On Monday evening, House impeachment managers, Senate leadership, and Donald Trump’s legal team reached agreement on the rules under which the impeachment trial will proceed. In many ways, the trial will look like the one that followed Trump’s first impeachment: Each side will have up to 16 hours over two days to present their case, there will be a period of debate in which senators can submit written questions to either side, then the Senate will vote on whether to hear from witnesses. That last vote will happen only if the House impeachment managers request witnesses, and at the moment it doesn’t appear this will be the case because the crimes Trump committed were done in front of the nation, and every senator and representative present bore witness to the results of those crimes.
The rules for the trial will be voted on in the Senate on Tuesday. Assuming everything goes as expected, House managers will begin presenting their case on Wednesday. But as the Senate heads into the second impeachment trial in a year, Trump is looking for more than an acquittal from Republicans. He’s looking for a vote that confirms the party is his, now and forever.
As The Washington Post reports, the stage is set for a trial over what are by far the most serious impeachment charges ever to be considered. Last year, Donald Trump was impeached for using his office in an attempt to extort the leader of a foreign government into interfering in a United States election. It appeared to be—and was—a clear case of violating the oath of office, exploiting the power of the presidency for personal gain, and threatening an allied nation to generate false claims against a political opponent.
In that Senate trial, Republicans signaled Trump that their support was absolute, and that they would not even consider the evidence against him. Bolstered by the knowledge that he was free to do as he pleased, Trump went on to spend the period before the election preparing his followers with this message: “The only way we can lose this election is if it’s rigged.” Trump delivered this statement not once but dozens of times at rallies, on Twitter, and before the media. When Trump did lose the election—by a wide margin—he doubled down on the idea that the election wasn’t valid, repeatedly attempted to overturn the results, and drove his followers with claims that ultimately generated the events on Jan. 6.
Now Trump is hoping to do it again. According to the Post, Trump’s lawyers will continue to argue that the Senate trial is somehow unconstitutional. To do so, they’ve leaned heavily on statements from Michigan State University Professor Brian Kalt, citing Kalt’s statements in both sets of replies they have provided to the House charges. However, as NPR reports, the statements aren’t just taken out of context. They’ve been turned inside out.
"The worst part is the three places where they said I said something when, in fact, I said the opposite," Kalt said in an interview with NPR.
Kalt’s argument is not that someone’s impeachment trial can’t go forward after they’re out of office, but that they can’t be impeached for actions taken while out of office. He also argues that impeachment is about more than just removal, though his work is cited by Trump’s attorneys as if he claims the reverse.
But it doesn’t matter that there’s not real support for the claim that Trump can’t be tried over crimes which he carried out in office, and for which he was impeached while still in office. What’s important is that Republicans intend to use this claim of “big constitutional issues” to simply ignore all evidence put forward against Trump. Just as with the 2020 trial, Republicans have already set up Trump’s “Get Out of Jail Free” card and are prepared to execute on that plan no matter what evidence the House managers provide.
The end result is that Donald Trump expects to emerge from this trial, as he did in 2020, with an even firmer control of the Republican Party. As Politico reports, the Republican Party has already “coalesced back behind” the “Teflon” Trump. Trump and his allies are confident that he will emerge from the trial as the only real power in the party, able to punish every Republican who doesn’t go along with his acquittal.
Trump’s not wrong. Criminals have long known that the best way to secure the loyalty of others is to involve them in a crime. It’s not just the people on the receiving end of knuckle-breaking goons who fall in line. Once you’re a goon, it’s very, very hard to ever be human again.
In 2020, Senate Republicans went along with Trump’s crimes against an American ally and American elections. In 2021, they’re expected to sign on again, this time to the destruction of democracy and sedition.
And how do you come back from that?