How has the President Trump’s legal team responded to the article of impeachment  and impending Senate trial?

According to PJ Media, ”

On Tuesday, former President Donald Trump’s lawyers Bruce L. Castor Jr., and David Schoen released Trump’s answer to the Democrats’ article of impeachment accusing him of “incitement of insurrection.” Trump’s response breaks the Democrats’ impeachment article into eight separate allegations and responds to each claim. In a nutshell, the former president argues that it is unconstitutional for the Senate to remove a president when he has already left office and that he is innocent of the Democrats’ charges.

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Trump asks the Senate to “dismiss Article I: Incitement of Insurrection against him as moot, and thus in violation of the Constitution, because the Senate lacks jurisdiction to remove from office a man who does not hold office. In the alternative, the 45th President respectfully requests the Senate acquit him on the merits of the allegations raised in the article of impeachment.” . . .

In addition to the claim that the Senate cannot convict a former president on impeachment, Trump argues that the Democrats violated his free speech and due process rights in rushing to impeach him and that the article of impeachment is deceptively drafted in an unfair manner. Trump also claims that disqualifying him from office would constitute a “bill of attainder,” which has been broadly interpreted to mean a legislative act against a class of people that inflicts punishment on them without a judicial trial.

Trump argues the article of impeachment is “facially and substantively flawed, and otherwise unconstitutional, and must be dismissed with prejudice.” . . .

Trump splits the article of impeachment into eight claims, providing a response to each one.

His first response claims that the impeachment power does not apply to him because he is no longer president. “The constitutional provision requires that a person actually hold office to be impeached. Since the 45th President is no longer ‘President,’ the clause ‘shall be removed from Office on Impeachment for…’ is impossible for the Senate to accomplish, and thus the current proceeding before the Senate is void ab initio as a legal nullity that runs patently contrary to the plain language of the Constitution.” . . .

Importantly, Trump denies ever having “engaged in insurrection or rebellion against the United States.” He also denies ever having “engaged in a violation of his oath of office.” . ..

“Insufficient evidence exists upon which a reasonable jurist could conclude that the 45th President’s statements were accurate or not, and he therefore denies they were false,” Trump argues. “Like all Americans, the 45th President is protected by the First Amendment. …. the Constitution and Bill of Rights, specifically and intentionally protect unpopular speech from government retaliation.”  . . .

Trump claims that he did not intend to interfere with the counting of Electoral College votes. He notes that Democrats in Congress challenged Electoral College votes in 2017 and that Republicans did so in 2021, in each case to no avail. He argues that Congress’s duty “was not just to certify the presidential election” but also “to first determine whether certification of the presidential election vote was warranted.” . . .

Trump also denies having made “any effort to subvert” the 2020 election in asking Secretary of State Brad Raffensperger (R-Ga.) to “find” votes. Trump claims that the word “find” was appropriate in context because he was expressing his opinion that an accurate count would “find” the votes required to put Trump over the top. . . .

After addressing the article of impeachment, Trump presents arguments in his defense.

He claims the Senate lacks jurisdiction to try a removed president for impeachment “because he holds no public office from which he can be removed, and the Constitution limits the authority of the Senate in cases of impeachment to removal from office as the prerequisite active remedy allowed the Senate under our Constitution.”

He argues that if the Senate acts on this impeachment, “it will have passed a Bill of Attainder in violation of Article 1, Sec. 9. Cl. 3 of the United States Constitution.”

He argues that the article of impeachment violates his right to free speech under the First Amendment and that the House deprived him of the due process of law “in rushing to issue the Article of Impeachment by ignoring it own procedures and precedents going back to the mid-19th century.” . . .

Trump warns that if the Senate does not rule in his favor, it would set a precedent that “such persons as the 45th President similarly situated no longer enjoy the rights of all American citizens guaranteed by the Bill of Rights.” . . .

Trump also claims that “by charging multiple alleged wrongs in one article, the House of Representatives has made it impossible to guarantee compliance with the Constitutional mandate in Article 1, Sec. 3, Cl. 6 that permits a conviction only by at least two-thirds of the members.” . . .

Finally, Trump notes that Supreme Court Chief Justice John Roberts has announced that he would not to preside over the impeachment trial, and Democrats picked Sen. Pat Leahy (D-Vt.) to preside. “Once the 45th President’s term expired, and the House chose to allow jurisdiction to lapse on the Article of Impeachment, the constitutional mandate for the Chief Justice to preside at all impeachments involving the President evidently disappeared, and he was replaced by a partisan Senator who will purportedly also act as a juror while ruling on certain issues,” Trump argues. . . .

The impeachment trial is scheduled to begin next Monday, February 8. . . .

Trump Team, Impeachment Managers Lay Out Arguments for Senate Trial

According to The Epoch Times, “Attorneys for former President Donald Trump and Democrat impeachment managers filed trial memorandums on Feb. 2 outlining their arguments for the Senate trial expected to begin next week. . . .

Democrats face an uphill battle in the Senate. Forty-five Republican senators voted in favor of a resolution calling the trial unconstitutional, since Trump is now a private citizen. With the Senate split 50–50, the impeachment managers would have to convince 17 Republicans that the trial is constitutional and that Trump is guilty of inciting an insurrection.

Trump’s defense team tied nearly every argument in the trial memo to the overarching point that the trial is unconstitutional. They argued that since the Constitution states that “impeachment shall not extend further than to removal from office, and disqualification to hold and enjoy an office,” Trump cannot be tried since he can’t be removed. . . .

The Republicans’ focus on the constitutionality of the trial wasn’t lost on the impeachment managers, who devoted a significant portion of their memo to the argument that impeached former officials can still be tried. The impeachment managers’ memo cites a number of precedential examples, though none pertaining to a U.S. president. They argue that the Framers didn’t make a specific exception for former presidents and intended for impeachment and conviction to serve as a deterrent against corruption throughout their entire term in office. . . .

Another selective quotation shows Trump saying: “You’ll never take back our country with weakness. You have to show strength, and you have to be strong.” A look at the previous sentence from Trump’s speech, which the Democrats omitted, shows that he was addressing the lawmakers who were convened to vet and certify the Electoral College votes. . . .

Senate Judiciary Committee Chairman Lindsey Graham (R-S.C.) on Feb. 1 warned his Democratic colleagues against calling witnesses during the trial, threatening to call the FBI to testify.

“If you open that can of worms, we’ll want the FBI to come in and tell us about how people pre-planned this attack and what happened with the security footprint at the Capitol. You open up Pandora’s Box if you call one witness,” Graham told Fox News on Feb. 2. . . .

(Photo Credit: The White House Flickr.)

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