QUESTIONS

Fifty-one United States Senators voted to shorten the constitutionally mandated impeachment "trial" by voting against hearing witnesses. Several arguments were advanced in support of that bizarre result:

1. Trump's defense team argued it was the House's job to gather the evidence, and they didn't do it. The House rushed to impeach because i) Barr's DOJ would not prosecute witnesses the House held in contempt, and ii) courts were way too slow in deciding subpoena enforcement cases. That was the House's decision, and it's not the Senate's job to do the House's job. The House brought to the Senate an uncooked stew and the House Managers need to live with their failure.

Let's examine the logic behind that claim. Let's assume (as I think is true) the House did rush to impeach for the foregoing reasons, and let's assume that the decision taken by the House leaders was (I do not agree) flawed. I.e.,the House should have taken the time to hear witnesses. The House made a mistake.

Question: Recognizing the House made a mistake in  its pursuit of the truth, why would a majority of the Senators vote to make the same mistake?

2.  Trump's counsel argued that it was important to bring the proceedings to a close. If witnesses were called, there could be no identifiable end date for the trial.

Question: Where in the Constitution does it say that in impeachment trials, brevity is a more important value than the search for truth?

3. Bolton was the subject of much argument. His unpublished book contained a statement that he had a one-on-one conversation in which Trump made clear that he was withholding assistance funds to Ukraine until Zelensky made a public statement he was pursuing a Biden investigation.

a) Trump's chief counsel Sekulow argued that the Senate should not call Bolton as a witness because the Bolton allegations were "unsourced". I know from personal experience the strains of preparing for trial. Clearly, Trump's counsel Sekulow suffered from overwork, but I suggest this was not a slip of the tongue. He repeated the argument several times, yet

 at the time of the Sekulow argument, the Bolton manuscript had been in possession of the White House for weeks. Clearly the President's lawyers knew what Bolton had written, and they knew that Bolton's statement demolished the defense team's argument that the charge against Trump was hearsay because Bolton was a direct witness to the Trump confession.

 Question: So how could Sekulow urge the Senate to skip over Bolton because the Bolton report  was "unsourced?" That's not only false, it's disingenuous At the time he made his argument, Seculow knew the source of the Bolton report was Bolton.

b) Trump's team argued that calling Bolton would take too much time because the President would assert Executive Privilege, and there would be a lengthy court battle. Putting side the question whether Roberts could or would promptly rule on the privilege issue ( I think he would not) it is important to note that Trump personally responded to the Bolton report by denying it. Trump insisted he never said that to Bolton, and that Bolton made the whole thing up. The Bolton claim was fiction.

Question: How could the President invoke a privilege over a conversation he insists never happened? Does the Trumpian version of Executive Privilege cover fiction too? Hasn't the President, once again, undercut his own legal position with his tweets?

Finally, I conclude these random post-hoc meanderings with a reflection on the unceasing hypocrisy of the Senate Republicans. In a thin post-trial effort to justify the decision to acquit in face of overwhelming evidence of guilt, several Senators said they voted the way they did because they did not want to remove Trump inasmuch as he had learned his lesson. The leader of that cheering section was "she-who-always-disappoints," Republican Senator from Maine, Susan Collins.

No sooner were the words out of her mouth, then she had to eat them. The Chastened One, at a Prayer Breakfast yet, (where the theme was "Love your Enemies") viciously attacked his adversaries. Trump directly challenged the Catholic religious devotion of Nancy Pelosi and that of Mormon Mitt Romney. In a meeting later in the White House, he attacked the integrity of Representative Adam Schiff, and said the whole Democratic party was "evil." The Republicans cheered.

Yup, he's changed, alright.

Sue, ya nailed it again.  Lots of luck in November.

A bientot.

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As my regular readers know, there is no fixed schedule for these posts. If you want a notice of each new posting, send me an email and I will add you to the notice list.  mlondon34@gmail.com

For more on my litigation experience with Donald Trump, see my memoir, "The Client Decides," available on Amazon and Kindle.