I’ve taken some delight in the Democrats’ stepping back from automatically transmitting the Articles of Impeachment to the Senate, whose leader has promised to conspire with the defendant in the trial to make sure that the trial boosts Trump as much as possible. (Trump cannot be allowed to be “exonerated” by a process that has bad faith written all over it, like Sen. McConnell saying that he will not be “impartial,” while knowing that he has to take an oath to be just that.)
At first, I understood that the Democrats’ position was to enable a trial to go forward only if it was clear that the Senate trial would be a fair, with the full presentation of the case with documents and witnesses. (For there’s absolutely nothing to be gained by giving Trump a victory through a Senate-run cover-up.)
But since then, I’ve been hearing Democrats say something different. Lately, some Democratic leaders have been saying that the hold-up is because the Democrats can’t proceed to name the House Managers until they know what the process will be, which will enable the Democratic leadership to judge who and how many to assign to the task.
What they’re not saying is what they’ll do if the McConnell presents the Democrats with a plan that is patently unfair.
Will they say, “Oh, so that’s how we’ll do it. Ok. Now we’ll do our part now to let the trial go forward”?
Or will they say to McConnell and his Republicans, “We will not participate in a farce of a trial, where the Republicans have assured that the American people will see nothing, and that the President who has been impeached will be acquitted regardless of what the evidence shows”?
Not long before talk of this withholding began among the House Democrats, the highly respected constitutional scholar Lawrence Tribe called for the stronger approach. No trial unless it will be conducted fairly
(And so say I.)
If the Democrats are planning to insist on a fair set of rules for the trial, is there some way it makes sense at this point in the process to put forward the minimal argument (we need to know so we can know how to play our part)?
I hope so. I would hate for the Democrats to play their cards unaggressively as they so often have over the years.
(Never in a generation, that I can think of, have the Democrats been too bold in pressing the battle. But they have erred frequently in the other direction, pulling their punches in their defense of the truth even while the Republicans go all out to make their lies prevail.)
The Democrats should surely not shrink from the battle when they have the upper hand.
The respected columnist John Heileman has said that he thought that McConnell had plaid a politically reckless card in declaring publicly his working with the defense and his plan to violate the oath he will have to take. He thought that Nancy Pelosi had the “whip hand,” being able to make McConnell pay a political price for the patently indefensible position he has taken.
(Heileman, it seemed clear, understood Pelosi to be taking the position that Trump and the Republicans will not get their trial if such a trial is going to be just one more corruption, one more cover-up, one more violation of the oath of office every one of them were required to take as a condition of their being invested with their powers. (And violating as well the oath they would be required to take in order to participate as jurors in the Senate impeachment trial).
I really hope that Pelosi is willing to shine a spotlight on the Republicans’ indefensible behavior, and to deprive the lawless President and his disgraceful party of the phony exoneration for those high crimes so well exposed by the House of Representatives as profoundly serious.
(As has been said by many, “If this conduct is not impeachable, nothing is.”)
No fairness should mean no exoneration. The threat should be: The indictment stands unrefuted, untested, the only judgment rendered— unless the trial is conducted fairly.