IMPEACHMENT TRIAL ADVOCACY

By John P Flannery

ADVOCACY. Let’s just say that we declare the concessions by McConnell give us a fair trial.

Hasn’t happened yet. And will not.

But then. if we said, you got it Mitch, this is now a “fair trial,” and at the end of this “fair trial,” the Republican Senators all vote in lock step with McConnell’s direction to acquit.

Does that mean the “exoneration” was fair and just?

I don’t think so but we are setting ourselves up by even suggesting we can obtain anything approximating fair in the Senate.

We have McConnell who promised he’d take care of Trump. We have four Senators who have received Trump funds to resist impeachment and conviction. We have another Senator, Johnson, who is a fact witness, who spoke to Trump. We have the VP Pence who is implicated in the Ukrainian deal.

This corrupt Republican Caucus, no matter how “impartial” the process may appear, control the end game, the coerced vote based on a Republican Senator’s fear of primaries, and a deathly embrace of a corrupt chief executive, the Trump cult, relying on these flawed Senators to “exonerate” him.

If we say there’s a process that’s fair, are we saying the resulting pre-determined “exoneration” is fair and just and right?

I don’t think so.

But that is what we’ll hear days or weeks from now, from these same ditto heads, if we keep pretending that there can be such a thing as a fair trial in this Senate.

We should instead be saying from start to finish that the Trump-McConnell ditto heads will leap into the political abyss, with bias and calculation to control and manipulate the outcome, whatever is required, to save this corrupt leader.

If they don’t, and I’d be quite surprised at that outcome, and so would every citizen, then they — the Rs — get credit for that public act for abiding by their oath. I would much prefer this outcome.

But, it is almost a certainty that, no matter the process, the outcome is biased and pre-determined.

Our objective therefore is to remove other explanations like — the House never went forward — where we’re headed presently.

We can’t have the story become that the House, the people’s house, failed to be there on the ground, in the well of the Senate chamber, calling out the Senate at every corrupt inflection point in this railroad.

In my opinion, this assault on the process, the Senate, the Republican Caucus requires that we never to say for a moment that there is any “fair trial” that McConnell and his gang will ever approve or implement.

I know some disagree and want to hold onto the victory in the House. Our “precious”? Until when? To what advantage? As it leaves in doubt if the process would ever be fair. We have to charge into the jaws of this unfair process and call it for what it is at every step of the way.

Finally, what good is that laudable victory, passing the articles, esp. given our past insistence that the time to proceed to the Senate was/is of the essence, given the clear and convincing danger Trump presented, and still presents, and then not use it, sit on it.

That’s another kind of failure, the failure to launch consistent with the rigors of the constitution?

Some commentators say that this case differs from Clinton because they had sworn witnesses there. So those rules made sense? Really?

We have sworn witnesses here who testified at depositions and before the nation at public hearings under oath.

Our weakness is not with the case we have to bring.

Nor do we need a gram more of evidence to make our case.

Our weakness is found in the failed character of the principal actors.

History will mark those who fought and those who sought to retreat in the face of a fight to save the idea upon which this nation was founded.

Let’s get on with it.

JPF.