WHITE House lawyers began their defence of Donald Trump in his historic Senate impeachment trial yesterday, saying the president did nothing wrong in his dealings with Ukraine, and American voters – not Congress – should decide his fate.

Counsel Pat Cipollone said it would be a “completely irresponsible abuse of power” if the Senate follows the lead of the House of Representatives and votes to remove the 45th US president from office.

“They’re asking you to do something that no Senate has ever done,” he told the 100 senators gathered on a rainy morning for a rare weekend session at just the third impeachment trial in the nation’s history.

Democratic prosecutors from the House, which impeached Trump last month for abuse of power and obstruction of Congress, have not convincingly made their case that he had committed “high crimes and misdemeanours”, as demanded by the constitution, Cipollone said.

“We don’t believe that they have come anywhere close to meeting their burden for what they’re asking you to do,” he told a hushed Senate chamber.

“We believe when you hear the facts… you will find that the president did absolutely nothing wrong.”

House prosecutors spent the previous three days laying out a detailed case that Trump withheld military aid to Ukraine, and called a White House meeting to pressure his Ukrainian counterpart to open an investigation into his political rival, Joe Biden, and the former vice-president’s son, Hunter, who served on the board of a Ukrainian gas company.

Adam Schiff, the chief House prosecutor, said the real estate tycoon turned politician poses an “imminent threat” to American democracy, and his guiding principle is “Trump first, not America first”.

Cipollone argued that the Democrats are asking the Senate to “tear up all of the ballots” from the 2016 presidential election and attempting to prevent Trump from running for re-election in November.

“They are here to perpetrate the most massive interference in an election in American history, and we can’t allow that to happen.

“Let the people decide for themselves.”

The Democrat-controlled House impeached Trump on December 18 in a party-line vote, setting up a trial in the Senate, where Republicans hold a 53-47 edge and the president enjoys the support of majority leader Mitch McConnell.

A two-thirds majority, or 67 senators, is required to remove a president from office, and the Democrats do not appear to have made any significant inroads so far in Trump’s wall of Republican support.

Shortly before his lawyers took the floor, Trump fired off a tweet with insulting nicknames for leading Democrats, and told his supporters to tune in to the live television broadcast.

The president’s lawyers will resume his defence tomorrow. They will have 24 hours spread over three days for their arguments, but have said they are unlikely to use all the time allotted.

Yesterday’s brief session was a relief to the four senators battling for the Democratic presidential nomination, allowing them to return to the campaign trail.

Vermont’s Bernie Sanders, Elizabeth Warren (Massachusetts), Amy Klobuchar (Minnesota) and Michael Bennet (Colorado) have been forced to remain in Washington while Biden and other candidates campaign in Iowa, which kicks off the nomination process on February 3. – AFP, January 26, 2020.