Donald J. Trump could stand in the well of the Senate and shoot somebody and his lawyers would argue no law could stop him. Republican witnesses would refuse to testify, and Sen. Majority Leader Mitch McConnell would disallow others to in any impeachment trial.
Trumpism and McConnell have in three short years bankrupted American democracy, decimated our international standing, and rendered the United States all but a laughingstock. Trump’s failed casinos lasted longer.
McConnell on Monday issued his terms for the conduct of Trump’s impeachment trial beginning today for abuse of power and obstruction of Congress. McConnell sees Speaker Nancy Pelosi’s abuse of power charge and raises her with abuse of process. “No witnesses. No evidence. No time. No cameras, ” tweeted David Frum.
“Sen. McConnell’s proposed rules depart dramatically from the Clinton precedent – in ways that are designed to prevent the Senate and the American people from learning the full truth about President Trump’s actions that warranted his impeachment,” Senator Minority Leader Chuck Schumer said in a statement. “The McConnell rules don’t even allow the simple, basic step of admitting the House record into evidence at the trial.”
“Under this resolution, Senator McConnell is saying he doesn’t want to hear any of the existing evidence, and he doesn’t want to hear any new evidence. It’s a cover-up, and the American people will see it for exactly what it is.”
A Potemkin court. A show trial without a show. A sham process for a sham president. But then, Trump is the Republicans’ sham president.
Twenty-four hours for the prosecution to present its case over two days. The same for the president’s defense. Senators then get 16 hours to present questions, then four hours of arguments, equally divided. Only then will the Senate consider whether to call witnesses. Unless Democrats can persuade four Republicans to vote with them, McConnell’s prevent defense will hold. If it does not, witnesses must first be deposed. McConnell wants no surprises.
The Washington Post reports Trump’s lawyers and GOP defenders are “quietly gaming out contingency plans” to keep former national security adviser John Bolton out of public view should Democrats somehow persuade enough Republicans he should testify. Option 1 of their Plan B is to move any Bolton testimony to a classified setting. Bolton, who called Trump’s attempt to extract an investigation into Democratic rival Joe Biden from Ukraine a “drug deal,” is the key fact witness in the case and has said he would testify if subpoenaed.
The president’s lawyers issued a 110-page filing laying out the outlines of their defense, claiming Trump did “absolutely nothing wrong.” That language echoes the president’s.
Trump thinks he’s done nothing wrong because he’s done nothing out of the ordinary for him. Shielded by inherited wealth, he has lived his whole life transgressing laws or evading them. Donald Trump routinely deploys threats of lawsuits and teams of lawyers to dodge virtually any culpability for acting like Donald Trump. Before accepting the presidency, he had never held a job where he was accountable to anyone. He doesn’t understand the very concept and now thinks it all unfair. When Trump tells the truth, it is by accident.
When you’re accustomed to privilege, equality under law feels like oppression.
Released today, “A Very Stable Genius” by Pulitzer winners Philip Rucker and Carol Leonnig of the Washington Post, presents yet another picture of chaos and dysfunction in the Trump White House. An incident they report regarding Trump’s view of the Foreign Corrupt Practices Act paints perhaps the sharpest image yet of a man who has no shame, who respects no boundaries, and who sees nothing wrong in corrupt behavior if there is profit in it.
Catherine Rampell explains:
The FCPA, passed after Watergate, was a trailblazing law. It said that bribes were illegal not only when paid to U.S. officials, but also when paid to foreign ones. That is, people or entities that operate in the United States (whether or not they’re American) can be held criminally liable here if they grease palms in, say, China.
In criminalizing the payment of bribes in foreign jurisdictions, the FCPA arguably made the United States the first country to significantly leverage its own market power to encourage more ethical business practices everywhere.
But ethics are for suckers, in Trump’s view. He quashed a bipartisan anti-corruption rule soon after taking office. He’s been looking for some way to repeal the FCPA since then, calling it a “horrible law” that has “the world is laughing at us.”
Leonnig and Rucker report Trump complained in early 2017, “It’s just so unfair that American companies aren’t allowed to pay bribes to get business overseas.”
“Does ‘our companies’ refer to the Trump Organization?” Rampell asks. “Or perhaps, given the president’s frequent conflation of his own private and government interests, the executive branch of the U.S. government?”
This is the man for whom McConnell and other Trump defenders would sacrifice any dignity they have left; for whom they would set the Constitution alight and snicker as it burns; all the while feigning patriotism and love of country in pursuit of personal power. They are no better than Trump himself. Perhaps worse. They know better and just don’t give a shit.
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