Welcome to Day One of public impeachment hearings! It should be quite a show, especially when the Republican Trumpists on the House Intelligence Committee try to gaslight the public in Putinesque fashion, kicking up clouds of confusion in the desperate hope of masking the mountain of evidence.

Remember, a few weeks ago, when they whined about the closed proceedings and demanded that the doors be swung open? Be careful what you wish for, boys.

Because when it comes to substantively refuting what’s already on record about Trump’s flagrant abuses of office (and what will be buttressed this week and next by sworn witnesses with sterling credentials), the Trumpists, in response, got nuthin’.

Instead, they’ll try to hose us with lies and irrelevancies. Here’s what we can expect from Devin Nunes, Jim “Gym” Jordan, and the other abetters of lawlessness:

“The evidence gathered does not establish an impeachable offense.” That’s a line from a newly-leaked GOP memo. In reality (the factual realm inhabited by roughly 60 percent of Americans), the evidence is overwhelming. Multiple career diplomats and national security officials have already testified in depositions – and will reiterate in public – that Trump sought to squeeze Ukraine for (fake) political dirt on Joe Biden by holding up promised military aid. Lt. Col. Alexander Vindman, a public witness, listened to the fateful July 25 phone call between Trump and the Ukraine president, and testified in his sworn deposition that “there was no ambiguity…there was no doubt” about what Trump was doing. And Trump’s own phone summary quotes him doing it – soliciting foreign influence in an American election, the kind of thing that the Founding Fathers warned against.

“The Ukrainian government was not even aware of a hold on U.S. security assistance at the time of the July 25 phone call.” That’s another line in the GOP memo, and, naturally, it’s a lie. Catherine Croft, a State Department official who’s in the loop on relations with Ukraine, has already stated in her sworn deposition that Ukraine’s leaders “found out very early on” that Trump had ordered the aid freeze. Laura Cooper, a a deputy assistant secretary of defense, also testified that Ukraine knew about the freeze.

What’s the big deal? Ukraine ultimately got the military aid anyway, without having dug for Biden dirt. That’s another memo line, amplified in recent days by Nikki Hailey (the 2016 Trump critic, now a Trump toady). First of all, Trump finally agreed to release the congressionally-mandated money, on Sept. 11, because angry senators were threatening to freeze 2020 Pentagon funds unless he complied. Secondly, whether Ukraine ultimately dug for Biden dirt is irrelevant, because the solicitation of foreign influence in an American election, by itself, is a federal crime. It doesn’t matter that Ukraine ultimately didn’t do Trump’s dirty deed. If that’s so important, then why should we prosecute people for attempted murder when the murder doesn’t happen? Why did we prosecute the terrorist shoe bomber after his shoe failed to explode?

There’s no evidence that Trump knew he was doing anything wrong. Or, as one of his captive senators, John Kennedy of Louisiana, wondered the other day, “It turns on intent, motive … Did the president have a culpable state of mind?” The answer is: Of course not, because extreme narcissists like Trump don’t have culpable states of mind. They don’t distinguish between right and wrong, the way normal people do. And this issue is irrelevant, because willful ignorance is no defense. What matters is the act itself. When a cop pulls you over for speeding, he typically asks if you know how fast you were going; if you insist that you did nothing wrong, that you didn’t know the speed limit, he gives you the ticket anyway.

If anything was done wrong, it wasn’t Trump who did it. The Trumpists on the committee will make period attempts to pin any blame on underlings, suggesting perhaps that Rudy Giuliani and his minions ran amuck. Nice try. There’s already ample evidence in the record that the military aid was withheld at Trump’s specific request, that he was instrumental in firing our ambassador to Ukraine because she was hostile to Rudy. And, in general, it has always been Trump’s boast that he “alone” is in charge of everything.

Ukraine meddled in the 2016 election, not Russia. And Biden was corrupt, or maybe his son was, and Trump was just trying to get to the bottom of it. The Trumpists will try to float all that general jibberish, but, in the realm of fact, we already know (thanks to 17 U.S. intelligence agencies) that Russia was the culprit; and that Joe Biden, as vice president, did nothing corrupt in Ukraine.

Instead, as career diplomat William Taylor, a lead public witness, has already stated in his sworn deposition, Trump engineered “the withholding of vital security assistance for domestic political reasons.” And as State Department veteran George Kent, another lead witness, publicly testified this morning, Trump’s man Rudy tried “to gin up politically motivated investigations” against Biden. Kent, a career nonpartisan officer, said: I do not believe the United States should ask other countries to engage in selective, politically associated investigations or prosecutions against opponents of those in power, because such selective actions undermine the rule of law.”

No desperate gaslighting can obscure that factual truth. And in these public hearings, factual truth – the lifeblood of a democracy – is ultimately what we’re fighting for.