Donald Trump was given a hard deadline from judiciary committee chairman Jerrold Nadler: if you want to defend yourself against impeachment, you must do so by 6 December. It didn’t take Trump long to respond: over my dead body. But while Trump’s bravado is not a surprise, his impeachment strategy is not without its risks.
White House counsel Pat Cipollone delivered a five-page letter to the senior Democratic lawmaker excoriating the process and taking issue with the entire inquiry. “Again, your letter provided no information whatsoever as to the dates these [impeachment] hearings will occur, what witnesses will be called, what the schedule will be, what the procedures will be, or what rights, if any, the Committee intends to afford the president,” Cipollone argued.
The president has long slammed the entire impeachment investigation as a sham and a transparent attempt by shameless partisans to overturn the 2016 presidential election. The White House response is straight out Trump’s playbook: resist, defy, fight like hell.
And yet one wonders whether it was the right decision.
Until now, House Democrats have prosecuted the case against Trump quite well.
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