WASHINGTON ― As it struggles for a “message” against impeachment, Donald Trump’s White House seems to be learning a lesson known to criminal defense lawyers for centuries: Things are a lot harder when the accused has already confessed and the prosecutors have loads of other evidence.

Trump’s staff has called the House’s impeachment inquiry “a star chamber,” “rigged,” “a sham” and “politically-motivated, closed door, secretive hearings.”

Trump himself has complained about “zero due process,” “the Democrats Scam,” and “a lynching.”

All these criticisms, though, are about the procedure Democrats are using to gather evidence that likely will be used to draw up articles of impeachment. White House staff almost never make any fact-based arguments, other than blanket assertions such as “President Trump has done nothing wrong,” as press secretary Stephanie Grisham said in a statement Tuesday night.

One former federal prosecutor has a theory why.

“It is often said of trial lawyers that when the law is not on their side, they pound on the facts. When the facts are not on their side, they pound on the law. When neither the law nor the facts are on their side, they pound on the table,” said Danya Perry, referring to poet Carl Sandberg’s quip. “It seems there is an awful lot of table-thumping going on right now from the Trump administration and its allies.”

Indeed, Trump’s release of the rough transcript of his July 25 phone call with Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky revealed that he asked for the “favor” of investigating the Democratic candidate whom he most feared in 2020 as well as a debunked conspiracy theory that attempts to discredit the U.S. intelligence assessment that Russia helped Trump win the 2016 election. The next day, House Intelligence Committee Chairman Adam Schiff (D-Calif.) released a whistleblower’s complaint stating that those investigation requests were tied to Trump releasing $391 million in congressionally approved aide to Ukraine.

Those documents alone were enough to swing dozens of impeachment-skeptical Democrats to switch and support an impeachment inquiry, as well as to start the shift in attitude among the public at large. Majorities had once opposed impeachment proceedings. Now they support it.

Days after the release of the transcript, Trump said during a media availability on the South Lawn that Zelensky should indeed investigate former Vice President Joe Biden and his son, and that China should, too.

And just last week, Trump’s acting chief of staff, Mick Mulvaney, admitted that the release of the aid, including $250 million in military assistance to fend off a Russian incursion in the eastern part of Ukraine, had been conditioned upon Zelensky’s agreement to start the investigations. “I have news for everybody: Get over it. There’s going to be political influence in foreign policy,” he said.