In keeping with his lifelong style, President Trump has gone on the offensive against the House impeachment articles by brazenly and venomously accusing Speaker Nancy Pelosi and her Democratic allies of the same allegations that seek to remove him from office.

In a rare direct letter on White House stationery, he has written that “this impeachment represents an unprecedented and unconstitutional abuse of power by Democrat Lawmakers, unequaled in nearly two and a half centuries of American history.”

Except for inclusion of his trademark “Democrat” derogation of the opposition party, his six-page screed smacks of the work of a ghostwriter with infinitely greater familiarity with the Founding Fathers than Trump has ever displayed.

The letter goes on: “The Articles of Impeachment introduced by the House Judiciary Committee are not recognizable under any standard of Constitutional theory, interpretation, or jurisprudence. They include no crimes, no misdemeanors, and no offenses whatsoever. You have cheapened the importance of the very ugly word, impeachment!” Never mind that impeachment does not require a specific criminal act.

The letter goes on in that vein, casting Trump as a constitutional scholar, as he surely must consider himself, inasmuch as it is signed in his now-familiar bold strokes of a man of unchallengeable decisiveness.

He lays it on thick: “By proceeding with your invalid impeachment, you are violating your oaths of office, you are breaking your allegiance to the Constitution, and you are declaring open war on American Democracy,” all of which applies to himself in spades.

There’s much more of the same, even to rebuking Pelosi for saying that she was praying for him: “Even worse than offending the Founding Fathers, you are offending Americans of faith by continually saying ‘I pray for the President,’ when you know this statement is not true, unless it is meant in a negative sense. It is a terrible thing you are doing, but you will have to live with it, not I!”

The President then plunges into details of the two impeachable articles against him, of abuse of power and of Congress. He pivots for the first time to explicit allegations of involved corruption in Ukraine against his prospective 2020 election rival, former Vice President Joe Biden.

He writes to Pelosi: “You know full well that Vice President Biden used his office and $1 billion dollars of U.S. aid money to coerce Ukraine into firing the prosecutor who was digging into the company paying his son millions of dollars. You know this because Biden bragged about it on video. Biden openly stated: “I said, ‘I’m telling you, you’re not getting the billion dollars’ … I looked at them and said: ‘I’m leaving in six hours. If the prosecutor is not fired, you’re not getting the money.’ Well, son of a bitch. He got fired.”

With Trump’s customary disregard for accuracy, Biden’s son Hunter was said to receive “only” $50,000 to $85,000 a month from the Burisma energy company, but never mind.

Trump’s letter goes on: “Even Joe Biden admitted just days ago in an interview with NPR that it ‘looked bad.’ Now you are trying to impeach me by falsely accusing me of doing what Joe Biden had admitted he actual did.”

Where did this new, detailed allegation come from? Trump didn’t say. Instead, he moved on to an empty defense against Article II, obstruction of Congress, wherein he ordered all subordinates to defy legal subpoenas for testimony or documents.

He proceeded to attack other Democrats, finally concluding, no doubt as a student of American history, that “more due process was afforded to those accused in the Salem Witch Trials. … History will judge you harshly as you proceed with this impeachment charade. … You are making a mockery of impeachment and you are scarcely concealing your hatred of me, of the Republican Party and tens of millions of patriotic Americans.”

Thus does this Constitutional expert by way of the Manhattan University of Real Estate try to turn the tables on the House Democrats who have gathered indisputable evidence of his assault on the pillars of our democracy. Yet, incredibly, he is now poised to escape impeachment in the Republican Senate.

——

Jules Witcover is a nationally syndicated columnist.