I had to wait until Saturday nightfall, the end of Shabbat, to watch the opening speeches by President Trump’s defense team. At least YouTube had not blacklisted those (yet). I already am a huge Pat Cipollone fan because he is a brilliant legal superstar who clerked in his early law days for the Hon. Danny J. Boggs of the United States Court of Appeals for the Sixth Circuit, and he has been masterful in defending the president from day one. But the real zonker for me was watching the masterful “Six Key Facts” opening by virtually unknown Trump Team attorney Michael Purpura. What a great presentation! And then a fine follow-up by Jay Sekulow. After three years of Democrat phony accusations and hoax investigations by them and their Corrupt Journalist Corps into every imaginable lie and rabbit hole, followed by half a year of Pelosi–Schiff–Nadler lies over the Ukraine phone call, the moment finally came for one rare week to unfold in Washington when, like it or not, the argument for President Trump finally gets to be heard through the interference by the corrupt media. Interestingly, his defense team seems to have come up with a novel theory for putting forward the President’s case: Truth.
Really, that is all there is to the Trump defense. Truth. That’s all.
Truth: Ukraine President Zelensky said the phone call was fine, and he never felt threatened by any quid pro quo.
Truth: The money that Congress earmarked for Ukraine was dispatched by the president within the mandated time frame.
Truth: The money was dispatched before any investigation into Burisma was undertaken.
Truth: Ukraine did not even perceive a hold on that money until a Politico article appeared a month after the phone call.
Truth: President Trump gave Ukraine lethal weapons including Javelin anti-tank missiles to use against Russian expansionism, the kind of desperately needed lethal aid that Obama refused to give.
Truth: President Trump frequently has held up aid to a wide swath of foreign governments located across four continents until he has been satisfied that the prospective recipients have begun fighting internal corruption.
Truth: The actual transcript of the phone call shows no link between security aid and corruption investigations.
Truth: No Democrat witness ever testified of firsthand information that aid had been tied to investigating Burisma or the Bidens.
Truth: Ambassador Sondland guessed what he guessed, presumed what he presumed, speculated what he speculated, but when he actually asked the president “What do you want?,” the president replied, “I want nothing”:
But I believe I just asked him an open-ended question, Mr. Chairman. “What do you want from Ukraine? I keep hearing all these different ideas and theories and this and that. What do you want?” And it was a very short and abrupt conversation. He was not in a good mood. And he just said, “I want nothing. I want nothing. I want no quid pro quo. Tell Zelensky to do the right thing.” … This is the final word that I heard from the president of the United States.
Truth: The Democrats have no case for treason and therefore did not submit an impeachment article alleging that crime.
Truth: The Democrats have no case for bribery and therefore did not submit an impeachment article alleging that crime.
Truth: The Democrats have no case for high crimes and therefore did not submit an impeachment article alleging that.
Truth: The Democrats have no case for misdemeanors as the term was understood in the 18th century and therefore did not submit an impeachment article alleging that.
Truth: There are no other grounds set forth in the United States Constitution to seek impeachment.
Truth: The Constitution and 230 years of American jurisprudence, dating to George Washington, have seen presidents assert “executive privilege” in conflicts with Congress and then seek rulings from the courts.
Truth: The Democrats did not allow the Republicans to call their own witnesses during the House travesty.
Truth: The yeoman’s work on the Pelosi Stillborn Impeachment did not even emerge from the House Judiciary Committee but from the House Intelligence Committee.
Truth: Schiff, Pelosi, and Nadler claim that they passed articles of impeachment based on “overwhelming evidence” — yet now are begging the Senate to call a slew of witnesses to get some evidence.
Truth: The House could have subpoenaed John Bolton or his top assistant, Charles Kupperman, or Mick Mulvaney, but they decided not to bother doing so.
Truth: Under American law, the accuser bears the burden to prove guilt, and no American ever before has been obligated instead by a legal burden to prove his or her innocence.
Truth: The House claimed that the impeachment was so urgent that there was no time to issue witness subpoenas — then sat on the impeachment articles for 33 days before submitting them to the Senate.
Truth: There never before has been an impeachment within the election year when a president has been campaigning for reelection.
In other words, this really is a simple case because it is no case. If not for the filth of politics, this case would have been dismissed instantly. Any practicing attorney fresh out of law school knows that, when a lawsuit has no legs to stand on, the defendant may move the court to dismiss the case immediately, even before the summoning of witnesses and the conduct of evidentiary discovery. In federal practice, it is called a “Motion to Dismiss.” The principle is that judges are busy overseeing serious cases with real issues, laypeople have more important things to do with their time than to be bothered with jury duty if that can be avoided, and taxpayers ought to be spared the financial waste of pointless lawsuits. Therefore, if on the face of a complaint there is no case, it can be dismissed up front. This Pelosi Stillborn Impeachment is a textbook example of a frivolous legal matter that should be dismissed on demurrer.
The problem is that politics is dirty, and the Pelosi Stillborn Impeachment is pure politics. It has nothing to do with truth, justice, or the American Way. Rather, it is a filthy political gambit to stain the president’s record, destroy his legacy in history, and manipulatively to win the Senate for the Democrats by forcing four Republican senators seeking reelection this November in purple states to demonstrate their Trump allegiances, thus giving red meat to Democrat voters. So it aims to corner Susan Collins of Maine, Thom Tillis of North Carolina, Martha McSally of Arizona, and Cory Gardner of Colorado. That is what this is all about.
On a second level, it is a tired, life-defeated Jerrold Nadler’s desperate scramble to avoid being primaried out of his House seat in a safe-Left-Democrat New York district where an Ocasio-Cortez wannabe wants to drive him out. He is too old to campaign and press the flesh anymore. With no intention whatsoever by this observation to denigrate or mock his body shape, he simply is in no physical condition to walk the blocks of his district to knock on doors. As Joe Crowley was ousted in a primary when he could not beat Ocasio-Cortez’s pathetically small attainment in getting the votes of a minuscule 3 percent of her district’s voters, so would Nadler be forklifted out of his House seat if he failed to get the impeachment articles through.
But things have a way of playing out unexpectedly. The narcissist Democrat focus on how the four Republican purple-state U.S. senators will vote forgets that Joe Manchin of West Virginia and Doug Jones of Alabama also will have to vote. Jones, too, is up for election in November. If he votes against the president, he is out. Indeed, he is out anyway. And although Manchin is four years away from his next season to lie to West Virginia voters, if he votes against the president, he is finished. He saved his skin last time by voting to approve Justice Brett Kavanaugh. If he votes with the Democrats for conviction now, he never will slither out of that one. Once Manchin or Jones votes for the truth, that will nullify any attack on Collins, Tillis, McSally, or Gardner.
As the president’s team throughout this week augments its first two hours of Truth as a defense, it very well may unfold that even the four “Republican purples” may decide that the expanded week-long record will thereupon give them ample political backing for voting to end the circus without bringing in more witnesses. And if there are to be more witnesses, Schiff and Nadler foolishly opened the door during their ever-repetitive drone attacks in the Senate to summoning both Hunter Biden and Joe Biden as material witnesses. Meanwhile, even if the Democrats would get John Bolton and Charles Kupperman in exchange for the Bidens, we next would witness the delightful spectacle of Bolton and Kupperman, after being sworn in, both refusing to answer any further questions beyond name, rank, and serial number, invoking executive privilege. Then would come the Hunter Biden spectacle, which finally would get some television ratings for this thing, lifting it from competing alongside late-night cable infomercials for least-viewed. The best would be the Joe Biden finale because, after he gets sworn in and is asked his first question about the bribes his family got from Ukraine in exchange for him releasing one billion dollars to feed Ukraine corruption, guess what he will do. If he remembers to read the script on his lawyer’s index card, yup, he will invoke executive privilege.
Of course the Corrupt Journalist Corps will lie all week, will do its most to avoid covering the Trump defense these next several days, will do its utmost to twist and pervert every word of truth presented in defense. But this will be a week like the last weeks of a presidential election campaign when, after three years and 10 months of blacking out the president’s side of the story, the media cannot help but give that side some significant airtime because the matter becomes so front and center in the American consciousness for a few days that it cannot be swept under a rug. This will be one of those weeks.
After three years of stifling mendacity, enjoy the air this week. The forecast is for three or four days of Truth before the fog returns.
