Originally published at: https://boingboing.net/2019/11/27/house-judiciary-invites-trump.html
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It’s totally normal for an innocent man to decline to present any evidence in his defense or allow others in his administration to do the same, right?
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Considering he’s a word sprinkler, even if he was innocent the things he would end up saying would just lead him into more problems.
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Trump’s innocence aside, suppose you were charged with a crime and the jury was entirely composed of spineless sycophants of yours who were constantly going on camera saying you didn’t do anything wrong. Would you take the stand?
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Here’s that “due process” that you want so badly, Trump. Your move.
(But I’m sure he’s not dumb enough to take the bait. He’ll just continue to move the goalposts like he always does.)
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Trump himself might actually be dumb enough, but I think everyone around him is doing everything they can to prevent him from going.
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Except, not a single Republican argument has been made in good faith based on it’s merit. They’re all just noise. So, I wouldn’t expect them to show up. Instead, I expect them to try and reply after the deadline but before hearing, and make lots of noise about not being allowed. Then, if the timing rule is ignored and they’re allowed anyway, they’ll still not show up and make noise about something else.
The noise in the point, not the merits of any argument being made.
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I don’t think even Trump is dumb enough to fall for this bait but I’d love it if he did. He’d be exposed as the incompetent and bumbling idiot that we all know he is when he can’t fall back on the same tired talking points.
He won’t do this though, there’s no upside. All he will do is keep attacking the process, the people, and exploit his supposed victimhood while complaining about the “fake impeachment inquiry” and his supporters will eat it up. He knows he’ll most likely get acquitted by the senate and then he can claim “total exoneration” and his unabated corruption will just continue to escalate.
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I’ve been called up for two juries. Didn’t make the cut for the first, served on the second. At voir dire, for both cases, we were informed that the defense intended to call zero witnesses, and we were asked if we would be fair to such a defense strategy.
(and it actually worked-- guy got off. His attorney said that we couldn’t connect the gun that was found to the suspect, and while I think that has horrible implications for the public safety, there was a sliver of doubt left.)
However, Grand jury proceedings do not contemplate any role for the defense. The role is to determine if the state’s case is strong enough to advance to trial.
Some pundits like to analogize the impeachment to an indictment, and the Senate phase to a trial.
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While I appreciate your conviction that this time he will be exposed and everyone will see him for what he is, he’s been exposed plenty of times before this across a spectrum of offensives and offensiveness and it doesn’t matter. I don’t think exposure is the missing element at this point. But I do think you’re correct about what he will do. He will not put himself in a position where he has to answer direct questions from people “out to get him” especially if lying would get him in even more trouble because the man cannot not lie.
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The difference is this would be under oath and there would be actual consequences. The “he’s just speaking his mind you guys” defense suddenly falls apart.
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Like impeachment?
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Wouldn’t that be nice. Even better if Pence were taken down as well and we had President Pelosi.
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Well, that’s right neighborly of them…
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If I was innocent I might or might not take the stand myself, but I certainly wouldn’t direct underlings who could testify to my innocence not to do so even under force of a subpoena.
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The tell-people-to-ignore-subpoenas thing is something you wouldn’t do whether you were innocent or not. It’s outright insane and plainly illegal. But no matter how much everyone keeps saying the opposite about America it is extremely clear that the president is very much above the law.
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Absolutely, but it’s even more insane to suggest that the President is breaking the law to prevent the very people who could speak to his innocence from testifying.
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No lawyer would let him testify. Of course he might anyway, against their wishes because he is a very stable genius who did nothing wrong.
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I like to hope it’s just that the law moves very very very slowly sometimes.
The question then becomes, does it move so slowly to effectively not exist for this use case, or before it is destroyed.
Unless I missed something, the White House has lost every case so far. It’s more of a denial of service attack that they are able to keep presenting new stupid ideas and appeals to drag it out.
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Did anyone notice that Anonymous used Pence’s favorite word, lodestar, again in yesterday’s Reddit AMA?
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