A Speedy Second Senate Impeachment Trial for Trump
The Senate’s impeachment confirmation hearings this week, according to sources on both sides of the aisle, will be short and to the point. A final vote is predicted for next Tuesday, February 16th.
For those of you who may be confused by the blizzard of misdirection and misinformation being being given life by the media, this is about an attempt by the President of the United States to precipitate an insurrection aimed at preventing the Congress from performing its constitutionally mandated duty to officially count the ballots cast by the electoral college.
Following a “Stop the Steal” rally where the president spoke for 70 minutes, hundreds of people marched to the Capitol building, overwhelmed security forces, vandalized the facility, and in the process injured 140 law enforcement officers.
Seven people died as a result of this assault on democracy. Elected officials were made to fear for their lives as the mob chanted for Speaker Nancy Pelosi and Vice President Mike Pence to be killed. A hangman’s gallows was constructed on the Capitol grounds.
The mostly ceremonial counting of the electoral college ballots was finished later that day, but not before 140 House Republicans and a dozen Senators objected to electoral slates from key states, giving their approval --despite the weasel words saying otherwise-- to the Big Lie repeated endlessly by the outgoing president and his minions that the election was invalid.
Since the lie about that day’s violence being somehow led by antifa has been disproven via dozens of arrests and thousands of images being posted on social media, the right has moved on to more desperate allegations.
On February 7, GOP Senator Ron Johnson appeared on the Fox News show “Sunday Morning Futures” and blurted out a conspiracy theory that House Speaker Nancy Pelosi had advance knowledge and details about the Capitol riot.
Johnson is wrong. I have it on good authority the riot was led by Boris Badenov and Natasha Fatale, the Russian (see! Russians!) ne'er-do-wells from the 1960s Bullwinkle cartoon series.
One thing you can be sure of these days, and that’s when Trump’s defenders are moving their lips, they are most likely lying. Even the fifth string lawyers representing him have joined the chorus.
https://twitter.com/ddale8/status/1358848161532542982?s=20
Defense attorneys for Donald Trump stated on page four of their trial brief said the former president only used the word “fight” a handful of times— when actually it was 20.
Via Politico:
The filing described some of Trump’s conduct — like pressuring Georgia Secretary of State Brad Raffensperger to “find” additional votes to overturn Biden’s win — as purely political. And it cites discredited, partisan sources like The Gateway Pundit by pushing dubious claims that elements of the Jan. 6 insurrection were actually anti-Trump forces, assertions that federal law enforcement and intelligence officials have consistently debunked.
The brief also rejects Democrats’ contention that Trump sat on his hands during the riots while the violence festered. Rather, they described him as “horrified” by what he witnessed and said there was a “flurry of activity” inside the White House that was impeded by “complex procedural elements.”
However, the brief does not contend with evidence that Trump was calling senators to continue his attack on the election results during the riots, or his tweet criticizing then-Vice President Mike Pence for upholding the election results even after he had fled the Senate chamber during the riots.
The defense team’s briefs could be written in Klingon and the prosecution’s case illustrated with prehistoric cave drawings--the result will be the same. It’s politically impossible for 17 Republican Senators to opt for conviction, matter what the legal arguments are.
Last month, 45 out of 50 Republican senators voted for a motion declaring the impeachment trial unconstitutional because Trump no longer holds federal office, a vote seen as a harbinger for the eventual vote on whether to convict Trump.
Furthermore, should a miracle happen and a bunch of fogeys grow spines, the show will go on.
In the unlikely event of a conviction, the defense will attempt to overturn the verdict — itself an unprecedented effort. Trump’s lawyers say the conviction would be “unauthorized” and “non-binding” — and that if Trump runs for president again, it “would be challenged in a court of law.”
There are those who argue for Democrats to go all-in and call witnesses. That’s certainly the viewpoint of Washington Post columnist Greg Sargent:
A full accounting is critical. Republicans on the state level are racing forward with new voter-suppression efforts, and Democrats have proposed national reforms that expand voting rights and curb counter-majoritarian tactics. They must be prepared to nix the filibuster to make these reforms law.
A big political battle is coming over all this as well. Democrats must fully dramatize the GOP’s continuing radicalization when it comes to embracing such tactics, so the public understands the stakes of what will be nothing less than a full-scale war over the future of our democracy.
That won’t be helped by any failure to create a full record of the most sustained effort to overturn an election and our democracy in modern times, including via intimidation and violence, or any failure to implicate the GOP in it.
As much as I want to agree with the sentiment expressed above, I doubt that more drama is going to change public perception.
The value of the impeachment process has diminished since the days when disgruntled Republican Senators could persuade a sitting President to vacate office for the good of the country.
With GQP Congresscritter Marjorie Taylor Greene’s introduction of articles of impeachment against Joe Biden on his first day of office, every president in the past four decades — with the exception of Barack Obama — has now had formal articles of impeachment introduced against them.
Get this deed done. Put it on Trump’s permanent record.
Then the Congress needs to get busy with the things that will really undo his legacy and weaken the foundation of what little ideology exists within the GQP.
Let’s get bold new programs started...save the planet...make those ninnies at Fox eat crow. The longer Democrats and the Biden administration wait to do the things that truly unite the American people , the harder it will be to get them done.
https://twitter.com/DHStokyo/status/1358857076269670401?s=20
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