The president’s attorney Jay Sekulow did a great job making his initial presentation to the Senate, and he seemed like a tough act to follow, but then White House attorney Pat Cipollone stood up and began what was an impassioned, brilliant defense of the president. Indeed, with his opening words, he said what I have been feeling for the last four months:
“It’s very difficult to sit there and listen to Mr. Schiff tell the tale he just told.”
Indeed, I sometimes get sick to my stomach when I am listening to Rep. Adam Schiff make up facts, bully members of Congress, and trample on the Constitution. How, I wonder, can any Democrat — or anyone else — put the slightest credibility into anything this man says?
But Cipollone didn’t just let the absurdities of Mr. Schiff’s argument go unanswered as so many Republicans tend to do. Instead, he went after him directly, as he has done before. He explained how Shifty Schiff had manufactured the impeachment charges by lying about the president’s phone call with the president of Ukraine, and then he showed how the president’s due process rights were ignored as Schiff led his investigation in the basement bunker of the House of Representatives.
“The president was forbidden from attending. The president was not allowed to have a lawyer present. In every other impeachment proceeding, the president has been given a minimal due process. Nothing here. …Witnesses were threatened. Good public servants were told that they would be held in contempt. They were told that they were obstructing. What does Mr. Schiff mean by obstructing? He means that unless you do exactly what he says, regardless of your constitutional rights, then you’re obstructing.”
As for the whiny Democrats complaining that they need the Senate to do an investigation, Cipollone was brutal:
“They held these articles for 33 days. We hear all this talk about an overwhelming case — an overwhelming case that they’re not even prepared today to stand up and make an opening argument about. That’s because they have no case. Frankly, they have no charge. When you look at these articles of impeachment, they’re not only ridiculous, they are dangerous to our republic. … The notion that invoking your constitutional rights to protect the executive branch … is obstruction — THAT is our patriotic duty, Mr. Schiff, especially when confronted with a wholesale tramling of constitutional rights that I’m unfamiliar with in this. country. Frankly, it’s the kind of thing that our State Department would criticize if we see it in foreign countries. We’ve never seen anything like it.
“And Mr. Schiff said, ‘Have I got a deal for you?’ Abandon all your constitutional rights, forget about your lawyers, and come in and do exactly what I say. No thank you.”
Bravo, Mr. Cipollone.
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