Radio Recap – Analysis: President Trump’s Legal Team Begins Presentation

It is President Trump’s legal team’s turn in the U.S. Senate impeachment trial.

On today’s Jay Sekulow Live, we discussed the opening of President Trump’s legal team’s presentation to the U.S. Senate over the weekend.

When we were last on the air on Friday, the House managers were preparing to make their final day of presentations to the U.S. Senate. Those presentations went mostly as you would expect, until near the end when House Manager Schiff suggested the President was threatening Senators in order to secure their vote. The tone appeared to shift at that moment, but it most certainly shifted when the President’s team took to the well of the Senate on Saturday morning.

There is a Proverb I referenced last week that says: “In a lawsuit the first to speak seems right, until someone comes forward and cross-examines.” On Saturday, we had a cross-examination. While it is unlikely House managers came anywhere close to convincing the requisite 67 Senators during the course of their presentation, any progress they made was quickly undone over the course of Saturday’s truncated session.

Here is what ACLJ Chief Counsel Jay Sekulow, acting in his private capacity as a member of President Trump’s legal team, said before the Senate on Saturday:

In his summation on Thursday night, Manager Schiff complained that the President chose not to go with the determination of his intelligence agencies regarding foreign interference and instead, decided that he would listen to people that he trusted and he would inquire about the Ukraine issue himself. Mr. Schiff did not like the fact that the President did not apparently blindly trust some of the advice he was being given by the intelligence agencies.

First of all, let me be clear: disagreeing with the President’s decision on foreign policy matters or whose advice he’s going to take is in no way an impeachable offense.

Senate Judiciary Chairman Lindsey Graham offered his thoughts on the proceedings on Sunday:

While Adam Schiff did a good job of presenting the facts, and at times with the law, when it came to removing the President, ‘he’s to go right now,’ is more audition of a future Senate run than it was compelling. What happened yesterday, in two hours in the Senate the President's defense team destroyed the narrative created in 21 hours regarding process and substance.

We were also joined for a brief update on the Senate impeachment trial by ACLJ Executive Director Jordan Sekulow, who is participating in his private capacity as a member of President Trump’s legal team.

You can listen to the entire episode, including analysis from ACLJ Senior Military Analyst Wes Smith, ACLJ Director of Policy Harry Hutchison, and me, here.