CNN legal analyst Jeffrey Toobin argued that President Trump’s defense team is “winning” the Senate impeachment trial.
The legal analyst gave his opinion about the president’s legal team’s performance on Saturday following the conclusion of the first of three days allotted for its opening statement.
“Again, I just think the Republicans are winning here. The president is winning here. And as long as they don’t completely fall on their faces, which they’re all competent lawyers, they’re not going to do that, I think that’s fine for them,” Toobin argued.
“They did make one good point about [the transcript], I thought, which was the president did about burden-sharing in that phone call, and the House managers didn’t focus on that or even mention it. And fair is fair,” he continued. “He has talked about it before, and that was, I thought, a very legitimate good point made by the defense.”
The president’s lawyers repeatedly noted that Trump released the rough transcript of the call between Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky and himself on July 25. The phone call is what led a whistleblower to come forward with a complaint, and it led to the president’s impeachment.
“They didn’t talk a lot about the transcript of the call,” White House counsel Pat Cipollone told the senators in the Senate chambers, “which I would submit is the best evidence of what happened on the call.”
Deputy White House counsel Mike Purpura later told senators that “the president did not condition either security assistance or a meeting on anything. The paused security assistance funds aren’t even mentioned on the call.”
