The past two days saw the Senate vote that “late” impeachment’s were constitutional and the House Managers begin to unleash a devastating case against former President Trump. Tragically none of this is likely to matter in the short term but could have a lasting impact on future impeachment issues. Either way, Trump won’t come out of this looking even remotely “good.”
February 9 saw a four hour debate between the House Managers arguing the constitutionality of this specific impeachment and the Trump team in opposition to the proceedings. Simply put, if this was a prize fight the House Managers would have scored a TKO over Team Trump after the first round.
A lot has been made over the style of the House Managers and lack of style of the Trump lawyers. The House Managers were prepared, articulate, coordinated in their presentations, and actually addressed the contested Constitutional issues. The Trump attorneys vacillated between stream of consciousness and primal scream, and needless to say only accidentally addressed the issues.
Team Trump was so bad that their client went out and hired two additional attorneys that day! Attorney Castor started their presentation by stating that given the strength of the House’s presentation the Trump team had to change things up. Evidently Castor’s partner, David Schoen, didn’t know Castor was even going to speak, let alone open Trump’s defense. And that was the high point.
Among other things, Castor argued that historical English precedent had no bearing on the Constitutional issue at play. Evidently neither did American precedent. But with minimal preparation - and that’s being generous - all he could do is riff and hope it made sense. It didn’t. In just one example of a riff gone bad, Castor argued that impeachment was unnecessary because if Trump had broken a law the Department of Justice knew what to do!
As for Schoen, apparently he hoped to repair the damage done by Castor by speaking loud and fast. I mean very loud and very fast. I watched his presentation attentively and I have no clue what he was talking about. It didn’t help that he got defensive when his team got caught misstating the one constitutional scholar they cited in support that late impeachments were unconstitutional. And by misstating I mean stating the exact opposite of what his source, Professor Brian Kalt, wrote.
Schoen was left with arguing about the impact of punctuation in the Impeachment clause and asserting that no less a luminary than Ken Starr agreed with him. And in order to get past the Kalt faux pas, it looked like he sent someone to Barns & Noble to purchase a book by Bernard Bailyn, which he waved around for...?
But Trump needn’t have worried. After what by all accounts was a disastrous presentation by his team, not much changed. According to Senator Tim Scott - SC, ”nothing changed.” And according to the Senate’s Constitutional scholar in residence (he wrote a book too), Mike Lee - UT, Trump should be given a “mulligan.” In other words, Lee agrees that Trump committed a serious offense which could be an impeachable offense but what the hell, he’s a great guy with a nice family so let’s give him a pass. You know, like he’s a first offender.
So going into day two, the House had a cooked jury to contend with. Needing 67 votes with a possible 56 in hand, the House Managers had to scale the metaphorical Mt. Everest. And so they climbed.
For approximately six hours the House Managers laid out in cogent detail the genesis of Trump’s offenses through the January 6 insurrection and invasion of the Capitol. Video not previously released to the public was shown in all its raw detail establishing how close members of Congress were to being captured, hurt, or even possibly killed.
On January 6, 2021 the whole world was watching. On February 9-10, the whole world is watching.
The House Managers meticulously laid out, in exhaustive detail, Trump’s attempts to steal the election. We heard again his phone call to Georgia Secretary of State Raffensperger suggesting how the “find” the votes Trump needed to win the state. We also heard his threats if Raffensperger didn’t comply.
We saw evidence of Trump’s pressure on his Vice-President to act unconstitutionally and send slates os electors back to the states so they could appoint new, pro-Trump, electors. And we saw Trump turning on Pence when the latter refused.
We saw new, horrific videos of the riot in the Capitol. We saw the insurrectionists‘ faces, we heard their voices. We saw innocent people, legislators and staffers alike whose only act was to perform their duties for their country, flee for safety.
We read the social media posts and heard the words of Donald J. Trump that incited the mob to action. He called them to come to Washington on January 6. Ostensibly, another group sponsored the rally but the Trump people picked the venue, picked the speakers, they even picked the music. In his speech, Trump used the word “fight” 20 times. He used the word “peaceful” just once.
We saw a side-by-side presentation of the mob rioting in the Capitol with Trump’s actions - or inaction - during those hours of insurrection. After hours cajoling Trump to put a stop to his minions’ assault on a democratic institution, we only got a very tepid social media post and an equally tepid video. It is reported that Trump reveled in what he unleashed and saw on television.
What we did not see is any effort to send help to the besieged Capitol police. Hopefully this will be addressed today.
And the jury? Josh Hawley sat ostentatious in his indifference to the presentation of evidence. We heard Lindsey Graham dismiss the House Managers’ presentation as “offensive.” We heard Rick Scott describe the entire impeachment process as a waste of time. So much for adherence to their oaths to act as impartial, unbiased jurors.
We’ll see what evidence is presented today.
And yes senators, I’m watching. The country is watching. The whole world is watching the dismantling of our democracy in real time.
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