Trump’s lawyers began the impeachment trial with a blizzard of lies

The opening debate of the Senate impeachment trial on Tuesday afternoon was supposed to be merely about the trial rules. But in quintessential Trump fashion, members of President Donald Trump’s legal team wasted no time telling a number of lies before things really got going.

Though getting facts wrong might be somewhat understandable in the context of extemporaneous statements, these falsehoods came in the context of prepared remarks read by White House counsel Pat Cipollone and personal Trump attorney Jay Sekulow. And if that approach is indicative of how the rest of the trial will go, casual watchers may end up with an understanding of the timeline of Trump’s Ukraine dealings and ensuing impeachment that’s at odds with reality.

As part of an effort to portray the process that resulted in Trump’s impeachment and trial as a partisan witch hunt, Cipollone at one point complained that “not even [House Intelligence Committee chair and impeachment manager Adam] Schiff’s Republican colleagues were allowed into the SCIF,” or Sensitive Compartmented Information Facility, which is basically the secure facility that members of Congress used to review classified information pertinent to the impeachment inquiry.

This assertion is not true. As a number of reporters pointed out, not only did Republicans involved in the impeachment have access to the SCIF, but many of them also used it.

As part of a made-for-TV stunt, House Republicans did storm a SCIF in October to protest Democrats not providing Republicans who were otherwise uninvolved in the impeachment inquiry with access to closed-door depositions. However, Republicans who are members of one of the three committees involved in the process had the same access as Democrats.

When the trial resumed after a brief pause following Sekulow and Cipollone’s statements, Schiff noted that Cipollone made “a false statement” about access to the SCIF, saying, “I will tell you this: He’s mistaken. He’s mistaken ... [Republicans] got the same time we did.”

That wasn’t the only easily refutable lie pushed by Cipollone during his opening remarks on Tuesday. At another point, he alluded to Schiff’s paraphrasing of Trump’s now-infamous July phone call with Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky: “When Mr. Schiff saw that his allegations [about Trump abusing his power] were false, and he knew it anyway, what did he do? He went to the House and he manufactured a fraudulent version of that phone call. He read it to the American people, and he didn’t tell them it was a complete fake,” Cipollone said, echoing a talking point that Trump has incessantly used to discredit the impeachment inquiry.

But those comments are a gross mischaracterization of what Schiff did. Schiff paraphrased the phone call for dramatic effect and made clear he was doing so. Though his decision may have been ill-advised — I criticized it at the time because it provided Trump with grist to diminish the proceedings — in no way did Schiff try and bamboozle people into believing Trump said things he didn’t say.

Cipollone wasn’t alone in getting basic stuff wrong. Sekulow’s opening statement, which served as an extended complaint about process, also managed to mangle the facts (he claimed House Democrats delayed transmitting the articles of impeachment to the Senate for a longer period of time than was actually the case) and mischaracterize the impeachment process (he said Trump “was denied the right to cross-examine witnesses” during the House inquiry when, in fact, the White House declined to do so).

Although most of the impeachment trial is still to come, the way Cipollone and Sekulow handled their opening statements suggests the White House is confident they have little to worry about from Senate Republicans, some of whom have indicated they would like to hear from witnesses as part of the process.

Facts, not to mention a sense of shame, will not get in the way of the narrative that Trump’s legal team intends to push about Democrats having it out for the president — and Cipollone and Sekulow are betting that the American people will either agree with them or won’t be able to see through it.

Schiff made clear that he also views Cipollone and Sekulow’s false claims as part of a strategy. After the aforementioned break, he mentioned a number of the lies and said, “Why don’t they have a better argument to make on the merits?”

When Schiff wrapped up, the next speaker — Rep. Zoe Lofgren (D-CA) — also devoted some time to debunking the false claims Cipollone made about both Trump and executive privilege.

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