‘I don’t know how they can retain their lawyer status, in the comments that they’re making…’
(Claire Russel, Liberty Headlines) House Speaker Nancy Pelosi, D-Calif., accused President Donald Trump’s defense team of “disgracing themselves” and suggested Trump’s lawyers should be disbarred.
“I don’t know how they can retain their lawyer status, in the comments that they’re making,” Pelosi told reporters on Thursday.
Pelosi was largely responding to the arguments presented by Harvard Law emeritus professor Alan Dershowitz, who has defended Trump against impeachment on the premise that abuse of power is not an impeachable offense.
In his argument on Wednesday, Dershowitz suggested that even if Trump had acted in a way that would “help him get elected,” this would still be in the “public interests,” and therefore “that cannot be the kind of quid pro quo that results in impeachment.”
Pelosi, predictably, insisted that the defense had failed to disprove her politically motivated impeachment articles.
“I don’t think they made the case,” she claimed. “I think they disgraced themselves terribly in terms of their violation of what our Constitution is about and what a president’s behavior should be.”
Pelosi and the other Democrats immediately accused Dershowitz of arguing a president can do whatever he or she wants, but Dershowitz rejected this characterization of his argument and accused Pelosi of misconstruing his words.
I challenge my critics – especially those who are deliberately misinterpreting my arguments – to a Lincoln/Douglas-type town hall debate in which name calling is prohibited and intellectual arguments must be responded to with other intellectual arguments. (MTC)
— Alan Dershowitz (@AlanDersh) January 30, 2020
In addition to attacking the president’s defense, Pelosi accused his Republican allies in the Senate of trying to “dismantle the Constitution.”
She accused them of acting with purely partisan motives in rejecting her partisan impeachment.
“Some of them are even lawyers,” she said. “Imagine that you would say—ever, of any president, no matter who he or she is or whatever party—if the president thinks that his or her presidency … is good for the country, then any action is justified—including encouraging a foreign government to have an impact on our elections.”
Several other Democrats—including lead House impeachment manager Adam Schiff, D-Calif., and Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer, D-NY, specifically attacked White House Counsel Pat Cipollone after a New York Times article, suspiciously timed, reported that Cipollone had been present at a meeting with former national security adviser John Bolton in which Trump asked Bolton to seek Ukraine’s help.
“You will recall Mr. Cipollone suggesting the House managers were concealing fax from this body,” Schiff said during his closing remarks.
“He said all the facts should come out,” Schiff continued. “Well, there’s a new fact which indicates that Mr. Cipollone was among those who are in the loop.”
Sen. Mazie Hirono also threatened Cipollone during a break in the proceedings, claiming he should be very afraid of the accusations that he was complicit in a cover-up and deliberately misled the Senate “tribunal.”
The claim allegedly comes from a book of Bolton’s due for publication in March, although the White House has said contains multiple instances of top-secret classification.
Schiff threatened that should the Senate vote to dismiss the articles and acquit the president without hearing their favored witnesses, including Bolton, that they could expect more damaging leaks to come.
“The facts will come out in the end,” he claimed. “In all of their horror, they will come out.”
Schiff previously claimed, falsely, that there was smoking-gun evidence that Trump was implicated in Russian collusion, and he has been caught repeatedly in lying to the public, as well as to Congress.
Liberty Headlines’ Ben Sellers contributed to this report.