Odds Are Trump's Senate Impeachment Trial Will Be a Farce
Trump's team could simply argue that, say, the violence at the Capitol was a function of a mind-control ray emanating from the top of the Smithsonian Castle. The result would probably be the same. -- Philip Bump
Former President Donald Trump’s legal team quit over the weekend.
On Saturday New York Times correspondent Maggie Haberman Tweeted "A person familiar with the situation called it a ‘mutual" decision.’
Yeah, it was mutual, alright. Trump wants to claim massive voter fraud as part of his defense. His lawyers didn’t feel like risking contempt charges or disbarment for presenting non-existent evidence.
A plausible legal argument would be that impeaching a president once they’ve left office is unconstitutional. It’s the justification Republican Senators want to use to vote against the House Democrats’ case.
The ex-President faces charges of “incitement of insurrection” in the mob invasion of the U.S. Capitol on January 6.
According to the Washington Post, House Democrats have made plans to bring evidence linking Trump to the injuries sustained by police officers during the insurrection, and are using cell phone footage taken on January 6 to “build an emotionally compelling impeachment case.”
At least 140 Capitol Police officers were injured during the day’s events, according to their union. One is in danger of losing an eye, one was stabbed with a metal fence stake, and others have suffered spinal and brain damage, Gus Papathanasiou, the chair of the Capitol Police Labor Committee, said this week.
One officer died from injuries sustained during the attack, and two other police officers who responded to the attack have died by suicide in the days since. Four of the rioters also died on January 6; one was shot by police, while three others died in separate medical emergencies, according to DC Metropolitan Police at the time.
Despite the bad news about the Trump defense team quitting, it didn’t take long for a couple of other fame-seeking lawyers to sign up to represent the accused.
On Sunday, Trump announced the latest legal team charged with handling his second impeachment trial in the Senate. The two lawyers representing him will now be David Schoen, a criminal defense lawyer with offices in Alabama and New York, and Bruce Castor, a former county prosecutor in Pennsylvania.
Schoen’s latest claim to fame is that he was the last outsider to see Jeffrey Epstein alive. During a five hour meeting in the summer of 2019 the disgraced millionaire asked him to quarterback his defense against new abuse allegations. He also represented Roger Stone, convicted of obstructing a congressional investigation into allegations of collusion with Russia during the 2016 election. Stone's prison sentence was commuted by Trump.
Trump's other lawyer, Bruce Castor, is known in legal circles as the guy who decided not to prosecute Bill Cosby despite substantial evidence of his guilt. In 2016, when another prosecutor pressed charges Castor testified he’d promised Cosby he would never be charged. A judge ruled that wasn't binding.
Heather Digby Parton, writing at Salon, tells us about what kind of defense to expect:
Trump's new attorneys would appear to be the kind of lawyers who will do for his impeachment trial what Dr. Scott Atlas did for his COVID response. When asked about the Democrats' reported trial strategy, Trump adviser Jason Miller told Axios' Mike Allen: "'Emotionally charged' is code for 'We know this is unconstitutional, but we're going to try to put on a show anyway.'"
Trump likely sees this trial as a way to once again rally the base with a spirited "defense" stating the election was stolen, this time with an implicit admission that he believes the insurrection was justified. If he does that all the pundits insist it's going to make the GOP senators very nervous and they might end up voting to convict. Will it? Nah. They'll find a way to make sure he faces no accountability at their hands. We have to stop pretending otherwise.
The question is whether the "show" the Democrats put on to prosecute Trump will be more convincing to the American people than whatever "circus" Trump is planning. If you want emotion, he's got plenty of emotion ready to go. He might even get some of that incitement going all over again. But the evidence of what he did that day is irrefutable. He's guilty as sin.
Trump has lost his big Twitter audience and he knows GOP Senators will acquit him. So look for him to use his trial to launch his next political move. The former president won't waste this opportunity defending himself since the outcome is already assured. He has other plans.
Philip Bump at the Washington Post explains:
There's no real need for Trump's defense team to argue against the incitement charge, simply because they almost certainly already have the votes to acquit. They need to do enough to make that vote easy; they have to at least give their allies in the Senate a prima facie reason to declare that Trump didn't actually incite the violence. But everyone involved knows that Trump's team doesn't need to and almost certainly won't actually convince anyone of anything. So in practice Trump's team could simply argue that, say, the violence at the Capitol was a function of a mind-control ray emanating from the top of the Smithsonian Castle. The result would probably be the same.
Instead of defending him against the most serious charge any president has faced, Trump is demanding that his team defend his pride. Instead of using the moment to rationalize his post-election rhetoric as harmless, he’s apparently hoping to use the platform provided by the trial to amplify the rhetoric that led to the violence in the first place.
His new attorneys will be exposing themselves to professional penalties by sanctioning this kind of theatrics. From a CNN interview with former federal prosecutor Elie Honig :
"I wonder, if his defense does bring up his false election fraud claim on the Senate floor, can they be sanctioned the way lawyers are sanctioned, or at least opened to sanction, [for] making false claims in court?" asked anchor Jim Sciutto. "In other words, do court-like rules apply in a Senate impeachment trial?"
"Absolutely," said Honig. "Donald Trump's attorneys make this Big Lie defense, this idea that the election was stolen, at their own professional peril. Attorneys carry ethical burdens with them wherever they go, whether it's in a civil court, a civil court, or impeachment court. And while, attorneys have broad discretion and a duty, really, to represent their clients zealously, aggressively, there are lines, and one of those lines is you cannot go into a court or Congress or any official proceeding and just state a lie and put forth a lie, especially as in this case, if it's a dangerous one. They could be sanctioned by their bar committees, their reputations will suffer. So there's real consequences."
The circumstances surrounding the January 6 Capitol insurrection are still being revealed, and the New York Times has a detailed accounting:
Thursday the 12th was the day Mr. Trump’s flimsy, long-shot legal effort to reverse his loss turned into something else entirely — an extralegal campaign to subvert the election, rooted in a lie so convincing to some of his most devoted followers that it made the deadly Jan. 6 assault on the Capitol almost inevitable.
Weeks later, Mr. Trump is the former President Trump. In coming days, a presidential transition like no other will be dissected when he stands trial in the Senate on an impeachment charge of “incitement of insurrection.” Yet his lie of an election stolen by corrupt and evil forces lives on in a divided America.
A New York Times examination of the 77 democracy-bending days between election and inauguration shows how, with conspiratorial belief rife in a country ravaged by pandemic, a lie that Mr. Trump had been grooming for years finally overwhelmed the Republican Party and, as brake after brake fell away, was propelled forward by new and more radical lawyers, political organizers, financiers and the surround-sound right-wing media...
...Across those 77 days, the forces of disorder were summoned and directed by the departing president, who wielded the power derived from his near-infallible status among the party faithful in one final norm-defying act of a reality-denying presidency.
Throughout, he was enabled by influential Republicans motivated by ambition, fear or a misplaced belief that he would not go too far.
“We will never give up. “We will never concede. It doesn't happen,” Trump said at the Save America rally before the riot at the Capitol. “You don't concede when there's theft involved. Our country has had enough. We will not take it anymore, and that is what this is all about.”
https://twitter.com/crzyfkinworld/status/1354873547181715467?s=20
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