The closest the president’s lawyers had come to weighing in on the case was an eight-page letter to House Democrats in October in which they unequivocally refused to furnish any documents or allow any witnesses to testify. Like that letter, Mr. Trump’s answer to the Senate on Saturday was heavy with political messaging even as it asserted broad constitutional principles and general legal arguments to proclaim the president’s innocence. In a statement later in the evening, the House managers criticized the claim by the president’s legal team that the pressure on Ukraine was just Mr. Trump’s way of fighting corruption. “It is not,” the Democratic lawmakers wrote. “Rather it is corruption itself, naked, unapologetic and insidious.”

Source: New York Times January 18, 2020 22:17 UTC