After listening to Democrats for three straight days, President Donald Trump's lawyers started their rebuttal on Saturday in the President's Senate impeachment trial, accusing House prosecutors of ignoring evidence helpful to Mr. Trump, asking Senators to turn aside an effort to 'cancel an election.'
"You will find that the President did absolutely nothing wrong," White House Counsel Pat Cipollone said to start the arguments in an unusual Saturday session of the Senate.
"Today, we are going to confront them on the merits of their argument," Cipollone added, as the President's legal team accused the House of bending the facts, and ignoring evidence in favor of Mr. Trump.
"Let's get our facts straight," said the President's personal lawyer Jay Sekulow.
"The House managers never told you any of this," said White House lawyer Michael Purpura. "Why not?"
“Impeachment shouldn't be a shell game,” Cipollone said, as the President's team used just two of their 24 hours of arguments - they will continue on Monday afternoon.
GOP Senators rushed to the microphones after Saturday's session to denounce what Democrats had presented earlier in the week.
"Within two hours, I thought the White House Counsel and their team entirely shredded the case which has been presented by the House managers," said Sen. Joni Ernst (R-IA).
"It completely undermined the case of the Democrats and truly undermined the credibility of Adam Schiff," said Sen. John Barrasso (R-WY).
"It was pretty stark today," said Sen. James Lankford (R-OK), who then used the famous quote from radio show host Paul Harvey to make the case for the President.
"Now you know the rest of the story," Lankford told reporters.
"This was a good day for America frankly," said Sen. Tim Scott (R-SC).
"I don't believe anything they have said so far is impeachable," said Sen. Rick Scott (R-FL) of the House case, as there continues to be no public evidence that any GOP Senators are ready to break with President Trump.
Playing out behind the scenes was the ongoing partisan tussle over whether current and former Trump Administration officials - whose testimony has been blocked during the impeachment investigation by President Trump - should be issued subpoenas by the U.S. Senate.
"I don't know how you have a trial when you know there is evidence that you haven't seen, or witnesses you haven't heard from that have first hand knowledge," said Sen. Joe Manchin (D-WV).
"A fair trial means witnesses and documents," said Senate Democratic Leader Charles Schumer.
The trial resumes at 1 pm ET on Monday.
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