The 100 senators who will sit in the jury. Doesnt really deny actions that the house impeached him for instead it lays out an argument that none of what he did is impeachable. The president s team calls the charges an abuse of power and obstruction of congress, a charade and trumps defense will call for a quote, swift acqu acquittal. A short time ago democrats did respond to a shorter white house previous filed on saturday citing many of the same assertions. The democrats call it chilling that the president says the senate cannot remove him even if the house proves every claim in the articles of impeachment. I want get to the white house, and Kaitlan Collins is joining me now. What does this brief tell us about how the Trump Legal Team will be arguing in the days ahead . Well, its basically a preview of what you are going to hear. The recently hired attorneys the white house announced last week, they are trying to appeal to the senators and what they make clear in the beginning of the previous, all 117 pages of it that we have been sorting through, they believe the articles of impeachment are flawed and dont think they are constitutional, and they dont want not only the president to be acquitted, but they want it done quickly. They make the argument in here they believe this is the president s first chance to defend himself, and they say they did not have that chance in the house, and of course they did not send witnesses over and did not turn over documents, of course, that House Democrats wanted to see and hear from, and as they make the argument against the articles of impeachment, simply saying you cant impeachment a president because they dont include a violation of a crime. Thats an argument you have been hearing from the white house for the last several days and you are even hearing it from Allen Dershowitz, the president s attorney, and thats going to be a big question of how that plays out and how the senators respond to that argument, and also they are defending the president s conduct here when it comes to ukraine, saying he was in his right to ask about the briden investigation, and they were in his right to ask about possible ukraine meddling, and its said that is a baseless theory being pushed likely by the russians. They are not going to only attack the president s impeachment, and they are going to defend the president s actions on ukraine and you could see that play out as soon as tomorrow. And here in the studio to discuss it, a former federal penn state prosecutor, and also hear, frank brunei, a columnist with the new york times. Here it is. Its thick. And lets just start with the first, the notion that they are arguing that the house did not actually backup the claim that they made in the first article of impeachment, which is that the president abused power. Heres part of what the white house lawyers argue. House democrats falsely charge the democrats supposedly condition military aid or president ial meeting on ukraines announcing the investigation, and they do not have direct knowledge that the president actually imposed such a condition. Well, the House Democrats presented many witnesses with in direct witness and witness after witness with indirect knowledge said the same thing and if you put the pieces of the puzzle together and fit so neatly, we dont need a direct witness to know what went on. To the extent theres nobody that could say i heard from the president s mouth x, y and z, its because the white house stonewalled congress. You cant have a smoking gun if the white house has utterly refused across the board from the beginning they wont provide documents, they wont provide witnesses, and its a piece of the same story and many a person in our judicial system is convicted on that kind of case. On the one hand the white house lawyers argue the house dd not really prove the case the case that they say they proved. On the other hand they are saying even if its true that the president did what they are accusing him of doing, so what . They are back to the so what, get over it. Yeah, its tough to reconcile those two arguments, but as frank said, they are blocking access to the people that would be firsthand witnesses. We are about to use common sense here. The senate is allowed to use common sense and its established beyond any question, one, that donald trump asked ukraine to investigate biden, and the white house argues in this brief there was no condition conditionality . Theres evidence that people throughout the government dont speak about it or say anything about it, and why if not for the connective tissue. This came from the president. To your point about the fact that they are saying, you know, okay, they didnt prove it and its okay even if he did it, i want to read part of the brief on that point. These are again the white house lawyers speaking. The charges in article 1 are further flawed because they rest on the mistaken preplious that it would be been illegitimate for the president to mention possible ukraine interference in the 2016 election or an incident even if then Vice President biden forced a dismissal of a ukrainian prosecutor. To put that in english, what they are saying is everything the president said to the ukraine leader is totally legit. Its not totally legit if its connected to the withholding of aid. If you read the original transcript, whatever you want to call it, and we know right after that happened, aid was held up and people were told not to talk about the fact that the aid was being withheld, or talk about why it was being withheld, and they can bring up those things in a vacuum if anybody believes theres nothing in his past to lead that is a legitimate concern. The only conclusion you can arrive at when you use common sen sense, it sen sense, you see it. The problem is it simply was not a policy. You have to ask the question ra torically. No problems in 2017 or 2018. This case happened to involve a family that was running against him for president , and if President Trump was out there trying to root out corruption in all the countries we give foreign aid to, thats not what happened. Lets talk about the general accountability office, and the reason i am bringing up the alphabet soup, an important agency, they are saying the president did violate the law in withholding the aid for whatever reason, because its not his job and its congresss job, and thats in the constitution to approve the aid. We have been given i have not heard any remotely believable or adequate explanation for why it was being held as long as it was, and its, as we now know, was against the law. It was concluded, congress allotted this aid to ukraine and President Trump held it back. Something that is interesting in the white house response, they are not just saying what happened doesnt quite rise to the level of impeachment, and they are not saying they didnt quite prove their case, and they are using words and it sounds like they are talking about child porn or something. He says if i deny it all the way over here, maybe people will believe this much. I want to go back to the original argument and the crux of the argument in this 110page brief that the president s lawyers are making, which is that this is not a violation of criminal law and that what they are arguing the framers had in mind on impeachment, a president has to violate the law, not just abuse power. Add skwru adam schiff responded to that yesterday and listen to how he did it. Abuse of power is at the center of what the framers intended an Impeachable Offense to be. The logic of that, and the absurd position being adopted by the president is he could withhold execution of sanctions on russia for interfering in the last elections yeah, Alexander Hamilton back in in the 1700s, and dershowitz in 1989, they are saying that. Our heuistory and precedent and law make it clear you do not need a crime in order to impeach. Various federal officials have been impeached over the years, president s and judges for these that are not crimes including malfeasance and intoxication. 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In 1998 he sounds like hes saying a very different tune. Lets listen. I will be paraphrasing the successful argument made by Benjamin Curtis in the trial of Andrew Johnson in the 1860s, where he argued the framers intended the impeachable conduct to be criminallike conduct or conduct prohibited by the criminal law and it doesnt have to be a crime. If you have somebody that completely corrupts the office of the president and poses great danger to our liberty, you dont need a crime. Dershowitz was trying to explain the difference, and im not a harvard lawyer but i dont think i need to be to understand what hes trying to do, which is twisting himself into many legal pretzels. This is a logical and legal pretzel. Hes trying to thread the needle between what he calls a technical crime and criminallike conduct. What the difference is or day light in between these two other than 20 years have passed and now hes on the opposite side of things, or it could be conduct akin to bribery. You try to find distinction, and i am not buying it and i dont think any normal human being in buying it either. Hes being true to alan dershowitz. Then, now, if you show him the contrairien position, he will take it. You show him a fact pattern that looks stacked against that person he will dive in and say wait a second, maybe not. You could argue thats the essence of being a defense attorney. Theres a weird that is true. Theres a weird integrity to that. I understand that. Lets talk about article 2, about the second article of impeachment. That is that the president obstructed congress. Back to what the white House Counsel said in their brief, they argue thats not a thing, and thats in laymans terms. House democrats obstruction of congress claim is frivolous and dangerous and House Democrats propose removing the president from office based on advice from the department of justice. You kind of agree with that . I think this has teeth, actually. Just to recap. The house served many subpoenas and found donald trump blocked them all, and the democrats didnt take any of them to court, which is don mcgahn, and thats a separate issue, and so the democrats never went to court and challenged this, and the white house is saying we have a right to assert executive privilege. They didnt make that up. They made up the absolute immunity thing they used other times. And how could it be something you could remove us for. The response is this was a blanket denial across the board. As you answer, adam schiff tweeted about this, we asked john bolton to testify and you blocked him, and its true that they decided not to go to court. Its also true we never decided through the years exactly what the boundaries of executive privilege should be. I think it has been puzzling from the beginning that when they boiled it down to just two articles, one one obstruction of congress, and we are talking about the legalities of this, and a lot of it is being adjudicated in the court of public opinion, and a lot of what is going on in the senate trial that is about to begin, its about 2020 and what voters will decide. I think obstruction of congress is a difficult concept and phrase for a lot of voters to get their heads around. Well said. Thank you both for helping to digest this document. Thank you. What will the Senate Impeachment trial look like once they agree on ground rules. Our next guest served at president clintons impeachment trial. Well be right back. Man sneezes skip to the good part with alkaseltzer plus. Now with 25 more concentrated power. Nothing works faster for powerful cold relief. Oh, what a relief it is so fast 9. 95 . No way. . 9. 95 . Thats impossible. 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Its our way of saying thank you just for calling. So call now. Oh no, here comes gthe neighbor probably to brag about how amazing his Xfinity Customer Service is. Im mike, im so busy. Good thing xfinity has twohour appointment windows. They have night and weekend appointments too. Hes here. Bill . Karolyn . Nope no, just a couple of rocks. Download the my account app to manage your appointments making todays Xfinity Customer Service simple, easy, awesome. Ill pass. Welcome back to the special Holiday Edition of cnn newsroom. Barely 24 hours until the Senate Impeachment trial gets under way and the president s legal team just submitted to the senate its brief laying out their defense for donald trump. Trumps lawyers argue he did not violate the law and therefore should not have been impeached, but before we hear from those for the impeachment in the senate, theres a resolution that will be laid out of how the trial will be conducted. The senate sergeantatarms, and my next guest was senate sergeantatarms 20 years ago at the clinton impeachment trial. Thank you so much for coming on today. First we have a clip of you announcing what the trial rules were back then. Take a listen. Heall persons are commanded keep silent. You heard something similar, and all senators are required to be quiet and no cell phones, and maybe that was