House Speaker Nancy Pelosi played this perfectly. Delaying the transmission of the articles of impeachment to the Senate generated exactly the desired extra attention to the moment and opened up the time necessary for critical new information to come out. And new information did come out. That information included John Bolton’s yes-he-did manuscript leaks, as well as a whole series of FOIA responses showing the desperate moves going on inside a White House scrambling to cover-up actions it knew were illegal.
Rep. Adam Schiff played this perfectly. Day in and day out, Schiff not only provided the Senate with a master class in presenting a case, but he also ended those days with speeches that called back to the best of American oratory. And while Schiff was delivering a live action remake of Mr. Smith Goes to Washington, the rest of the House management team absolutely had his back. Val Demings, Zoe Lofgren, and Hakeem Jeffries were standouts, but the whole crew pulled its weight and then some.
And that only makes what’s happening in the Senate today a thousand times more difficult.
I cannot imagine how hard it was for Adam Schiff and the rest of the House team to get up this morning. They went to the wall. Left it all on the field. Whatever metaphor for “did absolutely everything they could and then some” you prefer, it applies in this case. They worked hard. They did everything they could to save this nation, against impossible odds and in dire circumstances. They charged that hill and did not hold back for a moment.
Campaign ActionStill ahead of them are four hours of arguments about calling witnesses. Four hours made absolutely pointless by the declaration ahead of time of a Republican majority that they have already made their decision based on the fine legal tradition of We Don’t Give A Damn. To even make the House team come in on Friday and argue a case when Republicans have already forged Donald Trump’s crown is both a waste of time and cruel. Ted Cruz is surely looking forward to it.
Trump’s legal team could sleep through the final day. They could let Dershowitz call in from Miami to discuss underwear brands. They might even consider having Pam Bondi present a short course in “How to get away with obvious bribery,” but senators have already had that course. It’s called being a Republican in the Senate.
Papa, if Mitch McConnell sat down with that nice lady from Alaska and promised her hundreds of millions for her vote, is that impeachable?
No, my child. That’s how Republicans in the Senate work every f’ing day.
On Friday the House team will walk into a Senate whose Republican members has already decided to join Trump in his cover-up. Except that’s not even the right term. They’ve already decided that obstruction is valid tool for a White House that wants to end congressional oversight in full. Except … even that’s not enough. Because the Republican senators aren’t unaware of Trump’s actions, or even particularly concerned about who else finds out. They’re simply putting their loyalty to Trump over liberally, literally everything.
They’ve decided they don’t care about obstruction. They don’t care about the elimination of their oversight authority. Because they’re not denying what Trump did. The final decision from the Republican Senate didn’t simply put a gun to the head of American democracy. It fired it.
Which doesn’t mean that they won’t come out of the Senate, after agreeing that Trump was guilty, and march right in front of Fox cameras to proclaim his total innocence. Of course they will. After all, it was a perfect call.
When the House impeachment managers come back to the other end of Capitol Hill, they should do so with heads held high. More than that, they should be met with trumpets. With flowers. With every plaudit that can be brought to genuine heroes of their nation. They should get a parade.
And then there should be another parade of people in the streets. In every street in the country.
Friday is the day. The day Senate Republicans close out the impeachment cover-up, that is. After the “opening” arguments from both sides and two days of question-and-answer in the impeachment trial of Donald Trump, senators will debate whether to have witnesses and new evidence—something the vast majority of Republicans have already said they’re not interested in, in some cases because they admit that Donald Trump did try to pressure Ukraine to interfere in the 2020 elections and they just don’t care.
The trial once again begins at 1 PM ET, and will start with four hours of debate—two hours for each side—over witnesses and evidence. Presuming that fails—as it is overwhelmingly likely to do, because, again, Republicans do not care how corrupt Trump is and want to set him free to continue trying to rig the elections—then here’s what Politico Playbook reports will happen: “There will be a bit of discussion, then a vote on whether to proceed to the final vote. That motion is amendable, so Democrats might want to try to force some tough votes.” That’s the motion to go to the final vote. After that comes the final vote. Here’s the fun part: “SENATORS we spoke to Thursday predicted this could go as late as 3 or 4 a.m. Saturday morning.” Because Republicans really, really want to wrap this up.
All this is how it’s supposed to go. In theory there’s a chance that some Republican or other could have a sudden attack of caring about something other than Republican power and vote for a fair trial, but … in theory there’s also a chance that pigs could someday fly. As of this writing, Sen. Lisa Murkowski hasn’t announced her decision on the vote on whether to consider witnesses, and if she votes yes, that will produce a tie that lands in Chief Justice John Roberts’ lap. But that’s to say that the likeliest path to witnesses now requires both Murkowski and Roberts, i.e., two partisan Republicans, one of whom last night joined a question arguing that even if Trump did everything alleged (which he did), it still wouldn’t be impeachable. The less likely path involves some Republican who has heretofore not indicated that they might vote for witnesses suddenly coming forward, which, ha ha ha ha ha, yeah, right.
In short, buckle up for a long, long day of Republicans telling us it doesn’t matter that Donald Trump tried to use the power of the presidency for his own personal benefit, to the detriment of American democracy, and then obstructed any effort at congressional oversight.
By David Kamioner | January 31, 2020
As news of the Bolton and Schiff videos, clips that destroyed their witness argument, closed in on the Democrats the president’s opponents got stranger and more rabid. They knew they were likely to lose the whole match on Friday and they began to lash out at the GOP legal team, themselves, and at their real enemies, the voters of the United States of America.
Developments included:
RELATED: Impeachment Trial Could Be Over Friday Night
The trial resumes, perhaps for the last day, Friday afternoon.
This piece originally appeared in LifeZette and is used by permission.
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