As with the 4 days of House Impeachment arguments, I may not catch every bit of the White House Defense, but so far the lawyers for the President are better litigators at trial than the prosecution. They aren't as bound to the text of the pages before them, and are more dynamic.
The best way I can try to explain this is that it seems each lawyer wrote their own script for the White House defense, whereas the House Impeachment prosecutors seemed more often to be reading something written for them to read. We're only a few hours in, but this is my hunch.
And to be fair, many of the lawyers for the White House have argued at trial in the highest courts of the land, so I think they're just more natural at doing this through their experience over time.
Also each lawyer is spending well under an hour to make their case. I would compare this to a collection of short stories by the defense, to a reading of War and Peace by the prosecution. Each story we're seeing today is relatively concise and memorable.
The bulk of any repetition is essentially "Why didn't the House Managers tell you that?" In reference to the evidence Democrats sent to the court, but deliberately chose not to bring up, because that evidence hurts their own case. Saturday really was a "movie trailer" of sorts.
I'll reply more to this thread later as time permits, but I wanted to point out that if you just hear one person presenting today, watch the entire Pam Bondi presentation. It speaks directly to President Trump's intent, and is what I've brought up for months.
The fact there was enough information out there to spark a genuine interest of what is going on over there with Burisma, the Bidens, and the firing of the prosecutor Shoken, is enough to raise that concern with the UKR president, who is directly over these prosecutors.
The reason I know this issue is paramount is because I've received more pushback in discussing this topic, than any other with regard to this impeachment. Even if you believe the Bidens are perfectly innocent, the optics looked absolutely terrible. The video clip highlights that.
It looks like a duck and quacks like a duck, but maybe it's a turkey. But merely asking if it's a duck to someone who can verify what type of bird it is, is probably not uncalled for.
ok I finally got through the last bit of today's arguments and I have to say, the defense kept true to their word to avoid the pitfalls the House Managers kept jumping into. They kept the entire hearing just under 8 hours. Everyone spoke less than an hour, except Dersh's 1h 5m.
And up to Bondi's presentation, I thought she made the biggest and boldest case, and justification for intent, I think Alan Dershowitz stole the show by the end of the day, which he made the closing arguments. I could tell he, like everyone else, wrote every word of his speech.
The text from the pages he kept reading from was clearly visible from the camera. They were hand written. His own writing on notepad. Whereas a number of the presentations by others were typewritten (computer printed of course) on plain white paper.
I really do think they can wrap the remaining arguments by tomorrow, without extending beyond 8 hours, even though they have 5 more hours to play with beyond that. The two days of questions will be interesting of their own accord. House Democrats really screwed up big this time.
As Cipollone said, Impeachment was planned since day 1, very publically. House didn't vote for inquiry until a week out from creating articles. Their subpoenas were invalid. They didn't pursue some witnesses. They withdrew subpoenas on those they did.
The articles passed in a partisan manner. The articles are on powers the president has. They criticized the Senate on 3 of the 4 first days of the trial. I could go on but the fence is so high, Dems refused to scale the fence, and now want Reps to lift them over it. Insane.
House Dems could have done things so much differently, and made this case for more legitimately, before submitting it to the court - even if the articles themselves aren't historically of the caliber of impeachable offenses as described by the Founders. Why bail them out?
The House Dems, right now, could do a variety of things and resubmit a different set of bogus charges, simply because they have the votes. They could, right now, vote for an inquiry, subpoena all new witnesses, give due process from day 1. Allow the minority their witnesses, etc.
House Dems could take all the advice given to them for months, and learn from all those mistakes, and redo a new set of articles of impeachment. But they blew a lot of capital from how they handled this one. They might even get the votes to do this plan again. But should they?
It would last for months, and they would hope to have a smoking gun somehow appear that they didn't have for these articles. It would have to be on something like bribery or treason, but literally, not politically. Because failure erases confidence.
Right now, Nancy Pelosi, Adam Schiff, Jerry Nadler, and Chuck Schumer have set the table for acquittal before the only court that could try the case for impeachment, and as Pelosi said "Impeachment for life" Trump can say "Exoneration for life." She will take the blame for this.
Will they take the L? They can afford to. So I expect them to try and turn over new leaves. I've said before I want all new witnesses to testify. But any who testify before the Senate, that deliberative body deserves what they are signing up for. I hope it lasts for months.
I've long said this is the evil party vs the dumb party. Democrats are evil but incompetent. Republicans are dumb but good. Both parties have each other as adversaries, but also themselves as their greatest weaknesses.
Democrats are smart enough to know they aren't alleging a crime, and know they rushed this without fair and due process, but are crazy enough to try and ram this impeachment through. Republicans aren't smart enough to understand that, so will buckle under and call witnesses.
I was only happy for impeachment so I can see the circus. I don't think House Democrats did it right, and as time has gone on, it's only become more apparent. I didn't even fully understand how badly until the Senate trial commenced.
I will only concede that Republicans aren't the dumb party in this once instance, if they actually don't allow witnesses that Democrats want. Just as Democrats did in the House. If they call a single witness the Democrats want, it only strengthens my claim.
I'll digress with this: Any Senate Republicans who want to reward the House Democrats for their clown show of an impeachment inquiry deserve the scorn they get from the base. This was political from the beginning. It should be to the end.
