All the Ways the GOP Has Come to Trump’s Defense on Impeachment

(Bloomberg) -- As the public phase of the impeachment inquiry gets under way, Republican allies of President Donald Trump have mounted an array of overlapping, and sometimes contradictory, arguments to defend him.

Testimony from administration officials has supported the contention that the White House held up aid to Ukraine to pressure that country to publicly announce an investigation of the president’s top political rival.

In response, the president’s allies in the House and Senate have raised concerns about the process of the investigation, impugned the credibility of key witnesses and evidence and argued that the president’s actions were routine.

Here’s a closer look at how Republicans are responding to key points in the inquiry.

Witnesses Back Whistle-Blower

The whistle-blower complaint -- which revealed a campaign to pressure Ukraine to investigate former Vice President Joe Biden’s son Hunter and his work for a Ukrainian company -- has been largely corroborated.
In response, Republicans have:

• Argued that the whistle-blower is biased. Trump’s allies pointed to two notes in the inspector general’s report that the whistle-blower might “have a bias against President Trump” (House Intelligence Committee Ranking Republican Devin Nunes) and had a professional tie to a Democratic candidate. Citing conservative media reports, they contend that the “the whistle-blower actually worked for Joe Biden.” (House Minority Whip Steve Scalise)
• Claimed that Democrats coached the whistle-blower. Citing reports that the whistle-blower approached a House Intelligence Committee aide before filing the complaint, Republicans have said that they “cannot get a full account of these contacts” (Nunes) and argued, without evidence, that this means Democratic Representative “Adam Schiff and his staff coached the whistle-blower.” (Scalise)
• Dismissed the complaint as hearsay. Noting that the complaint includes second-hand or even “third-hand information” (Representative Mac Thornberry), they have dismissed it as hearsay from “somebody that wasn’t even on the phone call,” (House Minority Leader Kevin McCarthy), arguing that “you can’t get a parking ticket conviction based on hearsay.” (Senator Lindsey Graham)
• Called for the whistle-blower to testify publicly. They have argued that the “whistle-blower should come forward in an open hearing,” (McCarthy) arguing that “one of the ways you determine someone’s credibility” is for them “to be under oath answering your questions.” (Representative Jim Jordan) As the hearings began, the House intelligence committee’s ranking member complained Wednesday that “Democrats broke their promise to have the whistle-blower testify to this committee.” (Nunes)
• Called for the whistle-blower to be unmasked. Despite federal laws protecting anonymous whistle-blowers, some Republicans have called for the news media to “do your job and print his name” (Senator Rand Paul) and said they may reveal it “at some point” because “there is no law preventing anybody from saying the name” (Paul) and that public testimony would be fair to Trump since “every American deserves to confront their accuser.” (Graham)

Official Summary Shows Trump Asking For Favor

The official summary of the July 25 call shows Trump asking Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskiy to investigate Biden and alluding to foreign aid, saying “I would like you to do us a favor” and noting that the U.S. has been “very, very good to Ukraine.”
In response Republicans have:

• Claimed that the call does not show a quid pro quo. Republicans have said that allegations of an “illegal quid pro quo” were “not in fact backed up by the transcript” (Senator Ted Cruz) and claimed, inaccurately, that the transcript “does not match the complaint.” (Graham) They’ve said “nothing in the transcript supports Democrats’ accusation that there was a quid pro quo” (Senator Bill Cassidy), that “there was no ‘smoking gun.’” (Senator Deb Fischer)
• Argued that the call followed normal protocol. They have said that they have “zero problems with this phone call” (Graham), that it was “rather innocuous, by and large” (Representative Don Bacon) and that “it was done in a professional manner.” (Jordan) And they have argued that “there’s not anything that the president said in that phone call that’s different than he says in public all the time.” (Thornberry) “I look at this transcript and I go, it’s just Trump being Trump.” (Senator Ron Johnson)
• Equated it to Biden’s actions in Ukraine. Republicans have compared the call for an investigation into Trump’s top political rival to Biden’s public call for Ukraine to fire a prosecutor, an Obama administration policy backed by the European Union and the International Monetary Fund. “It seems like everybody, both parties, have been threatening aid, if some kind of investigation either doesn’t happen or is ended. And so I think, really, what’s going to happen is people are going to say, ‘Oh, they’re impeaching President Trump for exactly the same thing that Joe Biden did.’” (Paul)

Trump Asks China To Look Into Bidens

In remarks to the press on Oct. 3, President Trump said that he hoped Zelenskiy would investigate the Bidens after their phone call and then publicly called for Ukraine and China to “start an investigation into the Bidens.”
In response, Republicans have:

• Argued that he was joking. They said that Trump “loves to bait the press” (Senator Roy Blunt). They said they didn’t know “if that’s a real request or him just needling the press” (Senator Marco Rubio) and that they “don’t think anyone in America really believes” that “the President of the United States thinks China is going to investigate” the Bidens based on his remarks. (Jordan)
• Said the request is not an impeachable offense. At least one Republican said that Trump’s remarks were “not appropriate” but “not something that would strike me as an impeachable offense.” (Toomey)

Aid Tied to Investigation

The Trump administration froze nearly $400 million in military aid to Ukraine over the summer, with several administration officials testifying that the White House sought to tie the money to a public announcement of an investigation into the Bidens. The aid was released in early September, after the whistle-blower complaint was filed.
In response, Republicans have:

• Pointed out that Trump said he didn’t do it. One said the president “vehemently, adamantly and angrily denied” to him that there were any conditions on the aid at the time, saying that he “was concerned about the fact that Europe doesn’t” provide Ukraine “as much support as they really should” (Senator Ron Johnson) and that he had “very legitimate concerns and reservations” about corruption in Ukraine. (Johnson)
• Said Trump is generally skeptical of foreign aid. They have pointed out that the president “always been very skeptical about U.S. foreign aid to almost any country” (Senator Pat Toomey) “whether it’s in Central America or Afghanistan or other places, so it wasn’t necessarily unique to Ukraine.” (Representative Michael Waltz) In his opening statement at Wednesday’s impeachment hearings, the committee’s ranking member pointed out that, “after expressing skepticism of foreign aid and concern about foreign corruption on the campaign trail, President Trump outraged the bureaucracy by acting skeptically about foreign aid and expressing concerns about foreign corruption.” (Nunes) “The president not only held up aid here, he held up aid to Lebanon that still remains on hold.” (Representative Mark Meadows)
• Claimed that Ukraine did not feel pressured. They have also pointed to Zelenskiy’s remarks during a White House meeting with Trump in late September, noting that he “said he wasn’t pressured” (Scalise) and that no Ukrainian officials have told the State Department that “they felt like their arms were being twisted.” (Representative Will Hurd)
• Pointed out that Ukraine got the money in the end. Republicans have said the country eventually “actually got the taxpayer money” (Scalise) “and the investigations didn’t happen” so “if there was a quid pro quo, it certainly wasn’t an effective one.” (Representative Tom Cole)
• Said Trump has given more aid than President Barack Obama. Pointing out that Obama did not give Ukraine lethal aid while Trump has, they have argued that “President Trump has probably given more help to Ukraine than any other president.” (Scalise) “The president approved the supply of weapons to Ukraine, unlike the previous administration, which provided blankets as defense against invading Russians.” (Nunes) “The Trump administration has done more for Ukraine than the Obama administration has done previously.” (Meadows)
• Argued that Trump’s state of mind matters. Some have asserted that even if Trump held up the aid in exchange for an investigation, his reasoning matters since it would show if there was a “corrupt intent” (Cruz) or has a “culpable state of mind.” (Senator John Kennedy) “The question isn’t whether it was quid pro quo; the question is: Was it corruption?” (Senator Kevin Cramer) “You’re going to have to get into the mind of Trump and his advisers and say, ‘Well, he didn’t really believe that the Bidens were corrupt.’ I think he absolutely does.” (Paul)

House vote on Rules of Impeachment

The House of Representatives voted on Oct. 31, almost entirely on party lines, to approve a resolution laying out rules for an inquiry into Trump that was largely seen as a proxy vote about impeachment.
In response, Republicans have:

• Said the rules were different than past impeachments. Trump’s defenders said Democrats did not set the same rules as they did for presidents Bill Clinton or Richard Nixon (Cole) and that the inquiry should give the president “due process,” (McCarthy) arguing that “ whatever happens now, there will be a taint to this one-sided, partisan approach to impeachment.” (Thornberry)
• Criticized the impeachment process. Republicans have argued that the inquiry is following “Soviet-style rules” and is a “sham process” (Scalise) because Democrats reserved the right to overrule Republican requests for witnesses, including Hunter Biden and the whistle-blower. They have argued that “both sides ought to be able to call their witnesses in front of God and country and the American people” and the president and his lawyers should be allowed to participate. (Kennedy) They have cited constitutional principles, noting that “there’s a reason we let murderers and robbers and rapists go free when their due process rights have been violated.” (Thornberry)
• Argued that Trump’s fate should be left to the voters. Republicans have said that the issue should “let the American people decide this in less than a year.” (Thornberry) “There is, I think, latitude in our system to have errors of judgment and inappropriate actions remedied through the political process. It’s called an election.” (Toomey) “Why are we all here 11 months from an election? Why not let the American people decide?” (Meadows)

To contact the reporter on this story: Ryan Teague Beckwith in New York at rbeckwith3@bloomberg.net

To contact the editors responsible for this story: Kevin Whitelaw at kwhitelaw@bloomberg.net, Wendy Benjaminson, John Harney

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