Trump Defense Urges Senators To Feel Bad For Trump
WASHINGTON ― President Donald Trump’s impeachment defense team wrapped up its opening arguments in the Senate impeachment trial by pleading with senators to try to understand the president’s feelings.
“Put yourself in the shoes of the president,” attorney Jay Sekulow said. “The president of the United States, before he was the president, was under an investigation.”
Trump’s 2016 campaign was under FBI investigation, and then the president wound up being investigated by special counsel Robert Mueller, Sekulow argued.
“And then we asked why the president is concerned about advice he’s being given,” Sekulow said in his closing remarks on Tuesday afternoon. “Put yourself in his shoes. Put yourself in his shoes.”
Democrats allege that the president corrupted U.S. foreign policy for his own personal benefit, ignoring the advice of American diplomats, the law and the U.S. national interest. Their abuse of power charge says the president withheld military aid from Ukraine in order to coerce the country into announcing phony investigations ― one into former Vice President Joe Biden, the president’s highest-polling possible Democratic opponent for 2020, and another into whether Ukraine, and not Russia, was really responsible for interfering in the 2016 election.
“Put yourself in his shoes” has been a recurring theme of the president’s defense, with Sekulow and others repeatedly highlighting reasons the president had to be upset. They argued that Trump didn’t do what he allegedly did, but they also implied that he couldn’t help himself because he was frustrated.
By recounting the president’s complaints about the intelligence community, his attorneys are suggesting he had good reason to go around the State Department.
Sekulow mentioned a variety of Trump’s gripes with the FBI, some of which have been partly substantiated by investigations from the Justice Department’s inspector general. He mentioned...
