Tuesday, October 08, 2019

Impeachment Tracking: "This Whole Trial's Out of Order!"

Good point; so let's wander through it to see what it says.

First, for those of you not old enough to remember the Watergate hearings, Nixon did not have a lawyer representing his interests in the Committee room, or questioning witnesses.  The questioning was largely done by a lawyer for the majority (Democrats) and one for the minority (Republicans), and then questions from representatives (IIRC).  Nixon didn't have a lawyer there to challenge every statement John Dean (for example) made.

Nor are impeachment hearings legal proceedings subject to judicial review.  This is settled Constitutional law.  The House, under Art. I, has full authority to make its rules, including who will be Speaker (it doesn't have to be a Representative, under the Constitution.  House Rules may say otherwise, though.).  The Constitution makes no provision, not even an outline, of how an impeachment proceeding is to be conducted.  So everything on that page about "due process" and "right to cross examination" and etc., is pure bullshit.  It is not even vaguely a legal argument.  It's screeching to the peanut gallery who don't know what "due process" means, anyway.  This is Graham's "hearsay" argument all over again.  That argument lost, but they still haven't let go of it.
There argument here is, again, not based in anything but special pleading.  The investigation is "illegitimate" because they don't like what's being uncovered.  What the "record" established about the call to Zelensky (the same call the 'record' today says scared White House staff witless) is meaningless because the only record that counts is the one established by a House investigation into a possible impeachment.  This is like going to court and arguing your client is innocent of criminal charges because he said so in an interview outside of court.  In other words, it's so legally meaningless as to be an outrage; then again, it's not being made to a court, where a judge would make counsel eat these words, metaphorically if not physically.

Again, due process has no application here, as this is not a legal proceeding under rules of civil or criminal procedure, and will not end in Trump's imprisonment.  And again, where the Constitution is silent as to how impeachment is to be conducted in the House, it is impossible to call current proceedings "Unconstitutional."

And please not how much of these first two pages regurgitate the idiotic defenses Trump has put forward to demean others because that somehow means he is not guilty.  Schiff did not talk to the whistleblower, his staff did, and they directed the W-B back to the IG, as they do frequently with government employees who want to reveal the truth.  Nothing in these two paragraphs is grounds for anything except the White House Counsel turning in his law license, because he's not doing his job as a lawyer putting his name on this drivel.(even their citation to a case holding Alcee Hastings was entitled to due process in his impeachment is to a trial court order that was voided summarily by the D.C. Circuit).

This is just a "the call was perfect!" redux argument.  It's meaningless except as spew.  In fact, these last three pages just repeat the first five pages louder and funnier.  It's as if Trump insisted 8 pages was better than two, so the lawyer just repeated himself three times.  It's not a legal argument, it's not even a Freshman Composition level argument.  It's an embarrassment; which isn't grounds for impeachment, but it should be.

And if you didn't know, the argument made in this letter about the facts of the conversation and the "errors" of the whistleblower report are complete bullshit:
Meanwhile, back in the real world:

It's getting harder and harder to say just what they do understand.  But it's getting clearer and clearer that refusal to understand is not going to serve them well.




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