AP, WASHINGTONUS President Donald Trump’s lawyers plunged into his impeachment trial defense on Saturday by accusing Democrats of striving to overturn the 2016 election, arguing that investigations of Trump’s dealings with Ukraine have not been a fact-finding mission, but a politically motivated effort to drive him from the White House. “They’re here to perpetrate the most massive interference in an election in American history,” White House counsel Pat Cipollone told senators. Trump attorney Jay Sekulow suggested Democrats were investigating the president over Ukraine simply because they could not bring him down for Russia. Republican senators already eager to clear Trump on Saturday said that the White House presentation had shredded the Democratic case. Republicans accused Democrats of cherrypicking evidence and omitting information favorable to the president, casting in a nefarious light actions that Trump was legitimately empowered to take.
