The gaping hole in Trump’s impeachment defense

Washington Post logoHis legal team spent very little time actually vouching for his Ukraine conspiracy theories. Instead, they watered them down

President Trump’s defense team ended an extended opening argument Tuesday in which it laid out that Trump had legitimate reasons to ask Ukraine for specific investigations.

But it spent almost no time vouching for the actual investigations he wanted.

To the extent that Trump’s team tried to argue that the investigations were legitimate, it focused mostly on the idea that Hunter Biden’s employment at a Ukrainian gas company was problematic. It spent considerably less time arguing for the theory that Trump actually raised with Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky on their July 25 phone call: that then-Vice President Joe Biden sought to help his son by pushing out Ukraine’s top prosecutor. Continue reading.