For the past four weeks, I’ve been monitoring the evolving defenses put forth by President Trump’s allies. They began with flat-out denials of wrongdoing that didn’t survive casual brushes with scrutiny. Some of Trump’s defenders then tried to muddy the waters by normalizing corrupt quid pro quos and claiming that Trump and the Democrats alike had made missteps. The White House adopted a scorched-earth stance against the inquiry, refusing to cooperate in any capacity, but that has failed to stanch the daily revelations emanating from Capitol Hill as lawmakers hear from a parade of current and former Trump officials.



When the House voted on Thursday to formally authorize the impeachment inquiry, the Republican Party’s new strategy to defend Trump finally slid into focus. They implicitly seem to understand that they can’t defend him on the merits of his conduct. Nor can they make honest critiques of the impeachment process itself, now that House Democrats have adopted the procedural measures requested by the Republican Senate last week. So they’ve turned to comparing Democrats to communists, and accusing them of violating Trump’s rights, in the hopes that Americans are too ignorant about how impeachment works to know any better.



Republicans spent weeks demanding exactly what the House did on Thursday. A majority of senators signed on to a resolution last week urging their House colleagues to fix perceived flaws in the process. They first requested that members hold a formal vote to authorize the inquiry. The senators also urged their House colleagues to provide Trump and House Republicans with the same powers that past presidents and their allies received in the Clinton and Nixon impeachment sagas. Thursday’s resolution provides all of that, but with a crucial caveat: If Trump doesn’t provide the documents or witnesses they request, those privileges can be revoked.

Trumpworld wasn’t satisfied. “With today’s vote, Speaker Pelosi and the Democrats have done nothing more than enshrine unacceptable violations of due process into House rules,” the White House said in a statement. “Speaker Pelosi, Chairman Schiff, and the Democrats conducted secret, behind-closed-door meetings, blocked the Administration from participating, and have now voted to authorize a second round of hearings that still fails to provide any due process whatsoever to the Administration. The Democrats want to render a verdict without giving the Administration a chance to mount a defense. That is unfair, unconstitutional, and fundamentally un-American.”

White House Counsel Pat Cipollone had already made similar points in his letter to Pelosi last month. But it’s worth emphasizing that this entire line of attack hinges on falsely conflating the House’s inquiry with the Senate trial. As I’ve noted before—and as anyone with a passing familiarity of the impeachment process understands—the House’s role in the impeachment process is analogous to that of a grand jury. Grand juries generally operate in near-total secrecy. They question witnesses without their lawyers present. And they leave no public trace of their activities beyond an indictment.