Maybe Mitch McConnell Will Have to Hold a Trial Now?

"This is the definition of 'not Presidential.' "

So is this:

Trump suggests Adam Schiff should face severe punishment for paraphrasing his Zelensky call during a hearing: "In Guatemala they handle things much tougher than that." pic.twitter.com/bUMrsKJpyv

— Aaron Rupar (@atrupar) December 17, 2019

Irony is in the corner, choking back tears.

And yes, this brings us back to Lawrence Tribe's observation:

What happens if McConnell never agrees to a real trial with witnesses and documents and Schumer doesn’t cave? Then Trump will have been found guilty by the House of conduct “grossly incompatible with self-governance and the rule of law,” with NO exoneration. He won’t love that.

— Laurence Tribe (@tribelaw) December 16, 2019

UPDATE:  Neal Katyal thinks so:

Trump letter boomerangs, actually explains why he must testify in Senate. He says 1) House is unfair+ 2) he did nothing wrong

1) explains why he couldnt be called in House, only Senate
2) opens the door and makes his exec privilege claims wholly untenable. #SayTheLetterUnderOath https://t.co/uthjSmIkRu

— Neal Katyal (@neal_katyal) December 17, 2019

Trump really isn't making it any easier for McConnell to justify a motion to dismiss without at least hearing from witnesses.

And other voices, other rooms:

That letter.

It’s like peering into the mouth of madness.

— Rick Wilson (@TheRickWilson) December 17, 2019

The author of that letter has access to nuclear weapons. Have a good night!

— John L.T. (@JohnLT12) December 17, 2019

The sign-off tells the entire story.

Trump knows that he is 24 hours away from infamy. He is on the train tracks of history with the locomotive of impeachment bearing down.

This letter is so very Narcissistic Personality Disorder.

My lord, they’ll put this in text books. pic.twitter.com/puppUrEyDk

— The Hoarse Whisperer (@HoarseWisperer) December 17, 2019

Trump’s deranged, unhinged letter makes a pretty compelling case that the President is unfit for office.

— Jon Favreau (@jonfavs) December 17, 2019

 Since I'm on the subject, if you're interested in how much power McConnell actually has in an impeachment trial, this Slate article is an excellent examination of the question.  Not scholarly and dry, but sound in its reasoning and argument.  The tl;dr is:  Roberts is the Presiding Officer, and McConnell doesn't have much time to change the rules of the Senate governing impeachment.

To understand why, consider that these rules begin by requiring the House to “immediately” present its articles of impeachment to the Senate, which “shall, at 1 o’clock afternoon of the day (Sunday excepted) following such presentation … continue in session from day to day … until final judgment shall be rendered.” This means that once the House presents its articles to the Senate, McConnell has less than 24 hours to change the rules in any way that can win a Senate majority—since, at that point, the current rules command that the “Chief Justice shall be administered the oath [“to do impartial justice”] and shall preside over the Senate during … the trial of the person impeached.”

When the Chief Justice is the presiding officer, he can rule on matters of evidence and testimony and even control the testimony (Trump can't ramble on for hours as if he were at one of his rallies), and the Senate can overrule evidentiary rulings by a majority vote, but it can't control who appears as witnesses.  That's up to the Presiding Officer.  In other words, McConnell is making noise for the cameras and the public; but it's a threat he can't back up, and once the trial starts, a motion to dismiss would be determined like any motion:  by the judge, not by the jury.

Given Roberts’ repeated efforts to sustain the court’s legitimacy in the past, there is every reason to expect him to stand his ground and refuse to allow McConnell’s motion to be considered on the floor. If McConnell continued to defy Roberts and insisted that his colleagues back him up, it seems highly unlikely that his fellow Republicans would provide him with the bare majority needed to provide appropriate window dressing for his attempted constitutional coup. Sens. Susan Collins, Lisa Murkowski, and Mitt Romney have already recognized that the charges against Trump require serious investigation if they reach the Senate. It is hard to believe that they would not heed Roberts’ demand that they act like impartial jurors and refuse to follow McConnell’s commands.

This means that the Senate proceedings will be a very different drama from the repetitive legalisms offered up at the House Judiciary Committee hearings. Instead, the chief justice will almost certainly support the House managers’ demand that administration officials, who have thus far refused to testify, appear as witnesses before the Senate. It is only in this way that the Senate will have all the relevant facts necessary for rendering an impartial verdict. Once they appear in the chamber, they will be interrogated on the crucial issues by lawyers representing the president and those representing the House.

This won’t be the end of the story. After the House managers make their case, it will be the president’s turn to call his witnesses—including, possibly, Joe and Hunter Biden—to refute the charges against him. The Bidens cannot avoid systematic questioning any more than Rudy Giuliani or the other Trump confidantes granted “absolute immunity” by the president. It is only then that the senators will come to a final decision. At that point, McConnell will join all his other colleagues to render their verdict after swearing to “do impartial justice according to the Constitution and laws: So help me God”—to quote the rules one last time.

The latter, of course, is precisely what McConnell is afraid of.  With Giuliani running his trap on FoxNews, how can Giuliani be silent in the Senate chamber as the House attorneys play video clips of his nonsense?  The questions of the Bidens may be "systematic," but will Roberts find them relevant?  He's not going to preside over a "Judge Judy" trial, after all.

Besides, Trump has made it clear in his letter he wants to have his trial.  It won't be the one he expects, or even the one he'll say it is afterwards.  But it will be almost impossible for McConnell to refuse to hold a trial at all, and even harder to control what happens in that trial.