It should reassure journalists that even a US president can bury the main point of a story. In Donald Trump’s written response to his own impeachment, filed by his lawyers on Saturday, more than 200 words pass before a straightforward protestation of innocence. The preamble majors instead on the motives of his pursuers. The Democrats wish only to “overturn” the last election, he says, and “interfere with” the next one. It is a “dangerous attack” on democracy.

This is untrue. Evidence abounds that Mr Trump really did press Ukraine to investigate his domestic political opponents last year. The articles of impeachment passed by the House of Representatives in December constitute a prima facie case to answer. If anything, the case has grown in weight since then. Documents from Lev Parnas, an associate of Mr Trump’s personal lawyer Rudy Giuliani, show the latter requesting to meet the Ukrainian president, seemingly on Mr Trump’s behalf.

The Democrats had no choice but to bring things to this pass, even if, as seems almost certain, the Republican Senate acquits him in the upcoming trial. In fact, if impeachment backfires, and the president rides an incensed Republican base all the way to re-election in November, it would still have been worse to let the Ukraine scandal blow over for the sake of politics. More likely, though, the whole process will have had no vast electoral impact either way. Such is American partisanship, so many minds were already made up.