Trigger alert: what I’m about say is going to disgust you. So swallow your coffee, put your cup down and away from your laptop, and prepare yourself.
I think purging Trump from our collective memory and cutting all his karmic strings is exactly like what I had to do from age 16.3 to age 29.7: squeeze the pimple until it pops and flies across the room and oozes down the mirror, then pull out the ingrown hair and take a good long look at the pussy and bloody coil of hair, then throw it away, wipe down the mirror, and shudder. Then take Accutane and live with the acne scars. From a distance of years, it really doesn’t seem so bad, but at the time, it was bad.
I wouldn’t hire these guys to contest a parking ticket. Not even if they agreed not to bill me for their time and they agreed to pay the ticket if they lost. I just couldn’t bear the embarrassment of associating with anyone so stupid.
It’s well known that trump watched the attack on the Capitol live on television. Video evidence exists.
It’s also known that reinforcements for the besieged Capitol police took hours to arrive despite calls from leaders of Congress. trump had the authority to send reinforcements to the Capitol immediately. He didn’t. That he did not allowed the insurrection to continue for hours and is a violation of his oath of office and grounds for impeachment.
His dereliction of duty as commander-in-Chief is a compelling argument for his conviction. It certainly isn’t a distraction form the proceedings, by any means.
There are these phone calls to Tuberville that went to Mike Lee by mistake. That shows a state of mind during the riots of what could easily be termed “depraved indifference”
Perhaps one could find some merit in this argument had they said “riot” instead of “riots.” But, by their own admission, there was more than one riot. Do they not believe that different riots may have different instigators?
The Trump brief leaned into the constitutional question of whether the Senate can convict a government officer no longer in office, which is where Senate Republicans have signaled they would like to keep their reasoning for acquitting Trump.
So, if they can not ‘convict’ Trump (because they question the constitutionality of the trial)… how can they ‘acquit’ Trump?
It would be a distraction because the prosecution can’t prove what Trump’s reaction was, or what people asked him to do, without subpoenas and testimony which would not be forthcoming without a court fight.
The fact that the WH didn’t intervene by calling the Guard speaks for itself, and can be included in the trial. I expect it will be, at some point. But going beyond that, would require the video evidence you mentioned, and people’s testimony as to what happened in the WH during the riot. That’s not going to happen in this trial.
I heard it live when he was giving the speech. Was a big pause before it, like he was wracking his brain for just what the lawyers said he had to say to give himself an out.
AFAIK the phone companies don’t store audio recordings, just pings and caller IDs. That means a subpoena for testimony, because jerks like Mike Lee aren’t going to volunteer what was said during the call. Just the fact that a call was made is not damning without knowing the content.
