The Senate Screws Up and Some Thoughts from Barbara McQuade

So long as there is a Trumpublican majority in the Senate, the President can run roughshod over the Constitution. With the Senate’s aid, he is and will continue to get away with it.  The lawyers who comprise most of the members of that House, seemed to have forgotten that the language in the Constitution describing the Senate’s role in an impeachment proceeding: “The Senate shall have the sole Power to try all impeachments” specifically includes the word “try.”  Coming to a decision without evidence and witnesses other than what was provided in the Bill of Impeachment submitted to them by the House of Representatives, without conducting their own trial means the Senate did not do its job.  Without evidence, documentary and from witnesses, there was no trial.  And without a trial, you cannot try.

(Trumpublican control of the Senate is due to Republicans replacing Democrats in enough seats to give them that control due to the availability of campaign funds to them made possible by the corrupt “Citizens United” Supreme Court decision in 2010, enabling corporations to have the same free speech rights as individuals, manifested by relatively unlimited campaign contributions.)

The Senate was supposed to be a more stable, more deliberative, body that the “directly elected” House of Representative, the “People’s House.”  That’s why it was originally appointed by State Legislatures and not voted on by the people, and not responsible to political pressure. With direct election of Senators (since 1913 by virtue of the Seventeenth Amendment), however, political pressures cannot be avoided. In this case, the Executive Branch exerted such pressures, knowing that Senators run for direct election by the public,  which was not the intention of the Founding Fathers.  More about what’s wrong with the Senate will follow in future blog postings.

Here are some succinct and up-to-date comments by Barbara McQuade, of the University of Michigan Law School’s faculty and former Federal prosecutor, on the subject.  She appears frequently on MSNBC.

McQuade

“Any hope that more than three Republican senators would break ranks and vote to call witnesses at the impeachment trial of President Donald Trump was dashed Friday when only Sens. Susan Collins and Mitt Romney voted “yes.” The vote seems remarkably short-sighted for political expediency. When former National Security Advisor John Bolton’s book is released in March and more facts come out, the senators who voted no will risk being seen as complicit in a coverup.

Rep. Adam Schiff said that a trial without witnesses is no trial at all. I have participated in many trials during my career as a prosecutor, and I have never seen one without witnesses. In fact, the presentation of witnesses and exhibits is the very definition of a trial. A trial without witnesses is not a quest for the truth, but a debate for a conclusion based on the law, or, in this instance, politics.

The “no“ vote came even after additional reporting today with new revelations from Bolton’s book. A New York Times report states that two months before Trump’s “perfect” call with Volodymyr Zelensky, Trump directed Bolton to assist in persuading the Ukrainian president to investigate Trump’s Democratic political rivals. The report also says that White House Counsel Pat Cipollone was present at the meeting. Cipollone has led Trump’s legal defense at the impeachment trial. Based on the new reporting, Cipollone may have run afoul of ethics rules that prohibit a lawyer from handling matters in which they may be called as a witness.”

JL