It took less than 2 hours in the Senate impeachment trial on Tuesday for a member of President Donald Trump’s defense group to inform a straight-out lie.
White House Counsel Pat Cipollone started by grumbling about House Democrats’ procedure for talking to witnesses in the impeachment query. “The procedures occurred in the basement of your home of Representatives,” Cipollone stated. He included, “Not even [ Home Intelligence Committee chair Adam] Schiff’s Republican associates were permitted into the SCIF”—– the Sensitive Compartmented Information Facility where the interviews occurred.
There are a number of problems with that story. For one, closed-door interviews are regular for delicate congressional probes. More essential, plenty of Republicans took part in the closed-door conferences; they sat on the 3 committees leading the impeachment examination. The stunt pulled by lots of Republicans who loudly declared otherwise was a clear effort to sidetrack from the query’s bombshell testaments.
On Tuesday, Cipollone breezed past those facts to parrot Trump’s longstanding claim that the impeachment procedures have actually been rigged from the start. It was a clear signal that Trump’s legal representatives had no objective of rising to the solemnity of a historical impeachment trial and rather would look for to turn C-Span into Fox News.
Fact check: ““ Not even Schiff ’ s Republican associates were permitted into the SCIF.””
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1. Closed-door interviews are regular for delicate congressional probes2. Republicans took part in the conferences
It'' s the first day of the impeachment trial and Trump'' s group is currently lying. pic.twitter.com/KSZA5KJG5P
—– Mother Jones (@MotherJones) January 21, 2020
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