PROFILES IN CHARACTER

PROFILES IN CHARACTER

©Wendell Griffen, 2020

January 21, 2020

Little Rock, Arkansas

The impeachment trial of Donald John Trump on charges of abuse of office and obstruction of Congress begins today, three years after he took office as the 45^th President of the United States.  The trial will reveal the character of Trump, Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell of Kentucky, Chief Justice John Roberts, and the United States Senate to the nation and wider world.  We are about to witness a historic event. 

The main facts concerning the charges against Trump are not disputed.  During a July 25, 2019 telephone call with Volodymyr Zelensky, the recently elected President of Ukraine, President Trump asked President Zelensky to investigate a political rival, former U.S. Vice President Joseph Biden.  Trump then tried to pressure Zelensky to announce that Ukraine would investigate Biden by ordering the Office of Management and Budget and Department of Defense to withhold hundreds of millions of dollars in U.S. military and other aid which Congress had approved for Ukraine.  That aid was not released, despite urgent requests from Ukraine and strong urging from the U.S. Department of Defense and the National Security Council, until shortly after Congress learned it was held up thanks to a report from an anonymous whistleblower in mid-September 2019.   The whistleblower’s disclosure led to an impeachment inquiry by the Intelligence Committee of the U.S. House of Representatives, followed by hearings on articles of impeachment by the House Judiciary Committee, which referred articles of impeachment for abuse of power and obstruction of Congress to the full House.  The articles of impeachment were adopted by the House on December 18, 2019.

Trump insists he did not abuse presidential power by withholding the congressionally-appropriated aid to Ukraine because he was trying to fight corruption in Ukraine.  His lawyers and supporters argue that Trump was protecting presidential power, not obstructing Congress, when he instructed White House and Defense Department officials to not testify and not produce documents (including correspondence) about the Ukrainian aid during the impeachment inquiry.   Those arguments didn’t persuade the House of Representatives, which voted in favor of Trump’s impeachment along partisan-party lines. 

Now Trump’s defenders do not want the Senate trial to include testimony from witnesses and documentary evidence about the impeachment charges.  Led by Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell, Trump supporters in the Republican-dominated Senate want to avoid witness testimony.  They don’t want Senators, the nation, and the world to hear former National Security Advisor John Bolton testify about his objections to Trump’s conduct.  They don’t want to hear testimony from National Security Council and Pentagon officials who objected to Trump’s decision on national security and legal grounds. Trump’s defenders want an impeachment trial without witness testimony and documentary evidence so they can continue Trump’s assertion that the impeachment charges are “a hoax.”

So the world may be about to see the weirdest trial imaginable, a trial without witnesses and documentary evidence.  If so, we will witness a spectacle where lawyers for Trump and impeachment managers from the House of Representative argue about what Trump did, why he did it, and whether doing it amounted to “treason, bribery, and  other high crimes and misdemeanors,” to use the language of the U.S. Constitution.  If that happens, blame Mitch McConnell and any other Senators who support McConnell’s rules for Trump’s  trial. 

Trials are supposed to involve witnesses and relevant documentary evidence.  They are not debating matches.  Trials require proof.  McConnell’s preference for a trial without witness testimony and documentary evidence violates common sense and previous presidential impeachment trials.  Witness testimony and documentary testimony occurred during the impeachment trials of Andrew Johnson and Bill Clinton.   Donald Trump’s impeachment will mark the first time in U.S. history that a debate by opposing teams of lawyers will be treated as a “trial.” 

So Trump’s impeachment trial will first show whether each U.S. Senator will be a supporting actor in a charade Mitch McConnell intends to orchestrate.  

It would be commendable if Senators rejected McConnell’s plan for Trump’s impeachment trial when the trial begins this afternoon.  That would require Senators to behave like jurors.  Jurors in every other context refuse to decide controversies without receiving proof.  However, jurors receive proof in every other context because judges refuse to submit controversies for their decision without it.   When the U.S. Senate votes later today on whether to accept McConnell’s plan to conduct Trump’s trial without witness testimony and documentary evidence they will do so in a proceeding presided over by John Roberts, Chief Justice of the United States.  

I hope that House impeachment managers formally object to McConnell’s plan for an impeachment trial without witness testimony and documentary evidence.  If that happens, I hope Chief Justice Roberts has enough integrity as the chief judicial officer in the nation to sustain their objection.  Sustaining the objection would then force McConnell to appeal the ruling to the Senate as a whole and force each Senator to vote to either sustain or overrule the Chief Justice. 

If Senators vote to sustain a ruling by the Chief Justice to allow witness testimony and documentary evidence during Trump’s trial, our nation and the wider world will know that Trump’s trial will involve evidence and the rule of law.  But if McConnell’s plan for Trump’s trial is followed, the trial will be the latest and most damning spectacle of Trump’s sociopathic corruption and incompetence on the United States and the world.

Beginning today, the nation and world will learn whether Trump’s sociopathic and cancerous corruption and incompetence has metastasized to the Chief Justice of the United States and a majority of the U.S. Senate.  If it has, none of us should be fooled.  Metastatic cancer is incurable and fatal.