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Washington (CNN) - A new report aimed at defending Donald Trump against Democratic allegations of abuse of power represented a remarkable demonstration of the president's greatest political achievement: the transformation of the Republican Party to his likeness.
The 123-page document written by members of the Republican Party on three House committees formalized the president's own distraction and denial cycle that he used to overcome the Russian scandal. He is using the same tactic to save his work now that he faces a political trial for his political pressure on Ukraine.
"I think it's very unpatriotic on the part of the Democrats," Trump said of the process of political trial on Tuesday in London with NATO Secretary General Jens Stoltenberg. “I think it's a bad thing for our country. Political judgment was not supposed to be used that way. ”
Trump is not waiting to hear the formal case against him because he doesn't have to. Ultimately, it will make little difference since his defense has long moved away from the facts and is based on selling a disinformative narrative to his followers that sows confusion and devalue the truth for everyone else.
READ : The White House will not participate in the hearing of the Judicial Commission of the House of Representatives this Wednesday
The report published by the Republican allies of the president in the House on Monday was in effect the refutation of a report on the Democratic political trial investigation that the president of the House of Representatives Intelligence Commission, Adam Schiff, will publish on Tuesday.
The message of the document - not so much a defense of Trump on the grounds but rather an endorsement of his negative counterfactuals - was simple: nothing that Trump did when it came to Ukraine was wrong. His plan led by personal lawyer Rudy Giuliani to force Ukraine to investigate a political enemy, Joe Biden, was fine, according to the partisan document. Contrary to what the senior officials declared, there was no quid pro quo, the House Republicans say. And all the drama of Ukraine amounts to a coup d'etat by its enemies of the "deep state", despite an avalanche of evidence that shows otherwise.
The report, which ignores the significant and incriminating testimony against Trump, is a clear sign of confidence among Republicans that the conservative pro-Trump coalition will remain and that, despite the apparent strength of the Democratic case, will not cause a political earthquake in a tribalized nation that could see the president expelled.
The report's refusal to recognize even any inappropriate Trump behavior, in the face of direct evidence, also offers a marker of how Republicans can address an eventual trial of political judgment in the Senate.
The report is so openly partisan that it can undermine its own effectiveness among all but the strongest supporters of the president.
"I think they played their hand too much, whatever hand they had," said Ryan Goodman, former Special Advisor to the Department of Defense at "Erin Burnett OutFront."
"It challenges what we just learned in the last two weeks at public hearings," he said, citing the testimony of Trump-appointed officials alarmed by the president's behavior.
LOOK : Republicans defend Trump before political trial
In a significant evolution of the president's defense that tests the credibility of the Republican Party, the report argued that there was nothing wrong with Trump's concern about the commercial activities of Biden's son, Hunter, in Ukraine, despite the fact that there is no evidence of irregularities and the president stood up to win politically.
A jury that has decided
The rebuttal of the House of Representatives was an example of what lawyers do: frame a counter-narrative of the case of the accusation using selective evidence to paint their client favorably.
He encapsulated many Republican complaints about the Democratic process transmitted during televised political trial hearings last month.
"The evidence presented does not prove any of these Democratic accusations and none of the Democratic witnesses testified having had evidence of bribery, extortion or any crime or misdemeanor," said the report published Monday.
But the function of the report was mainly political. Unlike the appeal of a defense lawyer before a jury, this was more like a case designed specifically for people who had already made a decision: the American public who votes for Trump and who expect it to be large enough to save the presidency.
As such, he will tell a story for the history of the current political moment in which the president opted to rule by division instead of uniting the nation in a broad coalition.
It is a political maneuver in which Trump does not question the facts: he categorically asks supporters to ignore the evidence before their own eyes and throws smoke to thwart a broader understanding.
This was clearer when the Republican Party report addressed the call with Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky on July 25 when he asked for a "favor": an investigation into the 2016 conspiracy theory that Ukraine meddled in the elections and suggested that Kiev will also look at the activity of the Biden.
LEE : The Washington Post: Giuliani lobbied in the Justice Department for a Venezuelan client who received him in Madrid for a meeting with a Ukrainian official
However, the report, hardly credible, describes the approximate transcription of the call as a reflection of "laughter, jokes and cordiality."
He also takes Trump's claim that there was no pressure on Zelensky in the call as credible evidence that there was none. In this, the report contradicts clearly established facts and Trump's habit of crushing the limitations of his office in public view.
In addition to the evidence of the call, the White House interim cabinet chief Mick Mulvaney publicly said that quid pro quos related to aid are a normal part of foreign policy and told reporters to “get over it "
Trump said at the White House on October 3 that if Ukraine was "honest," he would investigate the Biden, in a possible abuse of his authority in the configuration of foreign policy for personal political benefit.
Adopting Trump's vision of the presidency, the report kept faith in Trump's mantra of never admitting a hint of irregularities. He said Trump had a deep suspicion of corruption in Ukraine, although a witness, US diplomat David Holmes, said the US ambassador to Ukraine told him that Trump only cared about "fat things" like investigating Biden.
READ : Conclusions of a busy day in court on the investigation of political trial
The 'Deep State' is back
The Republican Party report also developed a narrative of a "deep state" coup thwarted within the US Government. UU. and conspiracies that Trump and conservative media allies have been spreading even before taking office as a glue to reaffirm their voting base.
Although written in legal jargon, the report often seemed to formalize the president's Twitter publications and the monologues of conservative news program presenters who support the president.
"The Democrats are trying to dismiss a duly elected president on the basis of accusations of assumptions of non-elected bureaucrats who disagreed with President Trump's policy initiatives and processes," the report reads. "They are trying to dismiss President Trump because some non-elected bureaucrats were bothered by the diplomacy approach of an elected president 'outside the White House."
Current and former officials said last month that they were shocked by Trump's efforts to hijack foreign policies based on long-understood interests for his own political benefit.
Trump has used similar defenses to double the facts for years.
The reappearance on the scene this weekend, for example, of former FBI agent Lisa Page, who was accused of political bias against the president in Russia's investigation, allowed him to revive an unfounded and familiar conspiracy theory against the FBI.
READ : Breaks the silence of the former FBI who was Trump's target
The president did not take long to demonstrate the political game at work on the political trial on Monday, sending a tweet from Britain, where he just landed for a NATO meeting.
Activating a mutual reinforcement cycle with allies of the Republican Party, Trump warmly praised the allies of the Republican Party who wrote it and who rely on their support for their careers.
“I read the report of the Republicans about the deception of the accusation. Great job! The radical left has NO CASE. Read the transcripts. They should not even afford it. Can we go to the Supreme Court to stop? ”He tweeted.
Trump used the same attack tactic to praise Senator John Kennedy, a Republican from Louisiana who again suggested the equivalence between critical comments on Trump by some Ukrainian officials and a state-sponsored Russian espionage operation that points to the 2016 elections .
And the president's daily disinformation cycle continued with his selective appointment of an interview with Time magazine and several European media in which Zelensky denied having discussed a quid pro quo with the president, but seemed to reprimand him for retaining aid when his Government is waging a bitter war with the pro-Russian separatists.
“Thanks to President Zelensky. Case closed. Democrats who do nothing should finally get back to work! ”Trump wrote.
Democrats will vote on the report
On Monday, the Democrats made available their report detailing the case about Trump to members to see. The House Intelligence Commission is expected to formally turn the case over to the House Judicial Commission on Tuesday, before the first political trial hearing scheduled for Wednesday.
Trump's lawyers have chosen not to attend the meeting, a measure possibly designed to suggest a consideration of the merits of political judgment as illegitimate.
The president of the Judicial Commission of the Chamber, Jerry Nadler, published the list of witnesses for the meeting on Monday.
LOOK : Trump and his lawyers decline to participate in the political trial hearing this week
The witnesses are all experts in constitutional law: Noah Feldman, Pamela S. Karlan, Michael Gerhardt and Jonathan Turley, professors, respectively, in the law faculties of Harvard, Stanford, North Carolina and George Washington universities.
CNN's Betsy Klein contributed to this report.
Donald Trump
