The second Senate impeachment trial of Donald John Trump begins today at 1 p.m. Eastern time.
This is the fourth presidential impeachment in U.S. history. Trump owns two: the first for abuse of power in attempting to extort personal favors from a foreign head of state, and for obstruction of Congress; the second for inciting a deadly insurrection just a month ago against the government he was sworn to defend. It is a treacherous legacy.
With the COVID-19 death counter headed toward half a million dead in the U.S. alone, with ongoing protests against the military coup in Myanmar, with dozens dead and hundreds missing in a climate change disaster in India, and with two U.S. carrier groups conducting naval exercises in a tense South China Sea, the impeachment trial feels a bit like U.S. navel-gazing instead. But here we are. Again.
Trump’s defense team will attempt to dismiss the case today, arguing that trying a president who is now a private citizen is unconstitutional. Most legal scholars agree that past precedent and practice say it is not. Because an impeachment conviction prevents an official from holding future office, it “defies logic to suggest that the Senate is prohibited from trying and convicting former officeholders,” Republican attorney Charles J. Cooper wrote in a Sunday Wall Street Journal column. Nonetheless, Trump’s team will argue otherwise today in four hours of debate.
House impeachment managers will present their first arguments on Wednesday at noon. The Associated Press reports each side will have up to 16 hours to present arguments:
The Democrats are expected to try and take advantage of the senators’ own experiences, tapping into their emotions as they describe in detail — and show on video — what happened as the mob broke through police barriers, injured law enforcement officers, ransacked the Capitol and hunted for lawmakers. The carnage led to five deaths.
The impeachment managers have argued that the mob subverted democracy and that Trump was “singularly” responsible for their actions after months of falsely saying there was widespread fraud in the election. They will appeal to Senate Republicans to vote to convict after most of them criticized Trump in the wake of the riots, with many saying he was responsible for the violence.
There was no widespread fraud in the election. Election officials across the country, and even then-Attorney General William Barr, contradicted Trump’s claims, and dozens of legal challenges to the election put forth by Trump and his allies were dismissed.
No witnesses are expected at this time. Trump himself will not appear to testify. Seventeen Republicans need to vote with all Senate Democrats to reach the two-thirds margin required to convict.
The prosecution expects senators’ fresh recollections and vivid videos of the violence on Capitol grounds will help make their case along with months of Trump’s unsupported lies about election fraud and his own catalog of violent rhetoric. The presentation is expected to be fast-paced and aimed at renewing outrage at the deadly insurrection of Jan. 6.
Michelle Goldberg speaks for many in saying she dreads another impeachment putting the national spotlight again on Trump’s pathological narcissism and amorality. There is important legislative work to be done that this trial will delay:
The Senate trial will almost certainly not bring justice, because Republican senators make up half the jury, and even if many of them privately disapprove of Trump’s insurrectionary attempts to cling to office, their base does not. If this process drags on, it will slow the urgent work of passing an economic rescue package, increasing human suffering and possibly the chance that the party of Marjorie Taylor Greene will retake the House in the midterms.
But yet again, the only way out is through. A full public accounting of how the insurrection unfolded is necessary even if the Senate fails to convict. Trump’s true conviction will be in the court of public opinion here and abroad as well as in the pages of history. A congressional commission should follow to ensure the documentation is available for posterity.
Goldberg continues:
This is necessary not just to cement Trump’s disgrace, but because his election lies are being used to justify new restrictions on voting. Trump’s attack on democracy didn’t begin on Jan. 6, and even though he’s out of office, it hasn’t ended.
“Obviously there’s a political price that you pay in looking back instead of looking forward,” said Norm Eisen, co-counsel for the Democrats in Trump’s first impeachment trial. “No one really wants to ever hear from or talk about Donald Trump again, but we have no choice.”
The Republican Party has made its choice and its bed. God help the rest of us not have to lie in it.