The Daily Fuckup

House impeachment managers on Thursday asked former President Donald Trump to testify under oath in the Senate impeachment trial, saying his own defense had put key factual claims in dispute. In a letter, lead manager Jamie Raskin proposed testimony as soon as the following week and said the managers were prepared to arrange cross-examination. The letter said that if Trump declined, the managers reserved the right to argue that his refusal supported an adverse inference about his actions on January 6, 2021.

The request came after Trump’s lawyers filed an answer to the article of impeachment that disputed allegations about his conduct leading up to the attack on the Capitol. The managers said that because the defense had challenged the factual record, Trump should be willing to give sworn testimony and answer questions about what happened. The invitation did not compel him to appear, but it put the issue directly before his legal team.

Trump’s attorneys rejected the proposal the same day. They called it a public relations stunt and said he would not testify. That response left the managers with a simple opening: they had asked for sworn testimony, and the former president had turned it down. The legal significance was limited to what the managers might later ask the Senate to draw from that refusal, but the political message was immediate.

The exchange sharpened the split between the two sides ahead of the trial. Trump’s team wanted to contest the House case without putting him on the record. The managers wanted his version under oath, on the record, with the chance for questioning. Once the request was made and refused, the dispute became not just about the facts of January 6, but about whether Trump was willing to defend his own account in the formal setting of an impeachment trial.