WASHINGTON Lawyers are not supposed to make false assertions in a courtroom, but President Donald Trump s legal team has already violated that standard by pushing a claim on the Senate floor disputed by former national security adviser John Bolton s description of Trumps hold-up of military aid to Ukraine .

Were in court, Trump lawyer Ken Starr told senators Monday. Were in democracys ultimate court.

If that were actually true, though, Trumps legal team could face sanctions from the presiding judge for spending much of its argument period on Saturday claiming there was no evidence that Trump had held up the aid in an attempt to coerce Ukraine into announcing an investigation of his political opponent. Barely a day later, published reports revealed that Trumps former national security adviser has stated exactly that in a book draft, which Trumps White House has had access to for nearly a month.

Lawyers in courtrooms across the country are expected to behave as officers of the court and are not supposed to say things they do not believe to be true. As it happens, no such truth-only rule appears to apply to lawyers in impeachment proceedings.

There is an obligation to be truthful to judges, but I suspect the lawyers for Trump would argue that the impeachment trial is not actually a legal proceeding but is instead a political process, said Renato Mariotti, a former federal prosecutor in Chicago.

The White House on Monday would not address HuffPosts specific questions about when Trumps legal team came to know what was contained in Boltons manuscript that was sent to the National Security Council on Dec. 30.

Officials would only refer to a statement from NSC spokesman John Ullyot: Ambassador Boltons manuscript was submitted to the NSC for pre-publication review and has been under initial review by the NSC. No White House personnel outside NSC have reviewed the manuscript.

That specific wording does not speak to whether White House Counsel Pat Cipollone and his staff learned about the contents by some other means, however. Last autumn, for example, the office and Trump himself learned of details in a whistleblowers complaint about Trumps actions on Ukraine and attempted to block it from being turned over to Congress before White House lawyers concluded that they had no legal basis for doing so.