https://slate.com/news-and-politics/2019/11/trump-impeachment-transcripts-facts-democracy-sondland-graham.html
"Trump’s lines of defense have been crumbling under each wave of new facts. First, his phone call with Zelensky was said to be “perfect.” (Trump continues to make this claim, though he is nearly alone in doing so.) Then, yes, Trump pressured Zelensky, but there was no quid pro quo. Then, OK, there was a quid pro quo, but diplomacy is all about quid pro quos. Then, well, all right, this quid pro quo involved pressuring a foreign power to defame a possible rival in an American presidential election, and that doesn’t look good, but it’s not an impeachable offense. Finally, at our present moment, some Republicans realize that it is impeachable as an abuse of power and possibly as an act of bribery. So they decide, like Graham, to ignore the evidence. The main way they’ve done this is to condemn the process of the impeachment inquiry as corrupt and, therefore, the evidence it has gathered as illegitimate—in the same sense that evidence improperly seized by police would be thrown out in a trial. But as the transcripts of the hearings have been made public, this final line of defense has crumbled too. First, the hearings were not partisan, much less “Soviet-style” show trials, as Rep. Steve Scalise, the House minority whip, put it while displaying a picture of St. Basil’s Cathedral (the least Soviet-style structure in Moscow’s Red Square). The transcripts list all the House members who attended, and, it turns out, they included several Republicans. (As had long been stated, all members of the House Intelligence, Foreign Affairs, and Judiciary committees were authorized to attend the hearings.)"
