Here is the question Elizabeth Warren had for House Impeachment Managers and Trump’s Defense Team (Source Fox News):
“Bribery is contained within the accusation that the House levels of abuse of power. We explained in the Judiciary Committee report the practice of impeachment in the United States has tended to envelop charges of bribery within the broader standard of other high crimes and misdemeanors. That’s the historical standard.”
Here is the response she got from Rep Jerry Nadler (Source Fox News):
“If every defendant in a trial could be exonerated just by denying the crime, there would be no trial. It doesn’t work that way. I think it’s telling that when Ambassador Sondland spoke with President Trump, the first words out of his mouth, according to Sondland, there were ‘no quid-pro-quo.’ That’s the kind of thing you do. You blurt out when you’ve been caught in the act and you say, ‘it wasn’t me, I didn’t do it.'”
Here is the response she got from White House Deputy Counsel Patrick Philbin (Source Fox News):
“This is an effort to smuggle into articles of impeachment that do not mention any crime, the idea that there is some crime alleged here. There is not. And I went through that earlier. The articles of impeachment specify a theory of the charge here that is abuse of power. They do not allege the elements of bribery or extortion. They don’t mention bribery or extortion. If the House managers had wanted to bring those charges, they had to put them in the articles of impeachment. Just the way a prosecutor, if he wants to put someone on trial for bribery, he’s got to put it in the indictment.”
