On Saturday, President Donald Trump’s defense team began their opening statements in the Senate impeachment trial. Lawyer Pat Cipollone launched into a powerful opening statement, warning that the Democratic House impeachment managers are asking the Senate to “tear up all of the ballots” in the 2020 election.
Cipollone noted that Democrats are constantly wringing their hands about election interference, while they themselves are running “the most massive interference in an election in American history.”
“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,” he told the Senate.
Yet even in the 24-hour opening arguments, the Democratic impeachment managers left out key evidence. “They’re asking you to do something that no Senate has ever done, and they’re asking you to do it with no evidence and that’s wrong and I ask you to keep that in mind.”
“They said things over and over again that are simply not true,” Cipollone added. “One of them is there is no evidence of Donald Trump’s interest in burden sharing.” Yet Burden-sharing was discussed in the transcript of the call between Trump and Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky on July 25. The lawyer quoted directly from the transcript of the call.
Democrats are asking the Senate to “tear up the ballots in all of your states, and they don’t bother to read the key evidence of the discussion of burden-sharing that’s in the call itself!”
Trump’s lawyer claimed that this omission of evidence is “emblematic of their entire presentation.”
He asked if Democrats were “really interested in finding out the truth,” why would they rush the process in the way that they did? He claimed that their very actions show that “they themselves don’t believe in the facts of their case. And the fact that they came here for 24 hours and hid evidence from you is further evidence that they really don’t believe in their case.”
Watch President Trump's lawyer Pat Cipollone at the Senate #impeachmenttrial
"They're asking you to tear up all of the ballots across this country on your own initiative and take that decision away from the American people." pic.twitter.com/VTpzvJCfq7
— MRCTV.org (@mrctv) January 25, 2020
Tyler O’Neil is the author of Making Hate Pay: The Corruption of the Southern Poverty Law Center. Follow him on Twitter at @Tyler2ONeil.
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