Democrats built their impeachment case from that July 25 phone call transcript during which Trump urged Ukraine’s newly elected president to investigate his political rivals, including former Vice President Joe Biden. The House Intelligence Committee also interviewed 17 witnesses, including some who described deep confusion and chaos inside the administration after Trump ordered the withholding of military aid to Ukraine.

The obstruction charge arose from Trump’s blanket order to his administration to refuse cooperation with the House probe, an order that many of the witnesses whom Democrats sought to question ultimately defied. Trump also prevented the State Department, Pentagon and White House budget office from sharing documents that could shed light on the arrangements. Several key witnesses, including acting chief of staff Mick Mulvaney and former national security adviser John Bolton have refused to cooperate as well.

Democrats have emphasized that Congress and the courts have long agreed that impeachable offenses don’t require statutory crimes — in fact, the House Judiciary Committee approved “abuse of power” and “obstruction of Congress" charges in the past presidential impeachment attempts of Richard Nixon and Bill Clinton, and the House considered but ultimately rejected an abuse of power charge against Clinton.

But it appears that Trump’s team plans to sidestep the substance of Democrats’ case and focus instead on what they claim was a rushed investigation that offered no meaningful chance for Trump to participate. “The goal was to impeach the president, no matter the facts,” the president’s lawyers argued Monday.

Democrats did in fact offer Trump and his attorneys a chance to present a rebuttal and propose witnesses during the Judiciary Committee’s hearings in December, but the lawyers declined, claiming the process was unfair. Democrats also note that Trump’s allies in Congress had equal access to the hearings to question witnesses and push back on the allegations.

Democrats have also emphasized that they view the House’s function as analogous to a grand jury, while the Senate trial — which begins in earnest on Tuesday — is where the White House’s witnesses and evidence can be fully considered.

Senators are expected to spend most of Tuesday jockeying over the rules of the trial, while the House is expected to present evidence and arguments beginning on Wednesday. The House’s seven prosecutors, Trump’s lawyers and the senators themselves are largely in the dark about how much time all of the speakers will have and when to expect floor votes on whether witnesses should even be considered.

Trump’s reply brief is the final written document that the president’s lawyers are required to present before the trial starts. In it, they rejected the House’s own charges spelled out in their 111-page brief submitted on Saturday, which said the president’s “ongoing pattern of misconduct demonstrates that he is an immediate threat to the nation and the rule of law.”

The president’s lawyers countered with a sweeping attack on the House’s effort, urging the Senate to immediately reject the articles and warning of the precedent that would be established if Trump faced removal from office over the allegations Democrats have raised.

“The diluted standard asserted here would permanently weaken the presidency and forever alter the balance among the branches of government in a manner that offends the constitutional design established by the Founders,” Trump’s brief said.

The president’s team even went as far as suggesting a conviction in the Senate could be “unconstitutional.” In the brief’s final section, the lawyers suggest that the House’s impeachment articles are written so broadly that even if two-thirds of the Senate supported them, it may be for different reasons — rendering the conviction invalid.

“The deficiency in the articles cannot be remedied by dividing the articles, because that is prohibited,” they write. “The only constitutional option is to reject the articles and acquit the President.”

Though a conviction is viewed as highly unlikely in the Republican-controlled Senate, the president’s argument raises the prospect that if such a vote occurred, he might refuse to accept it. It also gives him another talking point as he criss-crosses the country in re-election mode with an eye on helping Republicans build their Senate majority and even retake the House to kickstart a possible second term.

The president’s response ignores large swaths of the House’s evidence, and all but omits the connection to personal attorney Rudy Giuliani, a central figure in the Ukraine episode who has been sidelined from any formal role in Trump’s defense on the Senate floor. The White House brief mentions Giuliani’s name just three times — though two are footnotes — compared to the 91 mentions in Saturday’s House brief. The White House brief makes only one mention of Guiliani’s associate, Lev Parnas, via a footnote that references a subpoena sent in October for documents and testimony.

Sprinkled throughout the document is pushback to some of the factual allegations lodged by Democrats. For example, Trump’s lawyers back up the president’s interest in pursuing a potential Biden investigation by arguing that Trump had legitimate reasons for temporarily delaying military assistance to Ukraine. The president's attorneys suggest that his interest in Kyiv investigating allegations of its own interference in the 2016 U.S. election — a theory that Trump’s own National Security Council and intelligence community has rejected — was sound.

The brief ignores a recent review by the nonpartisan General Accountability Office that declared Trump’s move to halt aid violated the law by substituting his policy priorities for a lawful congressional appropriation — without notifying Congress. In defending Trump’s interest in debunked claims about Ukrainian election interference, the president’s lawyers omit his reference to CrowdStrike, the security company at the heart of refuted conspiracy theories, as well as the unfounded claim that a hacked Democratic Party server was housed in Ukraine.

Trump is scheduled to leave Washington later Monday for an international economic summit in Davos, Switzerland, putting him on foreign soil and multiple time zones ahead of the opening days of an impeachment trial where his presidency and political future are on the line. Before his departure, the president took to Twitter to criticize House Democrats over an impeachment process that he ordered his own team of aides and lawyers to sit out.

“They didn’t want John Bolton and others in the House. They were in too much of a rush. Now they want them all in the Senate. Not supposed to be that way!” Trump tweeted.

Five minutes later, the president continued: “Cryin’ Chuck Schumer is now asking for 'fairness', when he and the Democrat House members worked together to make sure I got ZERO fairness in the House. So, what else is new?”

Minutes after Trump’s legal team filed its brief, the House impeachment managers formally responded to the president’s summons — a broad overview of their case against the impeachment charges — that was submitted on Saturday.

“President Trump has engaged in the trifecta of constitutional misconduct warranting removal,” the managers wrote in response. “He is the Framers’ worst nightmare come to life.”

That Democratic reply came as the House impeachment managers held meetings on Capitol Hill and completed a walk-through of the Senate chamber ahead of the first full week of the trial.

The walk-through included a tour of the anteroom off the Senate floor where House lawyers will be stationed during the trial. The room had two rows of desktop computers and TV screens that will likely show the Senate floor while the managers are making their case during opening arguments. The White House legal team, led by Cipollone, did its own walk-through of the Senate chamber on Monday afternoon.

House Intelligence Committee Chairman Adam Schiff (D-Calif.), the lead impeachment manager, declined to respond to questions about the White House’s brief.

Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell (R-Ky.) has yet to reveal the exact procedures for the trial, which are likely to be approved on a party-line vote when the Senate convenes at 1 p.m. on Tuesday. Democrats have objected to the possibility that McConnell will seek to limit the number of days allotted for opening arguments, which could lead to marathon 12-hour days in the beginning of the trial.

