is going

to be built around finding different versions of the facts or different details to bolster their case that the president did nothing wrong and returning to the president's comment that the call was perfect. And Deputy White House Counsel Mike Papura got into that in his presentation. The House managers never told you any of this. Why not? Why didn't they show you this testimony? Why didn't they tell you about this testimony? Why didn't they put Ambassador Sondland's testimony in its full and proper context for your consideration? Because none of this fits their narrative, and it wouldn't lead to their predetermined outcome. There were a couple of things that the president's legal team pointed to over the course of these

two hours as facts that they say were left out by the House managers. The fact that eventually there was a meeting between President Trump and Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky. It was September 25th. It was not at the White House, but a meeting did happen. They also say that Ukraine eventually did get the aid. The aid may have been withheld, but the president released the aid. There were no investigations announced.

Therefore, there's really nothing to see here. They also refer to testimony from the U.S. ambassador to the European Union, Gordon Sondland, in which he's asked whether the president ever directly linked military aid to the investigations of Democrats. And he says, no, he was never directly told by the president that those two things were linked. These are what the White House defense team called facts that they say were left out by the House managers. Now, I will say, prosecutors and defense attorneys will marshal the facts for their own arguments that best fit the narrative. That is normal practice. But there is, I would say, a useful turn of phrase here, a useful rhetorical flourish on the part of the White House defense team to suggest that, oh, things are willfully omitted. Therefore, perhaps we're not being told the truth by the House managers.

You heard a lot of facts that they didn't tell you. Facts that are critical. Facts that they know completely collapse their case on the facts. And one thing that they were also very intent on saying is reminding senators that the burden of proof is on the House managers to make the case that the president abused his power, that the president obstructed Congress, and therefore leaving out facts means that that case is therefore undermined. This gets us into the endless spiral of accusations that we've seen throughout the course of this trial so far of who is to blame for there not being the amount of information out there that people want. Democrats say they were prevented from getting

all of the information they want and the onususes on the Senate to go and call new witnesses and seek new evidence that the president blocked from being a part of the House record. And then the White House is responding and Republicans are responding by saying that, no, it was the House's job to go through the courts and get the information. So we're still in that spiral of argument about witnesses without any resolution in the near offing, though we have said at many times there will be votes on that in the future. So there were two other main themes from the president's legal team that I noticed today. One was that they repeatedly went after the lead impeachment manager, Adam Schiff,

the chairman of the House Intelligence Committee. They played a lot of video of him, including video of him on cable hits saying things that they say were later contradicted or weren't right. And then the other big thing, and I think this is something we are going to hear a lot of, it is something that has been sort of bubbling, but it's clear that it is a central part of the White House argument, is the idea put forward by Pat Cipollone, the White House counsel, that this entire effort is about reversing the 2016 election or influencing the 2020 election. They're asking you to tear up all of the ballots across this country on your own initiative. Take that decision away from the American people.

And I don't think they spent one minute of their 24 hours talking to you about the consequences of that for our country. Not one minute. This seems to be a building theme here is that they say that Democrats are trying to undo the 2016 election ahead of the 2020 election. The flip side for Democrats is saying that they are trying to protect the 2020 election from interference from President Trump. So this is a little bit of the political argument here, not just to senators in the room trying to influence the way they vote, but trying to speak to voters out there about what the stakes are of impeachment. Because I mean, we have heard that there's a little bit of impeachment fatigue out there. And this is a reminder to people about

why it all matters. And remember that if you remove the president from office, he will be barred from holding public office again. So he would not be on the ballot in 2020, which is part of what that about tearing up ballots in the future, what they were referring to. Now, the counter that Democrats have made to this, knowing that this argument was coming from the White House counsel, the argument that Schiff and the other House managers have made is that, you know what, the president was seeking to have a foreign power interfere in the 2020 election. Therefore, he has to be removed from office. Otherwise, we can't have confidence that there won't be interference in the 2020 election. This is about securing the 2020 election from interference. All right, we are going to take a quick break. And when we get back,

reaction to today's opening arguments from the White House and what that means for the trial ahead. Who was Qasem Soleimani? And what exactly was his role in Iran? This week on ThruLine, how the assassinated Iranian general and the organization he represented have shaped the relationship between the U.S. and Iran for decades. That's this week on ThruLine from NPR, the podcast where we go back in time to understand the present. And we're back. And I want to travel back in time to last night when House impeachment manager Adam Schiff delivered remarks that caused some ripples in the Senate chamber. CBS News reported last night that a Trump confidant said that GOP senators were warned,

vote against your president, vote against the president, and your head will be on a pike. Now, I don't know if that's true. Vote against the president and your head will be on a pike. I hope it's not true. I hope it's not true. Kelsey, can you put this in some context? Oh, yeah. And let me just tell you, Republican senators did not like this. They argued with the exact phrasing in particular, the idea that the president said put their head on a pike. They claimed that no such thing had ever been said. What Schiff is talking about here is the idea that Republicans can't vote against a Republican president who has shown a tremendous ability to gather support on Twitter and among his many, many very vocal followers

and has helped prop up primary campaigns against sitting Republicans. Now, he may have not said the exact words, put their heads on a pike, but the sentiment is one that is hard to argue with. One example of that from the past would be former Senator Jeff Flake, who took very public stances against the president and paid a political price for it. He is a former senator. And essentially, any Republican, any elected Republican who puts space between themselves and President Trump finds themselves very quickly out in the wilderness with Twitter mentions that they can't deal with. Or very quickly issuing a retirement statement, letting people know that they're out there criticizing the president because they've already decided they're not coming back.

Is Schiff, by highlighting this, essentially accusing the senators he was arguing in front of of not being impartial jurors? And does that then cause a problem for Democratic efforts to try to convince at least four of them to vote to have witnesses? Several of them have said that they were offended by the remarks that he made. But they also say that it's not going to change the way they were planning to vote. I mean, it's so hard to know at this moment exactly what the thing is that's going to be the last straw that makes somebody decide how

they're going to vote. But we should say we haven't really seen any indication from even these vulnerable senators or the moderate senators that they're necessarily going to be even considering voting against the president when it comes to acquittal. We've heard them talk about witnesses and maybe an openness to new evidence, but rarely have we heard anybody say that they are considering that maybe the president should be removed from office. I mean, we had a bitter reaction today, didn't we, after the opening comments from the White House side from Senator Joni Ernst, Republican of Iowa? Within two hours, I thought that the White House counsel and their team entirely shredded the case that has been presented by the House managers. So what we heard today was very concise. It was full of truths and facts.

Ernst is one of those Republicans who's maybe names we don't hear often like Susan Collins, but she is certainly vulnerable in 2020. She's up for reelection and her polling numbers just don't look that great. But if she is coming out this strongly, I think it's an indication of where the rest of them may be headed. I get that she's vulnerable, but I am not convinced that she was ever persuadable. Well, that's another question altogether, right? Again, that comes down to the question of, are they persuadable on opening up the door to new witnesses and evidence, or are they really persuadable when it comes to acquittal? So the president's lawyers were quite short today. They only went they went for slightly less than two hours.

They said that they don't intend to use the full 24 hours of time that they could use. They repeatedly mocked the Democrats for using so much of the time. We all get a break. We get a day of rest on Sunday. What comes Monday and Tuesday? What are we expecting in the days ahead? Well, I think that they are going to drill down deeper on all of the themes that we heard today about how they believe that this is about nullifying the election and basically canceling the election in 10, 11 months, that facts were omitted in the House manager's presentation. And I think we will also hear more references to a lot of the theories that we have heard out of the White House itself about questions about the intelligence community,

problems with the Mueller investigation, reasons that the president shouldn't, reasons that the president should be skeptical of the professional staff of the United States government and what they're telling him, which would justify listening to other people when it comes to the question of Ukraine. And I think one argument that we got a little bit of today that we might hear more of is this idea that Democrats are pushing the narrative that President Trump was out of sync with U.S. policy. Well, President's lawyers are going to argue that whatever President Trump wants is U.S. policy. One thing that I am very curious to see going forward, though, is how they handle the question

of Rudy Giuliani. He did not come up today. His name was not mentioned, but he played an outsized role in this whole saga. And I am very curious to see how they are going to tackle that issue. All right, that is a wrap for today. As the Senate trial continues next week, remember to tune in Monday to Up First. They will give a preview of what's to come. Then we will be back Monday evening with a wrap up of what happened during the day. Until then, I'm Tamara Keith. I cover the White House. I'm Kelsey Snell. I cover Congress. And I'm Ryan Lucas. I cover the Justice Department.

And thank you for listening to the NPR Politics Podcast.