OPINION | This article contains opinion. This site is licensed to publish this content.
President Trump’s legal defense attorneys were back on Monday, speaking for several hours on the Senate floor where they argued the wrong executive had been investigated over the past three years.
Not Trump, they said, but former Vice President Joe Biden should have faced investigation after investigation—like Trump has been victim to—due to his wrongdoings.
Former Florida attorney general Pam Bondi spent two hours making the case for Biden’s wrongdoing in Ukraine, including a Ukrainian gas company’s hiring of Biden’s son, Hunter.
“When the House managers gave you their presentation when they submitted their brief, they repeatedly referenced Hunter Biden and Burisma,” Bondi said, beginning her remarks per BizPac Review. “They referenced Biden or Burisma over 400 times. And when they gave these presentations they said there was nothing to see, it was a sham. This is fiction.”
For about two hours yesterday, Trump’s attorneys Pam Bondi and Eric Herschmann argued that it was Biden and Obama who should be investigated for corruption or abuse of power https://t.co/NycHYI1myS pic.twitter.com/t1uENcQjU6
— POLITICO (@politico) January 28, 2020
“You’ve heard from the House managers. They do not believe that there was any concern to raise here, that all of this was baseless,” she continued. “And all that we are saying is that there was a basis to talk about this, to raise this issue. And that was enough.”
“In fact, every person who was asked about Hunter Biden’s involvement with Burisma agreed there was a potential appearance of a conflict of interest,” the Trump attorney added. “Multiple House Democrat witnesses, including those from the State Department, the National Security Council, and others, unanimously testified there was a potential appearance of a conflict of interest.”
Here’s more, from the report:
The hiring of Hunter Biden “looks nepotistic at best, nefarious at worst,” Bondi said.
In painstaking detail, Bondi laid out the corruption at Burisma and the shady dealings involving Hunter Biden, which included business dealings with Christopher Heinz, the stepson of Secretary of State John Kerry. The two men, along with Devon Archer, were involved in the private investment fund Rosemont Seneca Partners, which sought to raise Chinese capital.
Bondi cited a Heinz spokesperson who said a “lack of judgment was a major catalyst” for Heinz to eventually end his business relationship with Biden and Archer, who was also on board at Burisma.
Watch more from Bondi’s remarks below:
As Politico reports, Bondi’s defense was joined by fellow Trump attorneys Eric Herschmann, Jane Raskin, and Jay Sekulow.
“Trump attorney Jane Raskin offered a short presentation defending Giuliani’s role — earning plaudits from the former New York City mayor on Twitter — by referring to him as an ‘internationally recognized expert on fighting corruption’ and accusing Democrats of using his efforts in Ukraine as a ‘colorful distraction’ to undermine Trump,” Politico reports.
Sekulow also responded to the latest leaked excerpt from former U.S. Ambassador John Bolton, which contended Trump absolutely tied foreign aid to Ukraine to their investigation into the Bidens.
“We deal with transcript evidence. We deal with publicly available information. We do not deal with speculation, allegations that are not based on evidentiary standards at all,” Sekulow said during the Senate trial.
Here’s more:
Former Harvard law professor and noted criminal defense attorney Alan Dershowitz, another member of the president’s legal team, mentioned Bolton by name late Monday night as he was wrapping up his presentation — but it was the only direct reference to the former national security adviser all day.
“Nothing in the Bolton revelations, even if true, would rise to the level of an abuse of power or an impeachable offense,” Dershowitz said.
But Trump’s lawyers, led by Sekulow and White House counsel Pat Cipollone, indicated early on that instead of addressing Bolton’s reported account of his conversations with Trump, they would continue presenting a defense of Trump’s conduct toward Ukraine — batting aside the House’s charges that Trump pressured Ukrainian officials to launch baseless investigations of his Democratic adversaries.
“They say their case is overwhelming and uncontested. It is not. They say they have proven each of the articles against president trump. They have not,” White House deputy counsel Michael Purpura said. “The facts and evidence of the case the house managers have brought exonerate the president.”
