Trump lawyers ‘opened the door’ for him to testify — here are the questions George Conway would ask

Prominent Republican attorney George Conway took to the pages of The Washington Post to lay out the case for why President Donald Trump should testify in his impeachment trial.

"There is an important missing witness in the impeachment of President Trump, and his last name, for all the fulminations of the president’s defenders, isn’t Biden. No, that witness is Trump himself — and the best case for calling him has been established by an argument advanced by the president’s own lawyers," Conway wrote.

"The claim that Trump acted for legitimate reasons ostensibly serves as the basis for his backers’ suggestions that former vice president Joe Biden or his son Hunter should be called to testify," he explained. "Precisely because the Constitution allows presidents to make non-corrupt mistakes in judgment, the true facts about Hunter Biden’s well-paid service on the board of a Ukrainian energy company or the vice president’s role in ousting a Ukrainian prosecutor don’t strictly matter. What does matter is Trump’s state of mind: What he actually believed, and what basis he personally had for that belief, should determine whether he committed an abuse of power. All of which means that it’s Trump, and not the Bidens, who should take the stand here."

Conway listed the specific questions Trump would face if he were conducting the interview.

"Your advisers told you that the Ukranians didn’t interfere with the 2016 election, but that the Russians did, right? You, yourself, ordered that the aid to Ukraine be held up? And your advisers repeatedly told you that was a bad thing, right? You were told about the whistleblower complaint before it became public, weren’t you? It was after you knew about that complaint that you told Ambassador Gordon Sondland that you didn’t want a quid pro quo, isn’t that true? And you didn’t release the aid until after you were told about the complaint, right? In fact, you released the aid only after the House announced it was investigating the whistleblower’s allegations, correct?" he listed.

Conway also noted Trump would be challenged with his "incriminating statements."

"Here’s video of you on the South Lawn saying that what you wanted on the July 25 call was for Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky to “start a major investigation of the Bidens” — you said that, right? You also said the Chinese should investigate the Bidens, too, didn’t you? And when you spoke to Sondland on July 26, you asked him whether Zelensky was going to do the investigations you wanted, didn’t you?" Conway wrote.

Conway, the husband of White House counsel Kellyanne Conway, predicted Trump would chicken out on testifying.

"Confronted by a skilled examiner, Trump would melt down in minutes. He’d be humiliated, and he knows it — which is why he’s too terrified to give testimony under oath, and why it won’t happen. But it’s the logical conclusion of the argument the president’s lawyers have been making. They have, to use Trump lawyer Jay Sekulow’s wording, 'opened the door' to calling Trump," he wrote.