Some highlights of the House response to the Trump team’s contentions:
“President Trump maintains that the Senate cannot remove him even if the House proves every claim in the Articles of impeachment. That is a chilling assertion. It is also dead wrong.”
“The Framers deliberately drafted a Constitution that allows the Senate to remove Presidents who, like President Trump, abuse their power to cheat in elections, betray our national security, and ignore checks and balances. That President Trump believes otherwise, and insists he is free to engage in such conduct again, only highlights the continuing threat he poses to the Nation if allowed to remain in office.”
“The calls transcript shows, first and foremost, that he solicited a foreign power to announce two politically motivated investigations that would benefit him personally. It also indicates that he linked these investigations to the release of military assistance: on the call, he responded to President Zelensky’s inquiries about U.S. military support by pressing him to ‘do us a favor though’ and pursue President Trump’s desired political investigations … “that word [corruption] appears nowhere in the record of the call, despite the urging of his national security staff.”
“The President also asserts that Article I does not state an impeachable offense. In his view, the American people are powerless to remove a President for corruptly using his Office to cheat in the next election by soliciting and coercing a foreign power to sabotage a rival and spread conspiracy theories helpful to the President. This is the argument of a monarch, with no basis in the Constitution. He is the Framers’ worst nightmare come to life.”
Obstruction of congress:
“No President or other official in the history of the Republic has ever ordered others to defy an impeachment subpoena; Presidents Andrew Johnson, Richard Nixon, and Bill Clinton all allowed their most senior advisors to give testimony to Congressional investigators nor has any President or other official himself defied such a subpoena — except for President Nixon, who, like President Trump, faced an article of impeachment for Obstruction of Congress.”
Jennifer Rubin at the Washington Post summarized its main points:
The House dismisses the White House’s five baseless arguments :
First, the impeachment inquiry was properly authorized and Congressional subpoenas do not require a vote of the full House.
Second, President Trump’s blanket and categorical defiance of the House stemmed from his unilateral decision not to “participate” in the impeachment investigation, not from any legal assertion.
Third, President Trump never actually asserted executive privilege, a limited doctrine that has never been accepted as a basis for defying impeachment subpoenas. . . .
Fourth, the President’s invocation of “absolute immunity” fails because this fictional doctrine has been rejected by every court to consider it in similar circumstances; President Trump extended it far beyond any understanding by prior Presidents; and it offers no explanation for his across-the-board refusal to turn over every single document subpoenaed.
Finally, the President’s lawyers have argued in court that it is constitutionally forbidden for the House to seek judicial enforcement of its subpoenas, even as they now argue in the Senate that the House is required to seek such enforcement.
The brief effortlessly disposes of the president’s arguments because they are not actual arguments. The president’s lawyers offer a set of talking points that require one to suspend logic, decline to read both the Constitution and the documents Trump relies upon, and to ignore the Senate’s obligation to conduct a fair trial. Trump’s lawyers are providing an excuse, not a legal or factual basis for acquittal.
Experts like Neal Katyal have described the House brief as “brilliant”. The Trump briefs are described as “garbage.” They are not legal briefs they are primal screams designed to please Trump’s base and keep their Senate lackey in line.