Fact check: Trump's official response to impeachment includes obvious lies

The legal team’s initial written response to the House’s article of impeachment against Trump, submitted to the Senate on Tuesday, focuses on debatable constitutional arguments, particularly the claim that someone who is no longer in office can’t be convicted by the Senate. (Many legal scholars disagree.) But the response also includes defenses of some Trump claims that are very obviously not true — including the bonkers claim that he actually won the election.

The House article of impeachment charges that Trump incited the insurrection at the Capitol on January 6. It alleges that earlier the same day, Trump made a nearby speech in which he repeated “false claims that ‘we won this election, and we won it by a landslide.'”

The response from Trump lawyers Bruce L. Castor, Jr. and David Schoen? Yes, Trump gave a speech and exercised his First Amendment right to express his opinion — but if the House is alleging his opinion “that the election results were suspect” is factually inaccurate, Trump “denies this allegation.”

That is, frankly, ridiculous. Trump lost fair and square. Joe Biden was legitimately elected president. Trump’s opinion is factually inaccurate. The end.

Another section of the Trump team’s response rejects the House’s assertion that, in the months prior to January 6, Trump “repeatedly issued false statements” in which he claimed the “election results were the product of widespread fraud.” The Trump team calls into question the legitimacy of pandemic-era changes in state and local election procedures, then argues: “Insufficient evidence exists upon which a reasonable jurist could conclude that the 45th President’s statements were accurate or not, and he therefore denies they were false.”

Another big lie

The Trump team’s response makes a third claim that is transparently false: “It is denied President Trump made any effort to subvert the certification of the results of the 2020 Presidential election.”

Subvert can mean overturn, overthrow, undermine — and whatever definition you choose, Trump clearly tried to do it.