As The Post’s Erica Werner, Karoun Demirjian and Elise Viebeck write, Trump’s legal team advanced an exceptionally broad defense of Trump’s actions at Wednesday’s Q&A session of the impeachment trial. The most striking parts of that defense came when they entertained the idea that Trump was indeed out for personal political gain when he asked Ukraine to investigate former vice president Joe Biden, a political rival, and his son Hunter Biden — despite long-standing denials that he was — and suggested even that that would be aboveboard.

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It was almost as if they are girding for what might come from former national security adviser John Bolton.

Dershowitz’s comment has made the most news — and for good reason. He stated that even if Trump was just trying to win reelection, as long as he believed that outcome was good for the nation, it would be okay. “If a president does something which he believes will help him get elected in the public interest, that cannot be the kind of quid pro quo that results in impeachment,” Dershowitz said.

Toward the end of the night, Dershowitz also addressed Democratic arguments that Trump wasn’t interested in alleged corruption involving the Bidens until Joe Biden was running for president. The lawyer again suggested if this was tied to a political campaign, it’s okay. If someone becomes “the president of the United States and he has a corrupt son, the fact that he’s announced his candidacy is a very good reason for upping the interest in his son,” Dershowitz said.

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(It bears emphasizing at this point that Trump’s request wasn’t to investigate Hunter Biden; it was to investigate Joe Biden for removing a Ukrainian prosecutor who was supposedly investigating the company that employed Hunter Biden — despite evidence disputing he was investigating the company. Trump’s legal team has spent little time actually defending that conspiracy theory and has instead focused on Hunter Biden.)

But Dershowitz wasn’t the only one pushing this aggressive line. White House Deputy Counsel Patrick Philbin at the start of the proceedings argued that even if Trump was out for personal gain, as long as there was also some kind of motivation involving the public interest, it would not be impeachable.

Toward the end of the night Wednesday, Philbin offered another rather remarkable assertion: He said it would be okay to solicit politically valuable information with foreign actors, despite laws against foreign involvement in U.S. elections.

“Mere information is not something that would violate the campaign finance laws,” Philbin said, adding: “And if there is credible information, credible information of wrongdoing by someone who is running for a public office, it’s not campaign interference for credible information about wrongdoing to be brought to light.”

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Philbin noted the Justice Department declined to pursue an investigation into a possible campaign finance violation involving Trump’s Ukraine actions. In making that decision, DOJ decided it wasn’t clear the investigations Trump sought would be things “of value” — the legal standard for a violation.

Democrats have since noted that witnesses allege Trump didn’t actually want the investigations, just the announcements of them — indicating he wanted the political benefit and not the actual resolution. It’s also worth noting that former special counsel Robert S. Mueller III entertained accusing Donald Trump Jr. of a crime for soliciting information from Russians during the 2016 campaign. He opted not to because he couldn’t prove Trump Jr. acted “willfully” and also because he couldn’t establish that the information was valued at more than $2,000.

(In that case, though, there is no evidence Trump Jr. actually did get useful information. Philbin was talking about a situation in which the information was credible and valuable.)

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On one level, Philbin was making the argument he had to make. After all, Trump himself has said it would be okay to see what kind of information foreign actors might have about his political opponents.

“I think you might want to listen; there isn’t anything wrong with listening,” Trump told ABC News in June. “If somebody called from a country, Norway, ‘We have information on your opponent,’ oh, I think I’d want to hear it.” Trump added he might contact the FBI “if I thought there was something wrong."

But given the arguments Philbin and Dershowitz were making, it is tempting to think they might be preparing for more damning information about Trump. Bolton, in his coming book, reportedly says Trump did tie the investigations to his withholding of hundreds of millions of dollars in military aid to Ukraine.

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That’s despite repeated denials that those were related. Bolton essentially says Trump wanted a quid pro quo, whether he explicitly authorized that quid pro quo to be communicated to Ukraine. The Trump team has repeatedly assured that his interest in Ukraine was truly about corruption and not his political fortunes, despite him showing basically no interest in investigations that don’t benefit him personally.