The latest indication of this direction comes from the president's personal lawyer, Rudy Giuliani, who in a couple of press interviews has acknowledged his role in advising President Trump to arrange the firing of the U.S. ambassador to Ukraine, Marie Yovanovitch, because Giuliani believed she stood in the way of getting those investigations.

If Trump wanted to focus on the impeachment defense that there was no quid pro quo and that he innocently asked for the investigations in order to fight corruption, then it would be genuinely crazy for his personal lawyer to reveal the specifics of how and what he communicated to the president. Giuliani's statements are terribly harmful to Trump's case — and he has now effectively waived attorney-client privilege, so he could be called to testify.

Of course Giuliani could just be crazy, a loose cannon making statements deeply detrimental to one possible line of defense his client might want to use in his Senate trial. But it seems more likely that Giuliani is foreshadowing Trump's future defense.