House Speaker Nancy Pelosi on Thursday slammed President Trump’s lawyers, saying they’ve “disgraced themselves terribly in terms of their violation of what our Constitution is about and what a president’s behavior should be.”
“I don’t know how they can retain their lawyer status, in the comments that they’re making,” Pelosi told reporters in the Capitol.
Pelosi also accused Republican lawmakers in the House and Senate of trying “to dismantle the Constitution.”
“Some of them are even lawyers,” she said. “Imagine that you would say — ever, of any president, no matter who he or she is or whatever party — if the president thinks that his or her presidency … is good for the country, then any action is justified — including encouraging a foreign government to have an impact on our elections.”
“[That] is exactly what our Founders were opposed to — and they feared,” she added. “I don’t think they made the case. I think they disgraced themselves terribly in terms of their violation of what our Constitution is about and what a president’s behavior should be.”
Pelso was referring to comments in the Senate trial by one of Trump’s lawyers, Alan Dershowitz. He said presidents cannot be impeached for trying to win re-election because they believe doing so is in the best interest of the country. “If a president does something which he believes will help him get elected in the public interest, that cannot be the kind of quid pro quo that results in impeachment,” Dershowitz said.
At the opening of Trump’s trial, his top lawyers, Jay Sekulow and Pat Cipollone, said “The articles of impeachment violate the Constitution. They are defective in their entirety.”
Pelosi has had to stand idly by after handing two articles of impeachment over to the Senate. She has no role whatsoever in the process, but that hasn’t prompted her to keep mouth shut.
On Thursday the Speakers said a Senate vote to acquit Trump would be invalid unless senators have called new witnesses.
“He will not be acquitted. You cannot be acquitted if you don’t have a trial; and you don’t have a trial if you don’t have witnesses and documentation,” she said.
Pelosi also said that if Democrats can flip three Republicans to vote to call witnesses, Supreme Court Chief Justice John Roberts, who is presiding over the trial, should step in and break a tie vote.
“I would think that they would have confidence in the chief justice of the United States,” she said. “That’s interesting to me that they’re afraid of breaking a tie with the chief justice of the United States.”
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