The impeachment

Feb. 12, 2021

 Trump's defense team threatened that if Trump were convicted, it would lead to Democratic presidents being impeached.  This is amusing because, of course, in fact it was the republicans that impeached Clinton for having oral sex with consent, an impeachment pushed by Congress men who were themselves debauched.

 

They said that Trump's bullying call to Georgia Secretary of State Raffensperger demanding that he "find" enough votes to reverse Georgia's vote for Biden was fine because a much larger percentage of mail-in ballots had been rejected two years before.  Of course, they didn't mention that two years ago, the Secretary of State was Brian Kemp, who threw out those votes when he was running for governor while remaining in his position as Secretary of State.  There was a very obvious conflict of interest.  Raffensperger is a republican, and if he had wanted to cheat, it would be expected to be in favor of republicans.  In fact, Raffensperger appears to have worked for a fair election.  In some districts where Biden won the presidential vote, republicans won other races.

I missed most of the impeachment trial defense because I'm a Tax-Aide volunteer, and my team did our dry run today.  But I heard enough to make a few comments.

The defense claimed that some of the people in the mob were members of groups that had planned the insurrection ahead of time, and started doing so before Trump spoke to them.  They said the FBI had known about this and reported it.  So I want to know why Trump did not prepare adequate defenses before hand?  Why did he delay so long to call in the National Guard, when the police were calling for help?  Why did he wait to speak to the mob, and when he did, did not tell them to go home?  In the question and answer part, republicans and Democrats asked when Trump that the mob was intent on breaking into the Capitol and doing violence, and the defense did not answer either of them.

Feb. 11, 2021

Trump planned this insurrection long before the election.  The polls indicated that he would lose the popular vote soundly, could very well lose the electoral college.  So he downplayed the Covid virus to his followers, encouraging them to risk their lives going to his rallies.  He encouraged his followers to risk catching Covid by voting in person, knowing that many Democrats who knew the dangers would vote by mail.  He railed against voting by mail, caused his followers to disbelieve the results of the election.   He deliberately set the stage for the insurrection, not caring about the health and lives of his followers.  This also, inadvertently or on purpose, helped Russia by weakening our own country.

 republicans claim to be for "law and order", they love harsh punishment, including the death penalty.  But now they are saying we should put Trump's insurrection behind us!  WTF!  If a mob boss directed a mob to attack your home with the intent to kill some people who live there, killed a police officer and beat up others severely who were protecting you;  stole and damaged your possessions;  if afterward you were told to let the boss go, put this behind you, what would be your reaction?

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https://www.npr.org/sections/trump-impeachment-trial-live-updates/2021/02/09/965590112/i-said-the-opposite-criticism-of-trumps-impeachment-defense-intensifies

'I Said The Opposite': Criticism Of Trump's Impeachment Defense Intensifies

February 9, 20215:00 AM ET
Heard on Morning Edition
Nina Totenberg at NPR headquarters in Washington, D.C., May 21, 2019

A constitutional law professor whose work is cited extensively by former President Donald Trump's lawyers in their impeachment defense brief says his work has been seriously misrepresented.

In a 78-page brief filed in the U.S. Senate Monday, Trump's lawyers rely heavily on the work of Michigan State University professor Brian Kalt, author of the seminal article about impeachment of a former president. His work is cited 15 times in the Trump brief, often for the proposition that the Senate does not have the authority under the Constitution to try an impeached ex-president.

The problem is that Kalt's 2001 book-length law review article concluded that, on balance, the historical evidence is against Trump's legal argument.

"The worst part is the three places where they said I said something when, in fact, I said the opposite," Kalt said in an interview with NPR.

Trump's lawyers argue that the Senate lacks jurisdiction because the president is already out of office, making an impeachment trial pointless. Kalt argues that impeachment is about more than removal; it's about accountability and deterrence. "The framers worried about people abusing their power to keep themselves in office," he adds. "The point is the timing of the conduct, not the timing of the legal proceeding."

Kalt is among more than 170 leading constitutional scholars who have formally weighed in on this issue, telling the Senate that contrary to Trump's assertion, it does have the authority to try Trump.

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Feb. 9l 2021

 

So far, I think my favorite part of the Trump defense is the claim that if we don't allow Trump to get away with trying to overthrow the government, it will lead to someone in the future overthrowing the government. 🤣

 

What nerve to characterize the incitement to insurrection as a partisan issue that will cause republican retribution in the future, and bring up Clinton, which was extremely partisan, with the republicans trying to remove Clinton with the excuse of his sex life.  So it's ok for republicans to try to impeach Democrats for partisan reasons with trivial excuses, but not to impeach republicans for treason and excitement to violence, resulting in death of a police office and severe injuries to other, and planned attacks on Congress and their staff.

Trump's defense is buttering up Senators, saying they care about the country. We know from when Obama was president that many republican Senators do NOT care about our country, because they deliberately blocked most of Obama's efforts to stimulate the economy to recover from the Great Recession, in hopes of turning people against Obama and getting someone from their own party as president.