The committee had laid five main charges but then added another six after the cigar-chomping judge had said his piece. Nazareno claimed that the government was pursuing him and the other supreme court judges because of rulings they had made ordering the redollarisation of deposits in two cases: San Luis and Smith. He argued that the process congress was following in attempting to impeach him was riddled with arbitrariness and shortcomings, and indicated that he expected the (unprecedented) process to be thrown out by the courts.
His most telling blow was pointing out the stipulation, under article 90 of the Cámara's operating rules, that all lawyers had to excuse themselves from impeachment cases: Nazareno gave the names of 13 congressmen who should have recused themselves but did not. He also pointed out that several deputies appeared to have convicted him before hearing the charges.
Furthermore, Nazareno said that under the constitution, judges could not be removed because of the judgments they had made. This argument would knock out two of the most damaging accusations against him: the Meller and Macri cases where Nazareno overruled experts in finding that the government should make a payment to Meller and let a subsidiary of the Macri group, Sevel, avoid a fine for tax evasion.
The impeachment process had got only one step further -Nazareno's rebuttal- than it did last year. On that occasion the attempt to indict the supreme court justices fell apart because of a combination of low politics and the shakiness of the government's case. The government had hoped Nazareno would resign in disgrace: despite his initial counterattack, Nazareno did resign on 27 June.
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