Republicans are desperate to have no witness testimony at Donald Trump’s second impeachment trial. They’d much rather run on the pretense that the whole thing is unconstitutional for mumble mumble reasons, and power through the whole of the presentation from the House impeachment managers with hands clamped tightly over their ears. After all, as long as they can pretend to be voting on a technical issue about impeachment, it’s less obvious that they’re actually signing on as full participants in sedition.
On the other hand, Democrats in both the House and Senate seem content to also run the impeachment trial without witnesses. Part of that comes from a concern that if there is a trial stretching out for weeks, Republicans will be on television every day pounding the “the Senate is getting nothing done because of this trial” drum—and ignoring the fact that “getting nothing done” was the definition of almost every day that Mitch McConnell controlled the Senate. Democrats also feel like they already have a solid case against Trump without needing testimony. After all … what he’s accused of is an event that everyone in the nation saw unfold. Every member of the House and Senate was a witness.
But the one person who seems determined to force the House impeachment managers to call witnesses against Trump is … Trump. That’s because the direction he’s taking his legal defense practically screams with the need to bring in people who can explain the truth.
Over the last week, Trump’s legal team and the House impeachment managers have filed a series of letters and replies. In the latest of these, the House team walked through the response that Trump’s attorneys made to the original statement from the impeachment managers.
The first three-fourths of that response lean heavily on the idea that trying Trump after his term in office has expired is not constitutional. It’s an argument that is based largely on quotes taken from work by Michigan State University Professor Brian Kalt, only every single instance has been taken out of context, or misquoted, to completely reverse the intention of Kalt’s readings. That alone may be enough to nudge House managers into calling a witness, because having Kalt appear to take apart the statements by Trump’s legal team has to be tempting—especially since this house of straw is the shelter where every Republican in the Senate is hiding from the big bad wolf of facts.
But there are actually two other parts of Trump’s defense that are even more tempting, both when it comes to calling witnesses and focusing the the case by the House.
First, Trump’s team has inserted into the response the claim that Trump felt “horrible” about the events on Jan. 6, and “immediately” took action to secure the Capitol. That’s pretty amazing, because the most “immediate” response that Trump seems to have taken was to focus the attack on Mike Pence. Ten minutes after the first insurgents smashed their way into the Capitol building, Trump tweeted this:
"Mike Pence didn't have the courage to do what should have been done to protect our Country and our Constitution, giving States a chance to certify a corrected set of facts, not the fraudulent or inaccurate ones which they were asked to previously certify. USA demands the truth!"
It was an hour and a half later that the announcement was made that National Guard forces were on their way to the Capitol. And that announcement cited approval by Pence. There was no mention of Trump. There were multiple phone calls and communications that afternoon between the Pentagon, local officials, police leadership, and Pence. Not one of these calls seems to have involved Trump.
As The Washington Post has reported, “Trump was initially pleased” by the assault on the Capitol and the resulting halt in the counting of electoral votes. According to Republican Sen. Ben Sasse, Trump was “walking around the White House confused about why other people on his team weren’t as excited as he was as you had rioters pushing against Capitol Police trying to get into the building.” Witnesses said that Trump “belatedly and reluctantly” called for peace only after ignoring people both inside and outside the White House trying to get him to stop his supporters. Then, when Trump finally appeared before the public—following a demand that he do so by Joe Biden—Trump told the people smearing feces along the halls of Congress, “We love you, you’re very special.”
The claims that Trump was immediately horrified and that he acted quickly to restore order are both clearly contradicted by events and statements on that day. In making these claims, Trump’s legal team makes it more likely that witnesses will be summoned to directly counter these false statements and show that Trump is still lying to the American people.
But there’s one last thing about Trump’s final response that may make it even more necessary to call witnesses, no matter what kind of strange threat Lindsey Graham makes. That’s because Trump has apparently made it clear to his attorneys that at no point can they admit he lost the election. Instead, as The Daily Beast reports, every mention of President Biden is only as “former Vice President Joe Biden” and at no time can the attorneys admit that Trump’s lies about voting machines, dead people voting, truckloads of ballots, sharpies affecting outcomes, or any of the other conspiracy theories raised over the course of months … are lies.
Trump is insisting on running a defense that doesn’t just make false claims about his actions on Jan. 6, but one that extends his incitement to violence right into the impeachment trial itself. And that needs to be made clear enough that no flimsy shelter of “we’re only here to talk about technical issues” can protect Republicans when they give the last scrap of their party to Trump.
(@ColumbiaBugle) 
