Sunday, January 31, 2021

Election 2020: Impeachment, an Emotional Affair

At least that's what the Democrats are trying to sell you. WaPoo, House Democrats building elaborate, emotionally charged case against Trump. "If the facts are against you, argue the law. If the law is against you, argue the facts. If the law and the facts are against you, pound the table and yell like hell". So this makes it pretty clear, as if we needed any more evidence, that the "impeachment 2.0" is not designed to change Senators minds. Senators are lizard people, they have no emotions. Rather it's aimed to sully Donald Trump and  Republicans in the public, particularly women who are more susceptible to the emotional. A strategey so obvious that even Andy McCarthy at NR can see it, Democrats Are Laying a Trap with Trump’s Impeachment Trial "Democrats' Impeachment Strategy to Hurt Republicans". Based on this all Republicans ought to simply refuse to participate, and vote no when the Dems get tired of hearing themselves. But of course, there's always a few who fall for the trick. Insty has the quote: ADMIRAL ACKBAR, CALL YOUR OFFICE: Democrats Are Laying a Trap with Trump’s Impeachment Trial.

Democrats do not want to disqualify Trump. They want to keep him radioactive. They want to remind the country in lurid detail of the former president’s role in the lethal January 6 rioting — the demagogic speech, the failure to take action while the seat of government was under siege. And then they want to force a vote — conviction or acquittal — that will be framed as every GOP senator’s choice to stand with Trump or against him.

How do Democrats want Republicans to vote? No matter . . . it’s a win-win.
Read the whole thing.

I would, but I ran out of free views (even though I'm still sponging off the nearly lifetime subscription to paper NR that my Mom accidentally paid for years ago).

CNN, Trump's impeachment defense team leaves less than two weeks before trial

Butch Bowers and Deborah Barbier, who were expected to be two of the lead attorneys, are no longer on the team. A source familiar with the changes said it was a mutual decision for both to leave the legal team. As the lead attorney, Bowers assembled the team.

Josh Howard, a North Carolina attorney who was recently added to the team, has also left, according to another source familiar with the changes. Johnny Gasser and Greg Harris, from South Carolina, are no longer involved with the case, either.

A person familiar with the departures told CNN that Trump wanted the attorneys to argue there was mass election fraud and that the election was stolen from him rather than focus on the legality of convicting a president after he's left office. Trump was not receptive to the discussions about how they should proceed in that regard.

Do lawyers really matter in this trial? The conclusion is foregone; why waste the money?  Althouse faces the prospect with equanimity, Is Trump pathetically lawyerless or is he planning the power move of all time — representing himself on the Senate floor?

The conventional wisdom is, of course, that you never want to represent yourself — but that's in reference to the conventional setting, where you are in court and it's a law-based affair. Trump faces a trial in the midst of 100 Senators, with no Chief Justice presiding — no separate decision-makers of law and fact — and a complete tangle of law and politics, with politics taking precedence over law.

Think about the stakes: What does Trump risk if he loses? Disqualification from running for office again? The real stakes are history — who writes it and whether Trump, in this next chapter, is a has-been holed up in Florida or the biggest, ballsiest man in American history, fighting 100 pompous politicos on the floor of the Senate. What a wildly entertaining movie! You say he's a narcissist? A reality-show star who somehow burst into the highest level of politics, where he boldly, recklessly proceeds on instinct and optimism?

Also Althouse, "Let’s get one thing straight: there’s nothing 'respectable' about representing Donald Trump in his impeachment trial. Trump doesn’t have any legal right..."

"... to be represented by a lawyer in this context: it’s not a criminal trial, and if no real lawyer is willing to represent him, well that’s just too bad. The notion that someone like Trump has a 'right' to have lawyers help him out in this context is a particularly perverse abuse of the concept of the right to counsel. If you represent Trump in this context it’s either because you think what Trump did on January 6th was affirmatively good, or you like money — or more realistically the promise of money — enough to overcome your distaste for murderous sedition."
Writes lawprof Paul Campos, (at Lawyer, Guns & Money). He finds it "funny" that Trump's "entire legal team quits. He's laughing at Trump's loss of legal representation and condemning any lawyer who would step up to provide representation. He says it's perverse and abusive even to think that there is a right to counsel at this thing called a trial that is to take place in the Senate. Everyone already knows in advance that Trump is guilty of "murderous sedition."

It's very creepy, this aggressive enthusiasm for seeing one's enemy deprived of a defense.

It's a show trial, after all, no need for a defense. Jonathon Turley, Why Hasn’t The House Held Hearings To Establish “Incitement To Insurrection”? Because they know the facts aren't on their side. Neither is the law, so they want to yell and pound the table. 

Carrie Sheffield at JTN writes Growing evidence Capitol assault was planned weakens incitement case against Trump, experts say "

If Trump "didn't know about it, they had planned it without him, then you're missing the causal relationship," said Alan Dershowitz. "It would have happened without his speech as well. So that would be relevant on the issue of causation."

WSH whines,  Jan. 6 Rally Funded by Top Trump Donor, Helped by Alex Jones, Organizers Say. Trump donors helped Trump, journolists offended. Sundance recounts how Justice Department Charges Proud Boys With Conspiracy To Obstruct Law Enforcement. The DOJ/FBI have gone all in on the right-wing extremist threats. Where were they when BLM burned the cities this summer? Proud Boys = Immanuel Goldstein.

WaPoo whines Woman charged in Capitol riot said she wanted to shoot Pelosi ‘in the friggin’ brain,' FBI says. People say a lot of shit they don't mean. Let me know when Kathy Griffin gets done with her sentence for inciting violence against Trump. Fresh via Insty, Colleges investigate community members for attending pro-Trump protest "THE CRUSHING OF DISSENT WILL CONTINUE UNTIL MORALE IMPROVES."

At Da Fed, Kristi Noem writes The Republican Party Has Failed America, And Here’s How It Needs To Change Now

In 2020, despite the virus, if you wanted to riot, loot, and burn buildings down, the government either stood idly by while you did that, or worse, tacitly encouraged the destruction.

Government didn’t punish the violent criminals. But it did everything it could to punish those Americans who simply tried to defend themselves, their families, their livelihoods, and their property.

What we lived in 2020 is the left’s vision for America.

So now we know what the other side stands for. What is it that Republicans stand for?

We stand for the rule of law, not selective prosecution based on what your political views are. We stand for the right to defend yourself, your family, and your property. For your right to worship, to actually practice and live your faith according to your conscience.

We stand for your right to earn a living and to do business.

I could vote for her. And to switch subjects again, from WaEx, 'Expert witness list' released in Antrim County lawsuit involving Dominion voting machines

An "expert witness list" was filed in court after a Michigan judge ruled that the names of the so-called “forensic investigators” who filed a report about Dominion Voting Systems machines in Antrim County could be released.

The court document was filed by the plaintiff’s attorney in the lawsuit, Matthew DePerno, and includes five names along with a description about what each person is expected to testify. Included are Russell Ramsland, James Wadron, and Doug Logan. Also on the list are Greg Feemyer and Paul Maggio of Atlanta-based data security company Sullivan Strickler.

Other witnesses include attorney Katherine Friess, C. James Hayes, and Todd Sanders, according to the Traverse City Record-Eagle, which cited a document from the Michigan attorney general’s office. Despite the release, it is not clear what role each of the witnesses might have played in the “forensic” investigation of the voting machines, which yielded a report that Dominion CEO John Poulos blasted as “technically incomprehensible.”

“What role each one played in the preparation of the report, my understanding is we won’t know until these individuals are deposed,” said Haider Kazim, the attorney representing Antrim County.

It's good to see progress toward untangling the mess, how ever incremental.  

2 comments:

  1. Just in fairness:

    A quick and casual read might lead one to think that Ann Althouse said those things above. She was quoting Paul Campos, and then disparaging the quote.

    She has her share of flaws, but let her defend the real ones, not the oops ones.

    (Reg here, but I like AA too.)

    ReplyDelete
  2. Thank you for your comment, but I respectfully beg to differ; the quote I included from Althouse:

    "It's very creepy, this aggressive enthusiasm for seeing one's enemy deprived of a defense."

    makes it pretty clear that she doesn't approve.

    Of course, I am a devoted Althouse reader (one of my comments was once picked up by Instapundit), and also know that while she has her foibles (don't we all) her blog is remarkable in it's fairness. I won't even pretend to be that fair.

    ReplyDelete