Trump lawyers push ‘no crime’ defence

Impeachment requires ‘criminal-like conduct,’ Dershowitz, others argue

WASHINGTON— U.S. President Donald Trump’s lawyers on Sunday previewed their impeachment defence with the questionable assertion that the charges against him are invalid, adopting a position rejected by Democrats as “nonsense” as both sides sharpened their arguments for trial.

“Criminal-like conduct is required,” said Alan Dershowitz, a constitutional lawyer on Trump’s defence team. Dershowitz said he will be making the same argument to the Senate and if it prevails, there will be “no need” to pursue the witness testimony or documents that Democrats are demanding.

The argument is part of a multi-pronged strategy the president’s team is developing ahead of its impeachment trial brief, which is due Monday. Trump asserts that his Ukraine pressure was “perfect” and that he is the victim of a witch hunt.

But the “no crime, no impeachment” approach has been roundly dismissed by scholars and Democrats, who were fresh off a trial brief that called Trump’s behaviour the “worst nightmare” of the country’s founders. In their view, the standard of “high crimes and misdemeanours” is vague and open-ended in the constitution and meant to encompass abuses of power that aren’t necessarily illegal.

The White House is pushing an “absurdist position,” said Rep. Adam Schiff, the lead Democratic prosecutor of the impeachment case. “That’s the argument I suppose you have to make if the facts are so dead set against you.” Rep. Jerrold Nadler, another impeachment prosecutor, called it “arrant nonsense” and said evidence of Trump’s misconduct is overwhelming.

Behind the scenes Sunday, the seven House managers were meeting on strategy with staff and shoring up which prosecutor will handle which parts of the case. They were expected to do a walk-through of the Senate chamber on Monday around lunchtime.

The White House, meanwhile, was working on its response to the House’s brief outlining the charges.

For all of the suspense over the trial’s structure and nature, some clues on what’s to come sharpened on Sunday.

“The core of the impeachment parameters allege that crimes have been committed, treason, bribery, and things like that, in other words, other high crimes and misdemeanours,” Trump lawyer Robert Ray said Sunday.

Republicans have long signalled the strategy, which has, in turn, been disputed by other scholars.

“Rubbish,” said Frank Bowman, a University of Missouri law professor and author of his own book about the history of impeachment for the Trump era.

“It’s comically bad. Dershowitz either knows better or should,” said Bowman, who said he had been Dershowitz’s student as a law professor at Harvard. “It’s a common argument, and it’s always wrong.”

Even as he made the case for Trump’s acquittal, Dershowitz on Sunday distanced himself from the rest of Trump’s defence team and said he would merely speak about the Constitution at the trial.

“I’m a liberal Democrat … I’m here as a constitutional lawyer,” Dershowitz said. “I’m here to lend my expertise on that issue and that issue alone.”