Tuesday, December 17, 2019

Nonsense is no defense

1) "It's not a crime". Impeachment is a remedy set out in the Constitution and does not require a crime under US law. It is applied when the Constitution, the highest law in the land, appears to have been violated.

2) "The aid was released, and the meeting happened". The completion of an illegal or improper act does not alter the fact of the attempt. A failed robbery attempt is still a crime, albeit not as serious as were the robbers to have been successful. So is attempted murder.

3) "We do it all the time: get over it". While bargaining is certainly an important part of diplomacy, the 'bargain' being stuck here was for private personal gain, not for the good of the country. That makes it abuse of office.

4) "The Biden's (father and son) were acting corruptly so the call for an investigation is legitimate". If the investigation requested had been into corruption in general, and not into the Bidens in particular the claim might have had merit. But because it was specifically directed at Trump's likely political opponent and was only requested after Biden declared his candidacy, indeed only after he appeared to be Trump's most threatening opponent, it can't be argued that his interests was about corruption in general, else why did he not pursue the matter his first three years in office?

5) "It's a politically motivated witch-hunt / coup". While there have been some Democrats who were calling for Trump's impeachment almost since his election, (and arguably with some reasonable cause), most resisted it. Since the Dems took back the House, they have been looking into a series of allegedly nefarious dealing by the President, but none, even Meuller's allegation of obstruction of Justice by the White House, were considered by the Democratic leadership as strong enough to support impeachment. The Ukraine matter is different in that not only does it conform almost, stereotypically, to a pattern of behaviour, it was also so simple as to make it easily understandable to a public that may not have time for the minutiae of the Meuller report. And in a single effort, Trump has committed three offenses: the solicitation of foreign interference in a US election; the abuse of his high office; and the obstruction of Congress in its oversight responsibility. Not a bad triumvirate for an amateur.  (It might have been clearer to the public to charge only the second article, that of obstruction of Congress, since that is the clearest example of the repeated pattern of obstruction this White House has engaged in. But to charge obstruction without a serious offense worthy of Congressional investigation would have been problematic, as it would have allowed the GOP to argue that the requests for information being refused were frivolous).

5) "We haven't heard from all the possible witnesses" First, if 17 witnesses all consistently make the same allegation, it is unlikely that another witness will, under oath, add or detract from the account of events established so far.  The "additional witness" defense is not intended to bring forward anyone who knows about the attempted extortion, but to bring in other people simply to muddy the waters (like Hunter Biden).   

6) "The testimony is all hearsay and therefore not admissible". First nothing prevents hearsay evidence in an impeachment. Second, some witnesses had first hand knowledge of the plot to extort Zelensky. Third the call transcript is an official record of one element the attempted extortion; it is not so much a "smoking gun", as video of the gun being fired by the perpetrator at the victim.  Moreover, the witnesses best placed to provide mitigating explanations are the same people, Mulvaney, Bolton, Pompeo, who have been told by Trump not to obey the congressional subpoenas. Were they really able to provide evidence that would change the understanding of the events concerned, Trump would certainly have encouraged, probably compelled, them to testify.   

7) "There facts are not established". Just nonsense; the facts are clear. Only willful blindness leaves any doubt as to what was going on. 

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