The better venue at that point is a
therapist's couch.
As opposed to the criminal's
stage.
This was not an option in the
second impeachment trial of former President Donald Trump.
The scene of the crime -- the
US Capitol and its Senate chamber -- was the courtroom. Victims of the
crime -- the Senators themselves -- were the jurors. Other victims -- the
House managers presenting the case for conviction -- were the
prosecutors. And still others -- the working Congressional staffers and
US Capitol police there on January 6 -- were spectators.
For all those victims, the
trial became a series of reminders.
The Congress was reminded that,
on January 6, it was only feet away from a violent mob bent on killing or
kidnapping some of them in order to stop all of them. Senators Mitt Romney and
Chuck Schumer were reminded that they were actually running into that mob --
and the uncertain fate that awaits the marriage of target with violence --
until Eugene Goodman of the Capitol police intercepted and redirected
them. Speaker Pelosi's staff was reminded that those who invaded the
Speaker's offices in the hunt for their boss failed to find and attack them
only because the mob couldn't breach the two closed doors behind which they lay
hidden under a conference table, whispering into cell phones for police
assistance.
And, sadly, at the end of the
day, America was reminded that, even after the horror of January 6, the party
of Lincoln is still . . .
The party of Trump.
The single article of
impeachment charged Trump with inciting insurrection. To find him guilty, at
least seventeen Republicans would have had to join forty-eight Democrats and
two Independents in concluding that he did so.
That was not a heavy
lift.
In the sixteen hours they took
presenting their case, the House managers laid out in meticulous detail how
Trump had invited and incited the mob on January 6 to overrun the US Capitol in
an effort to stop Congress from counting the Electoral College votes and
certifying Joe Biden as the winner of last year's Presidential election.
The vast majority of the
evidence came from Trump's own mouth and tweets. In the years and months
leading up to last November's election, he had repeated on dozens of occasions
the lie that he could lose the election only as a consequence of fraud, and in
the two-plus months afterward, he repeated those and other false claims that the
dead had voted, that Biden ballots had been invented, and that digital scanners
had been programmed in favor of his opponent. None of those claims were
remotely credible and all of them had been repeatedly rejected either by courts
that heard them or government officials who investigated them.
At the same time, on January 6, Trump urged his followers to "fight like hell" and
"stop the steal". He praised Rudy Giuliani, who at the same rally had called for
"trial by combat". In the past, he had praised a politician who
body-slammed a journalist, rally-goers who physically attacked Trump opponents,
and armed militia bent on killing a sitting governor. In all ways,
therefore, he had made it perfectly clear that, in "fighting like
hell", violence was acceptable. Equally damning, once the riot
started, anywhere from three to six people tried to convince him to immediately
intervene and tell his supporters to stop. He did nothing. Instead,
he enjoyed the carnage.
On January 26, forty-five Republicans voted to dismiss the impeachment case against Trump on the grounds that the Senate lacked jurisdiction because he was no longer President. That motion was defeated and this should have been the end of the issue. Jurisdiction is a threshold question. Once you have it, you cannot disclaim it. In other words, once the full Senate decided it in fact had jurisdiction -- which it did in voting down the motion -- even those who voted for the motion should have decided the case solely on the basis of Trump's guilt or innocence.
That, however, was not good
enough for Mitch McConnell.
After voting to acquit, McConnell
gave a speech demonstrating Trump's guilt beyond any doubt but arguing once
again that the Constitution itself gave the Senate no right to hold the now
ex-President accountable by convicting him on the article of impeachment.
McConnell based his claim on the views of Justice Joseph Story who in 1833
wrote the first treatise on American constitutional law and concluded in it
that impeachment in fact was limited to current office holders.
Story's position has been
rejected by most scholars and previously by the Senate itself. In fact,
even Story himself was skeptical, qualifying his opinion by stating that it was
subject to review by the Senate and that in any case the Senate's determination
would constitute the ultimate authority on the matter. Since then, the
Senate has spoken twice on the issue, once a little less than two weeks ago in
Trump's case and earlier in 1876 in the case of the impeachment of then ex-Secretary
of War William Belknap. In both instances, the Senate concluded that it
had jurisdiction to try the impeachment of a former official. In other
words, it rejected McConnell's position.
For good measure, even an
ex-President, John Quincy Adams, has weighed-in on the issue.
In 1846, while serving in the
House, Adams told his colleagues that "I hold myself, so long as I have
breath of life in my body, amenable to impeachment by this House for everything
I did during the time I held any public office."
McConnell's speech was
delivered with all the gravitas he generally marshals in the performance of his
official duties. Not the same, however, could be said for many of his confreres.
On trial Tuesday, Missouri’s Republican Senator Josh Hawley perched himself in
the Senate gallery above the floor where all his comrades were sitting at their
desks. With his feet casually up, Hawley reviewed paperwork as the House
managers below presented stark video evidence setting out Trump's months long
advance of the big lie, his express instructions to the armed and dangerous mob on
January 6 that they march to the Capitol and "Stop the Steal", and
the mob's violent and deadly attacks on Capitol police as it overran the
building.
Hawley, who had actually
saluted some of the mob on his way into the Capitol that day, was among those
who earlier claimed the Senate lacked jurisdiction. As noted, most
Constitutional scholars reject this view. Their principal fear is that doing so
will give chief executives permission to engage in high crimes and
misdemeanors -- pretty much a la Trump and his "Stop the Steal"
induced riot -- so long as those high crimes occur at the end of their terms.
Hawley didn’t care. With designs on the 2024 GOP nomination, he covets the
Trump base. Jurisdiction was one of his political life lines.
The other was sheer idiocy.
Even after the riot on January 6,
when Congress returned to complete the work Trump’s riot had interrupted,
Hawley still insisted on being one of the Senate sponsors demanding that
Congress refuse to count Pennsylvania's electoral votes. That effort raised
ignorance of the law to an art form. The courts had already upheld
Pennsylvania's vote, as they had Michigan’s, Wisconsin's, Georgia's and
Arizona's, the selected targets of Trump's putsch. Hawley’s opinion to the
contrary was nonsense.
As for the rest of the GOP, they were either bored . . .
Or insane
The bored were variously
described as "struggling to stay awake" (Indiana's Sen. Mike Braun),
"not paying much attention" (Iowa's Sen. Marsha Blackburn), or
"doodling" (Kentucky’s Sen. Rand Paul). Florida's Sen. Rick
Scott was seen examining "what appeared to be a map of Southeast
Asia."
The lunatic fringe was occupied
by South Carolina's Lindsey Graham.
Following the conclusion of
Wednesday's session, Sen. Graham lambasted the Capitol police, saying they
hadn't used enough deadly force on the mob. Ashli Babbit, the 35 year old
Air Force veteran shot and killed as she climbed through a broken window into
the Speaker's lobby, apparently needed company. Whether that company
would have included more police officers -- and not just more mobsters -- went
unasked (and unanswered), but this too is the GOP way. Their favorite
fundraiser/lobbyist, the NRA, routinely endorses a bullets uber alles approach
to crime, even when that approach is likely to create, as it would have on
January 6 (the mobsters had guns too), more dead bodies.
But that was Graham's take
regardless.
Memo to South Carolina voters
-- aren't you tired of being on the wrong side of our (un)civil wars?
After the House managers
finished their case on Thursday, Trump's ever-changing cast of attorneys put on
his defense. It lasted less than three hours and consisted of three assertions
-- (1) that all politicians use the word "fight" without being
accused of advocating violence, and Trump hadn't done anything different; (2)
that in arguing that the election was flawed, Trump was merely exercising his
First Amendment rights; and (3) that those who breached the Capitol on January
6 did so of their own accord and are being criminally prosecuted.
Sometimes brevity is the soul of wit.
This time, however, it was just . . .
Witless.
No other President has been like
Trump and Trump himself has been like no other President.
He is sui generis, unique.
A set of one.
You can search the
speeches of others without finding any examples of Presidents or presidential candidates telling
supporters to beat up opponents or equivocating before a crowd in the face of the obvious
potential for violence. No Democrat has ever done this. Trump, however, has either been advocating or winking at violence in the service of his political goals for years. In the person of Marjorie Taylor Greene, he has even created elected Republican acolytes.
You can also search the
speeches of other Presidents and presidential candidates without finding any who, in the immediate aftermath of a
clear electoral defeat confirmed by election officials, the national media and
numerous courts, claimed that he or she won by a landslide, demanded that state
officials "find votes" that did not exist, or summoned thousands so
that they could march on the Capitol to stop a pro forma count
that they claimed, without any evidence whatsoever, constituted
theft.
Finally, you also will never
find another President who, when faced with an armed and deadly attack on the
US Capitol that threatened to take out other public officials, including the
Vice President of the United States and the Speaker of the House, actually
stood by, did nothing, and . . .
Enjoyed it.
The First Amendment neither sanctions nor excuses any of this conduct.
In the end, seven Republicans -- Senators
Collins, Murkowski, Romney, Burr, Sasse, Cassidy and Toomey -- voted to
convict Donald Trump.
Forty-three of their party
colleagues voted "not guilty".
The seven who voted to convict
will become this era's profiles in courage.
As for the forty-three who didn’t, Chuck
Schumer had the last word. Their "failure to convict Donald Trump,” he said, “will live as a vote of infamy in the history of the United States Senate.”
When the impeachment trial ended and Trump was acquited last Saturday, it wasn't the Democrats who lost.
It was the country.
Now is the winter of our discontent.
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