An impeachment vote is inherently asymmetric: The president's defenders can use any of innumerable arguments to vote against it, while his accusers must vote exactly for the charges enumerated against him. Still, the arguments against in the House have taken surprising turns 1/x
The most straightforward reasons for voting against each of the articles are being a member of the president's party and supporting him, in line with a shared constituency, and failing, without further explanation, to find evidence of abuse of power or obstruction of Congress.2/x
Instead, the president's vocal defenders — and many who will vote no have chosen not to rush to cameras — have focused on battling over the facts of the case and interpretations of the law and the Constitution that require belief over evidence & extreme faith in Trump purity. 3/x
In the telling of the president's defenders, Trump suddenly developed a concern about corruption in Ukraine when it elected a new president who had campaigned on a Trump-like platform of cleaning up corruption. 4/x
Acting on this broad concern for corruption, and without consulting members of Congress who had appropriated $391 million to assist Ukraine in its war for survival against Russia, Trump chose to freeze the aid in mid-July. 5/x
He didn't tell Ukraine that he was freezing the aid because he didn't want it to affect decision-making by Ukraine, preferring not to use the money as leverage for the probes into Biden or Crowdstrike — or even for the broader anti-corruption effort he wanted but didn't flag. 6/x
It was natural for him to use his lawyer, who was busy digging for political information in Ukraine with two associates who would later be charged with political crimes in the U.S., to run point for him in Ukraine, not because of privilege but because Giuliani is an expert. 7/x
It was perfectly legitimate for Trump to be concerned that VP Biden might have used federal money to benefit himself by seeking the firing of a prosecutor in Ukraine, despite an absence of evidence to that effect, the inability to impeach a former official and ... 8/x
what some of Trump's defenders say is not a violation of U.S. law — i.e., leveraging foreign aid for official acts in another country, even if they might or do bear personal or political benefit. 9/x.
At the same time, Trump's interest in "Crowdstrike," the Russian disinformation campaign designed to exonerate Russia for interfering on Trump's behalf in 2016 comes not from any desire to cover up what happened but from a "good faith" belief in the disinformation campaign. 10/x
That is, acting with pure intent, Trump was simply fooled by the Russian disinformation campaign that would help him and wanted a probe into Ukraine's supposed meddling because, with the power of U.S. intelligence agencies telling him different, he truly believed Moscow. 11/x
It doesn't matter that the president's freeze of aid contradicted standing U.S. policy, as determined by appropriations as well as presidential authority, because the president sets foreign policy. And it doesn't matter that his policy helped Russia and hurt Ukraine. 12/x
He has the power to do that if he wants, so he can do it, and he doesn't have to tell anyone why. There's no such thing as abusing a power you have, and he had the power to freeze aid, whether he did it according to budget law or in violation of it. We know b/c he did it. 13/x
The transcript in which the president tells Zelenskiy he wants favors for "us" rather than "me" is exculpatory because he doesn't directly say he won't continue giving money to Ukraine if Zelenskiy doesn't open the probes. 14/x
The testimony that Zelenskiy's team was told before the phone call that Trump wanted the investigations into Biden and Crowdstrike and that Trump called Sondland the next day to make sure Zelenskiy got the message and would agree to the investigations are irrelevant. 15/x
One, because the Ukrainians, who now know Trump is willing to stop aid to them at any time, are now saying nothing happened, and two, because it was loud at the restaurant where Sondland took the call from POTUS. 16/x.
At no time are the Ukrainians even aware that the aid for their defenses is on hold -- the money they need to survive hasn't arrived -- until it's reported in POLITICO -- two and half months after it's suspended, even though witnesses testified they were well aware of it. 17/x
All of the witnesses are lying, mistaken, anti-Trump or not well-informed, with the exception of the phone call Sondland testified he had with Trump in which Trump said he wanted "no quid pro quo" to release the money but that Zelenskiy should do the right thing. 18/x
When Mick Mulvaney said directly that there was a relationship between the funding and the Crowdstrike investigation, he was wrong, and that's why he clarified it later. 19/x
The president ultimately released the money on Sept. 11 because he was convinced that Ukraine was fighting corruption, even though the two investigations he had named had not been opened. That had nothing to do with either the whistleblower report alleging corruption 20/x
or the fact that House and Senate appropriators were knocking on the doors of every federal agency to get answers. And it had nothing to do with Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell publicly saying he had no idea why the aid had been frozen. 21/x
The president would never invite a foreign government to interfere in U.S. elections, regardless of whether he jokingly invited Russia, Ukraine and China to dig into political opponents in consecutive elections. And even if he did, there's nothing wrong with that. 22/x
Ukraine never delivered on any request from any representative of the United States to announce the launch of investigations into the Bidens and Crowdstrike, so there was no conditioning of aid on the announcement of probes. 23/x
Without the completion of such an act -- call it quid pro quo, extortion, bribery, whatever you want -- it can't possibly be illegal. If you hire someone to kill your wife and the cops catch him at your doorstep, you're good to go as long as you didn't pay him already. 24/x
No harm, no foul. 25/x
There are parts left out for brevity, but this is basically the version of the events laid out by the president's defenders. The short version would be something like ... 26/x
A bunch of Trump-hating bureaucrats tried to twist a story about the pure president trying to make sure taxpayer dollars are spent wisely into a nefarious plot to serve himself at the expense of free and fair elections in a way that hurt Ukraine and helped Russia. 27/x
Likewise, the short version of the impeachment case is something like ...
Trump wanted insurance on his re-elect, so he used the tools available, including $391 million in federal money, to push a foreign country to help him slime his opponent and clear up an old matter. When he got caught, he covered it up. That's pattern behavior and dangerous. 29/29
