Trump’s lawyers are lying with such frequency that Adam Schiff fact-checked them on the Senate floor during Trump’s impeachment trial.
Schiff said:
I just want to provide a couple quick fact checks on my colleagues at the other table. First, Mr. Purpura said security assistance funds were not mentioned at all in the July 25th call between President Trump and President Zelensky. Well, let’s think back to what was discussed in that call. You might remember from that call that President Zelensky thanks President Trump for the Javelin antitank weapons and says they are ready to order more. And what is President Trump’s immediate response? I have a favor to ask, though.
What was it about the president of Ukraine bringing up military assistance that triggered the president to go immediately to the favor that he wanted? I think that’s telling that it takes place in that part of the conversation. So, yes, security assistance, military assistance did come up in that call. It came up immediately preceding the ask.
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What kind of message do you think that sends to Ukraine? They’re not stupid. The people watching this aren’t stupid. Mr. Purpura says they never found out about it, they didn’t find out about the freeze in the aid until a month later. Mr. Purpura needs to be a little more careful with his facts.
Let me tell you about some of the testimony you’re going to hear and you’ll only hear it because it took place in the House. If these were other witnesses, you wouldn’t be able to hear it. But you had Kathryn Croft, a witness from the State Department, a career official at the State Department who talked about how quickly, actually, after the freeze went into place the Ukrainians found out about it and she started getting contacts from the Ukrainian embassy here in Washington.
She said she was really impressed with their diplomatic tradecraft. What does that mean? It means she was really impressed with how quickly the Ukrainians found out about something that the administration was trying to hide from the American people.
Ukraine found out about it. In fact, Laura Cooper, a career official at the defense department, said that her office started getting inquiries from Ukraine about the issues with the aid on July 25th, the very day of the call. So much for Ukraine not finding out about this for a month later.
Video:
Adam Schiff is now fact-checking Trump's lawyers. #ImpeachmentTrial #SenateImpeachmentTrial pic.twitter.com/05fkZLK2qv
— Sarah Reese Jones (@PoliticusSarah) January 22, 2020
Trump’s defense strategy has been for his lawyers to repeat his Ukraine lies with no passion, energy, or conviction. To say that Trump’s defense has been lousy would be n understatement, but his lawyers can’t dispute the facts, so they are lying.
Adam Schiff isn’t allowing their lies to go unchallenged, because the American people deserve to hear the truth and the facts.
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Jason is the managing editor. He is also a White House Press Pool and a Congressional correspondent for PoliticusUSA. Jason has a Bachelor’s Degree in Political Science. His graduate work focused on public policy, with a specialization in social reform movements.
Awards and Professional Memberships
Member of the Society of Professional Journalists and The American Political Science Association
