Jonathan Bernstein, Columnist

The Ugliest Part of Trump’s Impeachment Defense

It’s bad enough to pretend that facts aren’t facts. What’s worse is claiming that a president can’t be removed for abuse of power.

Dangerously wrong.

Photographer: Samuel Corum/Getty Images
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President Donald Trump’s legal team wrapped up its three-day defense presentation in the Senate impeachment trial on Tuesday. The president’s lawyers wound up taking up less than half of their allotted time, which doesn’t necessarily mean anything — after all, the House managers who played the prosecutorial role took up all 24 hours in part by making many of their points multiple times. Keeping the defense short might be thought of as a strategy, rather than an indication of a lack of anything useful to say.