“It's why since this arose in September, I've thought it was a bad idea for the White House and Republicans to be fighting on the notion that there was a quid pro quo — simply because almost all foreign exchange is quid pro quo,” McCarthy said. “Again, it's just a Latin term that means ‘this for that.’ It doesn't necessarily imply corruption. And it was almost inconceivable to me that there could've been negotiations between these two sides that didn't involve something that would be able to be described as a quid pro quo.”

McCarthy said the question of wrongdoing really depends on which definition of “bribery” people are using.

“Number two — and this is something I don't understand why the Republicans haven't made a stronger point of this, but I think it really cries out to be made — and that is, the ‘bribery’ that the Framers were talking about in the Constitution is not the ‘bribery’ that is one of the crimes that's in a federal penal statute that Congress enacted 175 years after the Constitution,” he said. “What the Framers are talking about when they say ‘treason, bribery, or other high crimes and misdemeanors,’ is the kind of a bribe where a foreign power purchases the presidency.”

McCarthy also repeated a variation of his “no harm, no foul” defense, claiming that Trump should not be impeached because Ukraine never actually announced it was launching the requested investigation against Biden and the delayed military aid to the country went through. (As Media Matters has previously explained, this defense simply doesn’t work: The plot almost succeeded, but it was defeated at the last minute because of the whistleblower complaint and growing congressional scrutiny.)

Kilmeade then played an audio clip of Sondland’s opening statement from the hearing: