1/ It appears Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell has no intention of running a serious impeachment trial; rather he is coordinating with the President to quickly move to acquit him on the charges contained in two Articles of Impeachment detailing gross abuse of power...
2/ ...and obstruction of Congress. There is of course more than just these political charges- indeed, the final House report that accompanies the Articles suggests the President is also guilty of federal crimes including bribery and wire fraud.
3/ McConnell and the GOP establishment argue that despite the evidence, the President’s behavior simply does not rise to the standard for impeachment. “So what?”, they seem to be saying. It is a question that has come to define the contemporary Republican party.
4/ Coincidentally, just weeks ago, we heard the question in a court of law. Before a jury found his client, Roger Stone, guilty on seven counts of making false statements to Congress, obstruction and witness tampering, lawyer Bruce Rogow made his closing argument.
5/ Implicitly acknowledging that the government had presented a set of facts difficult to argue, he opted instead to suggest none of it mattered in the first place: “So much of this case deals with the question that you need to ask,” he suggested to the jury. “So what?”
6/ Stone, who relishes his persona as a "dirty trickster," worked in the shadows of Republican politics for decades. He got his first break on President Richard Nixon's campaign and popped up memorably to help George W. Bush survive the Florida recount in 2000.
7/ Stone was an adviser to Donald's 2016 campaign when he helped install Paul Manafort as campaign chairman. He guided the release of stolen DNC materials through his interactions with Wikileaks and with Guccifer 2.0, a social media persona ultimately exposed as a GRU front.
8/ His efforts to inject disinfo into the public sphere were crucial to Donald’s improbably slim victory, secured by a mere ~70,000 votes in three key states. When asked about these activities by Congress, he lied, compelled others to lie and withheld information.
9/ There is little doubt it was all worth it to him. "He did start off as an ideologue," filmmaker @morganpehme told the Hollywood Reporter in 2017 after the release of his documentary, Get Me Roger Stone...
10/ "Over time his ideology has fallen away and it's replaced by 'Stone's rules,' which essentially are maxims defined by 'win at all costs, destroy your enemies and do whatever is necessary for you to prevail'," Pehme concludes.
11/ These are now the rules of the Republican party. At some point, a generation of Republicans- from Roger Stone to Newt Gingrich to Mitch McConnell to Rudy Giuliani to Donald Trump- decided winning was everything, even if it means cheating.
12/ At this point, it has been the life's work of many. When judge Amy Berman sentenced Stone’s former partner Paul Manafort to prison, she noted he had “spent a significant portion of his career gaming the system.”
13/ We now know that Donald Trump was guilty of all the same crimes for which Roger Stone will presumably spend many years in prison. He apparently lied to Special Counsel Robert Mueller in his written testimony. He sought to compel others to lie.
14/ On multiple occasions, he obstructed the investigation, all to cover up the same truth that Stone fought to keep secret: the election of 2016 was tainted, its outcome the result of a set of betrayals of the public perpetrated by the President and his closest aides.
15/ Now, the impeachment hearings have proved he planned to do it again in 2020- this time using Congressionally approved military aid to bribe a foreign nation to provide him with information to use against his political rival. And once again, he obstructed the investigation.
16/ There is little evidence that Republicans in the Senate will take any of this seriously. Indeed, as former RNC Chairman and Trump White House Chief of Staff Reince Priebus told CBS News, the President is looking forward to it.
17/ “Now the Republicans are going to orchestrate a trial,” said Priebus last year. “And it’s going to be their turn to put up witnesses and cross examine people in the Senate under their rules and under their watch."
18/ "And I think the President is feeling very bullish about the idea of shutting all of this down under rules set by the Republicans now.”
19/ Priebus may have been optimistic that there would be any process at all- it seems unlikely that this trial will allow witnesses or evidence at all. It is not a trial, but a cover-up, as Nancy Pelosi has rightly called it.
20/ Thus, while polls show the majority of the country would support Donald Trump's removal, we will likely not see twenty Senators to break ranks and vote to remove him. Instead, the trial of the President in the United States Senate is likely to be a sham.
21/ But in some fundamental way, it is not the only trial taking place. The majority Americans are well aware that the rules are already rigged in favor of the Republicans.
22/ From gerrymandered districts all across the nation to Mitch McConnell’s ruinous career of obstruction to a Supreme Court majority secured by Justices installed on the rubble of decades of norms, this is the new normal.
23/ So just as the Senate passes judgment on the President, so too will the majority pass judgment on the Republican party. It is a final test- the choice of a party to put its power over the interests of democracy, to fully reveal the vacuum where its ideology once existed.
24/ In the book How Democracies Die, Steven Levitsky & Daniel Ziblatt chronicle the reasons the Republican party has resorted to breaking the rules of our system of governance, norm breaking, and why it abdicated its duty to contain the threat Donald poses to our democracy.
25/ Drawn from the study of patterns in other democracies that stumbled, they pose four key warning signs for the rise of authoritarianism. They warn that...
26/ “we should worry when a politician 1) rejects, in words or action, the democratic rules of the game, 2) denies the legitimacy of opponents, 3) tolerates or encourages violence, or 4) indicates a willingness to curtail the civil liberties of opponents, including the media.”
27/ While many would agree Donald Trump ticks all the boxes, he is certainly not alone when it comes to rejection of the rules of the game. On that charge, the GOP leadership is collectively guilty.
28/ When the GOP votes to acquit Donald Trump, it will be forevermore the party of So what? He’s a bigot? So what! He’s enriching himself while in office? So what! He incites violence? So what!
29/ He’s willing to withhold military aid to embattled allies for personal gain? He cheats at elections? So what! So what! So what! So what! It is not just Donald Trump who has committed an impeachable offense; it is the whole of the Republican establishment.
30/ In the Roger Stone trial, the government’s lawyer, Assistant US Attorney Michael Marando, was taken aback by Rogow’s nihilist defense. “So what? So what?” Marando asked.
31/ “If that’s the state of affairs that we’re in, I’m pretty shocked. Truth matters. Truth still matters, okay.” A jury made up of American citizens agreed with Marando. They decided that facts matter. That the system matters. They decided to find Stone guilty as charged.
32/ Soon, the American people will have the opportunity to do the same in the case of Stone’s old friend, Donald J. Trump, and the party that aids and abets his crimes. No matter what happens in Mitch McConnell's kangaroo court in the Senate, a reckoning is coming. /end
Addendum: yes, WE are the ultimate jury. @senatemajldr had damn well remember it.
Addendum: when I wrote this thread, I never expected one of them to actually say they intend to use the "so what" defense. But, here we go:
