Laura Ingraham Defends Trump: ‘Attempted Bribery’ Is Not Listed as Impeachable Offense in the Constitution

Fox News primetime host Laura Ingraham offered up a rather novel defense of President Donald Trump on her show in an attempt to rebut Speaker Nancy Pelosi, pointing out that “attempted bribery” is not specifically cited in the Constitution as an impeachable offense.

During her opening monologue, Ingraham blasted the House Democrats’ impeachment as “radically grasping for something that people can actually understand about this Ukraine thing. Let’s just pick bribery out of a hat.”

Ingraham then played a clip of Speaker Pelosi explicitly linking Trump’s solicitation of investigations into Democrats to withholding $391 million military aid: “I am saying that what the president has admitted to and said ‘It’s perfect,’ I say it’s perfectly wrong. It’s bribery. Bribery. That is in the Constitution attached to the impeachment proceedings.”

“Okay. Here’s the problem, yeah, of course, Nancy, it’s in the Constitution, we can read: ‘The president may be impeached for bribery, treason, high crimes and misdemeanors,'” Ingraham snarked, before unveiling her own unique defense of Trump’s conduct. “Even assuming the Democrats’ strained and ridiculous interpretation of the facts — and I do not assume them —but just for the sake of their argument, attempted bribery is not in the Constitution.”

“Remember, Ukraine got its military aid. It was 14 days delayed, big deal,” Ingraham falsely claimed. In fact, the military aid was delayed 55 days, as fellow Fox News pundit Andrew Napolitano pointed out on her network earlier that day. And the Congressionally-approved aid was only released after the whistleblower complaint was made public and bipartisan Senate frustration boiled over at the president.

“Remember, Ukraine never made any public statement about any investigation,” Ingraham then added, misleading her viewers about that detail as well. According to aides of Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky, he had an interview with CNN’s Fareed Zakaria scheduled for Sept. 13, the purpose of which was to publicly announce the investigations into Biden that Trump had pushed for in the July 25 phone call, in order to free up the desperately needed military aid. That interview was only scrubbed after the aid was finally released two days before, on Sept 11.

“What about the news reports that the fellow on the other end of the call, Zelensky, said he did not feel pressured at all. He didn’t even know aid was frozen to his country until weeks later,” Ingraham said. And once more, she left out key context. News reports and sworn testimony say the Ukrainians knew as early as the first week of August that the aid was being intentionally held back until the investigations into Democrats were announced. This timeline also means the Ukrainians would’ve been aware of the consequences of not cooperating with Trump’s personal attorney, Rudy Giuliani, who was pressing that country to launch a probe into the Bidens later that same month.

Watch the video above, via Fox News.

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