The impeachment managers from the Democrat House, along with co-Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer, seem convinced that a Senate “trial” will dispatch Donald Trump from the American scene.
Not so fast….
The first three days of the “trial” will highlight House managers arguing that former president Trump “incited violence” at the Capitol on January 6, 2021. Which was preceded for weeks when “he [Trump] reiterated false claims that ‘we won this election, and we won it by a landslide’… false statements asserting that the Presidential election results were the product of widespread fraud and should not be accepted by the American people or certified by State or Federal Officials… President Trump’s conduct on January 6, 2021, followed his prior efforts to subvert and obstruct the certification of the results of the 2020 Presidential election.” (Articles of Impeachment, HR 24, Jan 11, 2021)
The Dem case will be a rehash of what we have already seen from media accounts — incorrect, made-up, or incomplete accounts, accusations, and assorted condemnations — accompanied by exhortations made by Democrat politicians aided and abetted by soft-headed and weak-kneed Republicans.
There are enough facts established by independent observers, and investigators including the FBI, that the claims that Trump’s Jan 6 speech to an energized but peaceful crowd at the Ellipse incited a riot are implausible, farfetched, and without evidentiary foundation. Athletic rhetoric perhaps, yet all within the bounds of commonplace discourse today — largely institutionalized by Democrats’ own incendiary language, by the way. Trump inciting a riot? Spare me.
Moreover, the Dems will not present any evidence dispositively proving that Trump repeatedly made “false statements” about the election results. As Paul Mirengoff of the Powerline blog posits, the House managers must prove that Trump’s election assertions are indeed demonstrably false, and knowingly false, not simply First Amendment protected opinion.
The Dem House managers won’t provide evidence that Trump’s statements were false — not only because they don’t have anything beyond declarations — but simply because nobody really knows whether the [courts will finally review the available evidence and rule the ] election results in the contested six states are not, free from error and not, lathered with fraud. Some Republican state legislators are beginning to act, albeit at a speed akin to awaiting an asteroid to arrive, uncover severe irregularities that will corrode the Democrat narrative, leading to broader claims that Joe Biden’s inauguration is flim–flam.
Then the fireworks on the Senate floor will begin.
Because the Senate “trial” is an extra-constitutional exhibition, it has no authority or binding power. Trump as reality TV show celebrity, with neither constraints, nor fears of the outcome, will be free to present his case in any manner, form, or construct that he chooses — having no downside consequences.
An acquittal would never quell the Dem partisans; a conviction would be quickly dismissed when Trump challenges in federal court any collateral proscriptions meted out by the Senate, or later attempted by Democrat state election boards.
Notable legal commentators such as Jonathan Turley (George Washington University law professor), Michael Luttig (former appellate court jurist), Alan Dershowitz (Harvard Law School professor emeritus) and Kenneth Starr (Watergate special prosecutor) have all said the pursuit of impeachment and trial of a former president is moot and meaningless.
Moreover, Starr and Dershowitz have pointed out that post-presidency bans on political speech, assembly, politicking, campaigning, or commerce imposed against Trump would be bills of attainder, clearly and unambiguously prohibited by the Constitution.
Even the malleable SCOTUS Chief Justice John Roberts knows the Senate trial is illegitimate, a farce, and will not participate as presiding judge.
Finally, how would SCOTUS endorse a Senate “conviction” when its Chief Justice refused to preside over a sham, and vaporous, impeachment trial?
Of course, any layman who can read and comprehend English — even one who never studied deductive reasoning or symbolic logic — would readily agree that the Constitution provides impeachment and trial only for a sitting president or other federal official. Not for one whose term has ended, and now is a private citizen.
Trump himself will have at least three hours – with or sans counsel — to puff-off feather dust claims that he incited a riot on January 6th, but more important, present all of the material that formed his opinion about the lack of election integrity — most notably the exhaustive presentations by Peter Navarro — covering ballot fraud, numerous ballot process irregularities, and violations or rewrites of state legislature-enacted election laws by officials without sanction from legislatures, obviously unconstitutional at both the state and federal levels.
And so, Trump is playing with “house” money. It doesn’t matter if he infuriates RINO senators who abandon their earlier position that a former president can be neither impeached by the House nor tried by the Senate. A “conviction” will be a meaningless resolution, in the form of the “sense of the Senate.” Trump can walk away with tens of millions of followers and future voters in tow, with Democrats’ veins a-bursting, and RINO hair afire.
Trump will enjoy an entertaining day — or days — on the floor of the US Senate, knowing he can vindicate those tens of millions of loyal voters who are deeply skeptical of Biden’s legitimacy, set the stage for a dramatic shadow presidency, or lay down the pavers for another march towards the White House in 2024.
Meanwhile, Dems and RINOs think Trump will be intimidated or otherwise marginalized, silenced, and cancelled.
Think again… not so fast.
Here’s another reason the impeachment trial is unconstitutional
After American Thinker queued up my “Impeachment Trial Preview” for publication on its busy pages, even more novel questions tumbled out, if one can believe it, about the second impeachment trial of former president Donald John Trump.
C-SPAN is expecting the trial to start on 1:00 P.M. EST on Feb. 9, 2021. People can watch live or whenever is convenient “on demand” on C-SPAN’s special web page.
Impeachment managers sent from the U.S. House of Representatives to the U.S. Senate have threatened to, and really already did, violate the Fifth Amendment to the U.S. Constitution.
They are asserting violations of the Constitution by Trump while themselves violating it.
On Feb. 2, 2021, new attorneys representing Trump filed an “Answer” to the articles of impeachment, but not (yet) an actual trial brief. Trump’s attorneys and others challenge the trial as unconstitutional because Trump has left office.
Yet on Feb. 4, 2021, the impeachment managers asked Trump to testify in the upcoming trial.
In other words, if Trump took the bait, he would be legitimizing an unconstitutional proceeding. Democrats believe their own propaganda about him. They thought Trump could not resist out of ego. By showing up to testify, Trump could destroy his legal objection to the unconstitutional trial, as Jason Miller suggested.
Trump’s “Answer” denied the factual allegations. This is overwhelmingly typical, requiring the prosecutors to prove their case. Yet House “prosecutors” want to force Trump to prove his innocence. Democrats are accustomed to just asserting things. Trump’s lawyers quickly rejected the invitation.
The letter from the impeachment managers’ leader, Jamie Raskin (D-Md.), threatened Trump:
If you decline this invitation, we reserve any and all rights, including the right to establish at trial that your refusal to testify supports a strong adverse inference regarding your actions (and inaction) on January 6, 2021.
Although reported only indirectly on Fox News, Raskin apparently said Trump’s refusal shows his guilt after being rebuffed.
However, the Fifth Amendment to the U.S. Constitution prohibits anyone from being “compelled in any criminal case to be a witness against himself.” The U.S. Supreme Court has repeatedly made clear that it is a violation of the Fifth Amendment for a trial court to draw an adverse inference from a defendant’s decision not to testify. See Carter, Estelle v. Smith, 451 U.S. 454 (1981); Mitchell v. United States, 526 U.S. 314 (1999); Carter v. Kentucky, 450 U.S. 288 (1981), at least at the guilt phase.
But this is impeachment. Yet the courts routinely treat some proceedings as “quasi-criminal.” Democrats are threatening criminal prosecution. This is a problem because the jury pool in Washington, D.C. voted 95% for Biden. (Conservatives without regard to race need to move into D.C. Only about 341,000 D.C. residents voted in 2020.)
Moreover, the U.S. Supreme Court holds that the threat of drawing an adverse inference from a defendant not testifying would cripple Fifth Amendment rights. Therefore, an inference would harm constitutional rights.
Also, it is the Senate that decides what rules will apply and what factual assertions to believe. Raskin as prosecutor has no right to decide what inferences the Senate will make. Yet he clearly assumes that power.
Famous law professor Jonathan Turley, a Democrat before his party swerved sharply to the left, condemned this bullying:
The Supreme Court has been adamant that the type of inference sought by Raskin is abhorrent and abusive in courts of law. In Griffin v. California, 380 U.S. 609 (1964), the Court reviewed a California rule of evidence which permitted adverse comment on a defendant’s failure to testify.
And:
The statement conflicts with one of the most precious and revered principles in American law that a refusal to testify should not be used against an accused party.
Professor Turley also reads into this exchange that the impeachment managers are not prepared to prove their case, having rushed the impeachment through without witnesses.
Meanwhile, watch for this also: clearly the main reason Democrats want to proceed with impeachment is to make sure they don’t have to face a rematch with Trump in 2024. Democrats are likely to argue that they can disqualify Trump from holding future office without a two-thirds vote. Many have already said they can disqualify Trump on a simple majority vote even if they fail to get two thirds of the votes for removal.
The Constitution says:
Judgment in Cases of Impeachment shall not extend further than to removal from Office, and disqualification to hold and enjoy any Office of honor, Trust or Profit under the United States[.]
But it also says:
And no Person shall be convicted without the Concurrence of two thirds of the Members present.
Therefore, “judgment,” meaning “convicted,” requires a two-thirds vote of the U.S. Senate. Disqualification arises only from a judgment, which requires a two-thirds vote.
There are enough novel issues at stake to fascinate us for weeks, but the trial is likely to be short.
Jonathon Moseley is an attorney in Virginia.
Destroying Democracy in Order to Save It
Time magazine’s “The Secret History of the Shadow Campaign that Saved the 2020 Election” by Molly Ball is supposed to come off as an epic tale of left-wing institutions swooping in to save democracy from untold chaos in the aftermath of the election but reads more like a confessional where the storyteller and her informants unwittingly reveal that the election was indeed rigged.
Ball stresses that the “shadow effort [was] dedicated not to winning the vote but to ensuring it would be free and fair, credible and uncorrupted.” In other words, they were not attempting to defeat Trump, but were focused on ensuring free and fair elections to prevent chaos if Trump were elected or refused to concede. This required a coordinated effort among a staggering number of left-wing organizations, the media and tech, titans of industry, an army of activists, #NeverTrumpers, and a whole lotta Benjamins, baby.
Through extensive interviews and access to documents, Ball lays out in earnest the game plan with absolutely no awareness that this nonadmission of wrongdoing is actually an admission that bolsters what the President has been saying all along (and is vital to his defense against this second impeachment):
They got states to change voting systems and laws and helped secure hundreds of millions in public and private funding. They fended off voter-suppression lawsuits, recruited armies of poll workers and got millions of people to vote by mail for the first time. They successfully pressured social media companies to take a harder line against disinformation and used data-driven strategies to fight viral smears. They executed national public-awareness campaigns that helped Americans understand how the vote count would unfold over days or weeks, preventing Trump’s conspiracy theories and false claims of victory from getting more traction. After Election Day, they monitored every pressure point to ensure that Trump could not overturn the result.
None of this could have happened organically. Democracy, you see, has to be manipulated in order for the good work of democracy to happen:
“Every attempt to interfere with the proper outcome of the election was defeated,” says Ian Bassin, co-founder of Protect Democracy, a nonpartisan rule-of-law advocacy group. “But it’s massively important for the country to understand that it didn’t happen accidentally. The system didn’t work magically. Democracy is not self-executing.”
That’s why the participants want the secret history of the 2020 election told, even though it sounds like a paranoid fever dream — a well-funded cabal of powerful people, ranging across industries and ideologies, working together behind the scenes to influence perceptions, change rules and laws, steer media coverage and control the flow of information. They were not rigging the election; they were fortifying it. And they believe the public needs to understand the system’s fragility in order to ensure that democracy in America endures. [Emphasis added.]
In late 2019, senior advisor to the president of the AFL-CIO and mastermind of the shadow campaign Mike Podhorzer, was gobsmacked when he realized that the data and analytics strongly pointed to a Trump win. That was the moment the shadow campaign was born. During a frantic 11 p.m. Zoom meeting on election night, Podhorzer had to remind his co-conspirators that they knew Trump would pull ahead but would ultimately lose “as long as all the votes were counted.” [Italics added.] “Count all votes” was critical to the syndicate’s PR campaign and violated the norm, touted by conservatives, that all legal votes should be counted.
If it was foreordained that Trump would prevail, the Democrat Cabal had to protect the people from themselves — subverting Democracy in order to save Democracy. So, they manipulated the election in their favor and called it “fortifying” even though they were really “rigging” it. They claimed the system was on the verge of collapse because Trump was going to be elected. And, because they couldn’t admit to rigging the election, they disguised their efforts with a massive PR campaign demanding all votes be counted to prevent chaos.
Massive PR campaign, indeed.
They had the good fortune of COVID-19 giving them cover for mail-in voting propaganda. BLM leadership was able to “harness [the momentum behind the George Floyd riots] for the election.” In other words, the riots were orchestrated to benefit Democrat candidates.
Corporate benefactors shoveled out gobs of money (i.e., $300 million dollars from the Chan Zuckerberg Initiative) to fund a massive reworking of state voting systems and procedures that bolstered mail-in voting in 37 states and D.C.:
The [National Vote at Home] Institute gave secretaries of state from both parties technical advice on everything from which vendors to use to how to locate drop boxes. Local officials are the most trusted sources of election information, but few can afford a press secretary, so the institute distributed communications tool kits.
Organizations tracked disinformation online and provided it to campaigns and the media so they could “out” the liars. Rather than pushing back against “toxic content” which invited more attention, they pressured platforms like Twitter and Facebook to police and remove content or suspend accounts.
Podhorzer enlisted the help of former military officials, cabinet members, and elected officials to convince the public, governors, AGs, and secretaries of state, that mail-in voting was safe. Former Democrat congressman Dick Gephardt raised $20 million dollars to fund these efforts. Now we understand why Kemp and Raffensberger in Georgia, and Wolf and Boockvar in Pennsylvania, behaved as they did.
They refocused election security on self-policing versus reliance on law enforcement and
created a force of “election defenders” who, unlike traditional poll watchers, were trained in de-escalation techniques. During early voting and on Election Day, they surrounded lines of voters in urban areas with a “joy to the polls” effort that turned the act of casting a ballot into a street party. Black organizers also recruited thousands of poll workers to ensure polling places would stay open in their communities.
In other words, they recruited a partisan army of poll workers who were backed by partisan “election defenders” to monitor voting and ballot counting. This is how Republicans ended up with poll watchers who were ousted, blocked, and situated light-years away from the count, and piles of ballots — almost exclusively for Joe Biden — coming out of the woodworks in the wee hours.
As 150 left-wing organizations prepped for violent nationwide demonstrations against a Trump steal, the AFL-CIO, the U.S. Chamber of Commerce, and churches formed a powerful alliance with a carefully crafted message of preventing “violence, intimidation or any other tactic that makes us weaker as a nation.” Meanwhile, everything the shadow campaign did was violence, intimidation and other tactics that undermined our free elections — classic projection.
All of this is boldly asserted in Ball’s article. It’s not unusual for victors to brag about some feat to the astonishment of onlookers. They become so obsessed with the righteousness of their cause, they proudly articulate what they did with seemingly no regard for the potential for any blowback.
The Nazis documented everything in the mistaken belief that their national obsession with world domination and cleansing the world of impure races was not only in Germany’s best interests, but those of the entire world. They honestly believed history would judge them kindly. But they were blind to the reality that, in recording their atrocities, they wrote the script for world condemnation of their crimes against humanity.
Similarly, in their sanctimonious fervor to boast about their role in “fortifying” the election and its aftermath, Ball’s informants actually outed themselves as the crooks, cabalists, and conspirators they really are. And poor Ms. Ball appears the useful idiot.
She quotes someone from the Democracy Defense Coalition as saying:
“There’s an impulse for some to say voters decided and democracy won. But it’s a mistake to think that this election cycle was a show of strength for democracy. It shows how vulnerable democracy is.”
While this can be read to mean democracy was in jeopardy until Democrats organized the shadow campaign to save democracy from a Trump second term, it’s really just a slick way of confessing to rigging the 2020 election and stealing it from Trump. Let’s hope Trump’s attorneys feature these admissions in his impeachment defense.
Image: Time magazine
https://www.americanthinker.com/articles/2021/02/destroying_democrary_in_order_to_save_it.html
Beating Democrat Electoral Corruption
By J.R. Dunn
Since Nov. 3rd, one particular line has been repeated almost to the point of becoming a meme: “There will never be another honest election in this country.”
I’ve seen it in a dozen articles I’ve worked on for AT, and at least twice that many times elsewhere. It wouldn’t be going too far to say that it has became a piece of received wisdom, along the lines of “Biden is the asterisk president”: there will never be another honest election in the U.S.
To some extent, this attitude is understandable, and you can’t blame people for holding it. I myself entertained similar thoughts in the wake of the electoral coup this past fall.
This reflects conservative defeatism. Unfortunately, the default position for most conservatives is to give up, retreat into the think tank and spend time tossing off remarks about how horrible our doom will be, mixed with attacks on anyone trying to stop it. It’s in times like this that this fatal, self-inflicted flaw becomes most evident.
But all the same, it’s wrong, and it’s wrong for a very apparent and simple human reason.
At first glance, the idea seems to have a lot going for it. As November 3rd clearly revealed (and Molly Ball and Time mag foolishly underlined), the electoral fraud machinery is immense and the Dems went to incredible effort and expense to put it together. So why would they use it only once? That would make no sense whatsoever. Surely, the Democrat’s theft machine is built for the long haul, like the Tammany machine of the 19th century or the Cook County machine of the 20th.
But there are number of reasons why it’s unlikely that it will ever be reused – at least not at the level it was last November. The first involves COVID-19. COVID was the key element in last fall’s electoral fraud. Probably the foulest example yet of the Dem’s “never let a crisis go to waste” philosophy. There’s no question that Democrats have exploited the pandemic for their own benefit – the Empress of Ice Cream has boasted as much. It may be going too far to assert that Democrat policies have deliberately intensified the effects of the disease, though at times it’s hard to avoid that conclusion. Certainly, the irrationality of the anti-disease efforts (what, exactly, is a curfew supposed to do to control a disease?) is hard to explain any other way.
COVID enabled the Democrats to ram through a vastly expanded use of absentee ballots on the grounds that voting was now “dangerous.” As we all know, the COVID virus avoids attacking Antifa riots and BLM demos, hoarding its efforts to strike down voters alone. It has to be that way – otherwise, Dr. Anthony Fauci, third in humanitarian stature only behind Gandhi and MLK, Jr. (recall the story of how he descended from his white steed to divide his cloak in two in order to share it with a poor COVID victim) would have told us.
It was the absentee ballots that were the core of the fraud effort. If you look at the chain of events surrounding the fraud, you’ll note that almost all the irregularities involved the absentee ballots. It was regarding those ballots that all the questionable court decisions were handed down, those ballots that corrupt governors and secretaries of state intervened to permit. Vote counts were halted to allow time for those ballots to be manufactured, and GOP vote counters were sent home for the sole purpose of allowing those votes to arrive unobserved. It was those votes that GOP observers were denied the right to examine, and it was to hide those votes that windows were blocked. While other efforts might have been underfoot, it was the absentee ballots that bore the weight of the fraud. It was those that comprised the bulk of President Asterisk’s 13 million votes out of hyperspace.
These circumstances are unlikely to be repeated. While the Dems are stretching the COVID “crisis” (in truth, it’s the botched response that actually triggered the “crisis”) as long as they can, it’s unlikely to be tolerated much longer, let alone the 21 months that would be required for them to drag it on into the 2022 election. And faking up a new plague would simply be too obvious (though not too idiotic – see Molly Ball) for the Dems to attempt. Once we’re out from under the COVID “countermeasures,” it’s likely that most people will look back on them as a gross overreaction that caused more chaos that they were worth.
COVID was a one-shot deal. But what about the fraudulent systems already put in place during the 2020 campaign? It happens that almost all the battleground states (along with nearly half the states in the country) excepting Nevada are GOP-controlled at the legislative level. It also happens that many of these politicians in these states are looking at re-election in 2022.
What this means that the Republicans are finally going to get off their fat duffs and do something. The GOP may not be willing to lift a finger to help Donald Trump or protect the Constitution. But save their own penny-ante political careers? That’s another story. That’s important. That has to be defended at all costs.
And so we’re beginning to see efforts to do just that. In Pennsylvania, the legislature is addressing the problem in the session that began this week. Several proposals have been made to abolish mail-in ballots completely. The Dems have protested, which simply shows how much these procedures mean to them.
The problem with PA is that Gov. Tom Wolf is up to his neck in last year’s election corruption (no single politician was more closely involved with the promotion of absentee ballots) and is unlikely to budge an inch. A veto-proof majority will be necessary to overcome inevitable opposition from Wolf.
The Arizona GOP is willing to go even farther. House Bill 2720 would enable the Arizona House to revoke certification of presidential electors. While passage of this bill may be unlikely, there are a number of proposals for either eliminating (House Bill 2701) or modifying absentee ballots ranging from requiring that they be dropped off in person (Senate Bill 1503) to including a copy of a driver’s license (House Bill 2369).
There are also rumblings from Georgia, but it’s difficult to imagine any meaningful reforms with Kemp and Raffensperger in charge. Both refuse to admit any responsibility for the multiple electoral disasters that struck their state, both seem blind to future dangers, and both are evidently happier battling members of their own party than the political opposition. But the January 5th runoff, run under the same rules as the November election and resulting in the “defeats” of Douglas Perdue and Kelly Loeffler, has no doubt put the fear of Jehovah into the hearts of state politicians. We will see reform in Georgia.
These are only the leading edge of efforts to attack the universal electoral corruption revealed last November, efforts that will be given further impetus by court decisions such as the late January decision finding Virginia’s late election law changes illegal. (We can also forget about the section of U.S. House bill H.R. 1 that attempts to seize control of national elections form the states. This is blatantly unconstitutional and will be found to be exactly that once Roberts and the Three Musketeers can be dragged awl out from their hiding place beneath the bench.)
This is all very appropriate. In our system, the states are the last line of defense. It’s the states that will undermine the Dem’s headlong rush to a totally corrupt single-party state. Apart from that, it’s often overlooked that the Founders, in their wisdom (that amount of brainpower out of only 2.5 million people. If you were to look for a dozen Americans to match them out of our 330-odd million, you would utterly fail), based our system on human frailty. As has been said in other cases, any system based on that is based on a strong foundation indeed. We’ll see plenty of evidence of that in the months to come.
Image: Thomas Nast
https://www.americanthinker.com/articles/2021/02/beating_democrat_electoral_corruption.html
Lee Demands Statements Be Stricken From Record, Brings Impeachment Trial Day To Messy Conclusion
At the end of Day 2
Mark Meadows: President Trump Offered Security Assistance Multiple Times
Trump wanted to deploy 10K National Guards for Jan 6, but was rejected; CCP to set global standards?
LIVE: President Trump Impeachment Trial: Day 3
NOTE: We’re offering this coverage because it’s important the people hear President Trump’s defense!
We obviously do not support impeaching our great 45th President.
Thursday, February 11, 2021: President Donald Trump’s second impeachment trial will resume in the Senate.
Senate Impeachment Trial for Insurrection – Day Three 12:00pm Livestream
The third day of former President Trump’s second impeachment trial continues in the Senate. President Trump is being charged with one article claiming incitement of an insurrection prior to the Jan. 6th Capitol chaos. [Livestream Links Below]
The insufferable political exercise is scheduled to begin again at Noon ET.
CSPAN Livestream Link – PBS Livestream Link – Alternate Livestream Link
