Impeachment 3: The MF Has Been Impeached! The Trial Has Begun!

[fraurosena]

The managers are taking every opportunity for rebuttal. 

[fraurosena]

 

[fraurosena]

Adam Schiff is so, so good at what he does.

 

[GreyhoundFan]

"The 3 most interesting Q&As from the Senate impeachment trial, so far"

Spoiler

The world’s greatest deliberative body hasn’t exactly lived up to its billing thus far in Wednesday’s Senate impeachment trial proceedings. With senators given eight hours to ask President Trump’s legal team and the House Democrats’ impeachment managers questions, they have opted mostly to ask safe questions to their own side. They generally just teed up talking points rather than try to till new ground.

But in a few instances, they got somewhere.

Below are a few of the most interesting exchanges. This post will be updated as the question-and-answer session continues.

1. Trump legal team says that even if Trump was trying to help his reelection bid, that’s okay

The first question came from the all-important triumvirate of Sens. Mitt Romney (Utah), Lisa Murkowski (Alaska) and Susan Collins (Maine) — the three most likely GOP votes for new witnesses. It was about what the senators should do if they deduce that Trump had both official and personal motives for his actions regarding Ukraine.

Deputy White House Counsel Patrick Philbin responded with a very broad assertion: that regardless of personal motives, as long as Trump had an official motive, “we think it follows even more clearly that cannot possibly be the basis for an impeachable offense." Philbin argued that senators would then be put in the position of trying to deduce how much of a motive for a decision was personal vs. official.

Then Philbin added, perhaps more interestingly, that it was impossible to completely separate personal motives from such decisions.

“All elected officials to some extent have in mind how their conduct, how their decisions, their policy decisions will affect the next election,” Philbin maintained. “There’s always some personal interest in the electoral outcome of policy decisions. And there’s nothing wrong with that. That’s part of representative democracy.”

There is no doubt this calculation often factors into lawmakers’ decisions. But “always"?

Trump lawyer Alan Dershowitz later expanded on that argument, saying that even a president trying to help his own reelection bid could be construed as working in the public interest.

“If a president does something which he believes will help him get elected in the public interest, that cannot be the kind of quid pro quo that results in impeachment,” Dershowitz said.

That’s a remarkable claim.

You could also deduce from the question a possible off-ramp for Romney, Collins and Murkowski to vote to acquit Trump: the idea that he may have been trying to help himself, yes, but that he also had official motivations — however legitimate.

2. Schiff’s quid pro quo analogy using Romney

When Dershowitz gave the quote noted above, he was asked — leadingly — about whether it is “true that quid pro quos are often used in foreign policy?” Dershowitz said yes, and used an analogy involving Middle East policy.

Rep. Adam B. Schiff (D-Calif.), the lead House impeachment manager, though, was given a chance to respond to the loaded question and Dershowitz’s response. He pointed to the holes in that line of argument — namely, that not all quid pro quos are created equal. The problem, as Democrats have argued frequently, is when the quid pro quo is a corrupt quid pro quo.

And to make his case, Schiff used an analogy involving, perhaps not coincidentally, Romney. He took the event Republicans have often complained about — President Barack Obama telling then-Russian President Dmitry Medvedev on a hot mic in 2012 that he would have more “flexibility” to deal with missile defense after the election — and inserted Romney.

Schiff painted the picture: “President Obama on an open mic says to Medvedev: ‘Hey, Medvedev, I know you don’t want me to send this military money to Ukraine because they’re fighting and killing your people. I want you to do me a favor, though. I want you to do an investigation of Mitt Romney, and I want you to announce you’ve found dirt on Mitt Romney. And if you’re willing to do that, quid pro quo, I won’t give Ukraine the money they need to fight you on the front line.' ”

Schiff added: “Do any of us have any question that Barack Obama would be impeached for that kind of misconduct? Are we really ready to say that would be okay if Barack Obama asked Medvedev to investigate his opponent and would withhold money from an ally that it needed to defend itself to get an investigation of Mitt Romney? That’s the parallel here."

Schiff is inferring a quid pro quo from Trump’s “do us a favor, though” comment from his call with Ukraine President Volodymyr Zelensky, it’s worth noting, and the transcript isn’t totally clear that was Trump’s intent. Still, the use of an analogy involving Romney seemed a clear effort to illustrate the case — perhaps to Romney himself.

Sens. Lindsey O. Graham (R-S.C.) and Ted Cruz (R-Tex.) later asked Schiff about another Romney hypothetical: If Romney’s son worked for a corrupt Russian company, would it be okay a President Romney to ask Russia to investigate?

Schiff responded that the hypothetical was apples-and-oranges, because it didn’t include a potentially corrupt purpose, as he argues exists in the case of Trump.

3. A higher standard in the Senate, but no new evidence?

Trump lawyer says impeachment standard is higher in Senate

In response to a question from GOP senators about whether the standard for removal from office is higher than it is for impeachment, Philbin responded that it was.

“It is very clear that there is not any requirement for proof beyond a reasonable doubt simply for the House to vote upon articles of impeachment,” Philbin said. “There is a very much higher standard at stake here.”

He added: “The Senate sits as trier of both fact and law, reviewing both factual and legal issues, de novo, and the trial and the House managers are held to a standard of proving proof beyond a reasonable doubt of every element of what would be a cognizable impeachable offense here. They have failed in their burden of proof.”

Trump’s legal team would like a higher standard for removal than for impeachment for very obvious reasons. But they’ve also argued that the House needs to rely only upon the evidence it already had. If there is a greater burden of proof in the Senate, though, wouldn’t it follow that there might be a need for additional evidence?

You may soon see this in Democratic arguments in favor of witnesses like John Bolton and Mick Mulvaney testifying.

 

[GreyhoundFan]

 

[fraurosena]

The idiocy of Trump’s defenses immediately becomes clear when applied to other presidents.

 

The depths to which the trumplicans manage to go are an indication of how scared they are of the truth coming out. Good to see Justice Roberts is stepping in here.

 

[GreyhoundFan]

"Wavering Democrats face pressure as GOP eyes bipartisan vote for Trump acquittal"

Spoiler

Democrats are casting a nervous eye on a small group of publicly undecided senators in their ranks as Republicans target a coveted prize in the Senate impeachment trial — a bipartisan acquittal of President Trump.

Under the spotlight are two centrist mavericks who won election last year — Sens. Joe Manchin III (D-W.Va.) and Kyrsten Sinema (D-Ariz.) — as well as Sen. Doug Jones (D-Ala.), who will face voters this year after a long-shot win in a special election in 2017.

“I talk to those three every day; I don’t have a sense on where they’re going to be in the end,” said Sen. Chris Murphy (D-Conn.), who described the coming verdict as a “conscience vote” in which senators are leaving colleagues to reach their own conclusions.

Senators hardly need to be reminded of the stakes, however. Public attention in the early stages of the trial has been heaped on the handful of Republican moderates who are set to determine whether unheard witnesses and unseen documents will be admitted to the proceedings after the White House stonewalled Congress, but the wavering Democrats could have a significant bearing on the ultimate political ramifications of the verdict.

Multiple Republicans suggested Wednesday that any defections would fuel their campaign to dismiss the nearly five-month impeachment probe as a partisan witch hunt, while undermining Democrats’ attempts to cast doubt on the fairness of the Senate trial and use the impeachment probe as a cudgel in the upcoming elections.

“Everybody’s focused on one thing, and that is whether or not the Republicans will stay united,” said Sen. Tim Scott (R-S.C.). “The truth of the matter is that there are at least two if not three Democrats that can separate from their caucus, which would be a huge win because any bipartisan acquittal is big deal.”

Manchin, who has sought to maintain a working relationship with Trump even after the president campaigned heavily against him last year, is widely seen as the most likely Democratic vote for Trump’s acquittal. That speculation has been based not only on the tilt of his state, which voted for Trump by 42 percentage points in 2016, but his history of backing the president on key votes and the 72-year-old’s refusal to rule out a 2024 reelection run or a second stint as governor.

In an interview Wednesday, Manchin invoked his home state repeatedly as he insisted that he was tuning out pressure from either party: “I’m here because of West Virginia. I’m not here because of any senator, okay?” he said. “No one’s my boss except West Virginia.”

Jones is facing an even more precarious position in a similarly pro-Trump state. The surprise winner of a special election, Jones will face voters in November, and Republicans consider that by far their best opportunity to flip a Democratic seat in the 2020 cycle. But he also has little chance of reelection if he alienates his party’s base voters by opposing Trump’s removal.

“In every case, a judge says: ‘Please don’t start deliberating. Please don’t make up your mind until you hear all the evidence,’ ” Jones, a former U.S. attorney, told reporters Wednesday. “Am I leaning on different things? Sure. But I ain’t going to tell you guys that, for God’s sake.

In public comments this week, Jones suggested he is entertaining a split decision — convicting Trump for abuse of power while acquitting him for obstruction of Congress — although he suggested Wednesday he might be moving away from that view: “The more I see the president of the United States attacking witnesses, the stronger that case gets,” he said, after Trump tweeted sharp words about John Bolton, his former national security adviser.

More than any other Democratic senator, Sinema has kept her thinking private.

“I will treat this process with the gravity and impartiality that our oaths demand and will not comment on the proceedings or facts until the trial concludes,” she said in a statement at the outset of the trial and has assiduously avoided addressing reporters since.

But Sinema is also perhaps the most unpredictable member of the Senate Democratic ranks, joining Manchin and Jones in February to confirm Attorney General William P. Barr before taking a week-long break mid-session to compete in a New Zealand triathlon.

Spokeswoman Hannah Hurley, declining an interview request on Sinema’s behalf, pointed to that initial statement in explaining “how seriously she takes this process, the oath that she swore, and what that oath demands of her and every other senator.”

Some Republicans have their eyes on a fourth Democrat: Sen. Gary Peters of Michigan, who is seeking a second term this year in a race that is looking increasingly competitive due to the aggressive fundraising of Republican businessman John James. But much like Jones, other Democrats see little chance Peters breaks faith with the vast majority of his party’s voters who favor Trump’s removal.

Peters said Wednesday that he remains undecided and that he would wait for the two-day question-and-answer process to conclude.

“I’ve learned through a lot of committee hearings: It’s not the opening comments that are the most interesting. It’s the questions and answers,” he said. “I think it’s important to keep an open mind.”

Democrats have been encouraged that all four senators have stayed publicly united on the question of summoning additional evidence. Over 12 procedural votes last week, party lines held firm on all but one question, where Sen. Susan Collins (R-Maine) joined with Democrats.

Trump and his allies have already sought to put a spotlight on the modest partisan crossover in the House, where Rep. Collin C. Peterson (D-Minn.) voted against both articles of impeachment, Rep. Jared Golden (D-Maine) voted against one, and Rep. Jeff Van Drew of New Jersey switched to the GOP after opposing both. They have at the same time dismissed the vote of Rep. Justin Amash (I-Mich.), a conservative former Republican who left the party last year after facing blowback for his attacks on Trump.

In the Senate, Republicans could be facing defections of their own. Collins as well as Sens. Mitt Romney (R-Utah) and Lisa Murkowski (R-Alaska) have signaled that their votes remain in flux. But many in the GOP believe that a Democratic crossover is more likely — and potentially more significant.

“It would mean once again,” said Sen. Kevin Cramer (R-N.D.), “that the only bipartisan support is for the president.”

Senate Minority Whip Richard J. Durbin (D-Ill.) played down the Republican pressure campaign and, like Murphy, said there has been “no pressure and no demands and no retribution suggested for anyone” in the Democratic ranks. Any claims of bipartisanship on Trump’s part, he said, would ultimately be flimsy.

“If I get one Republican vote, I talk about my ‘bipartisan measure’ — that’s natural around here. But you know, I think people will understand if it’s just one, two, three people as opposed to a larger number,” he said, pointing to the 1999 Bill Clinton impeachment, where five Republicans joined Democrats to reject one article, and 10 rejected another. “I think that was bipartisan. It’s in the eye of the beholder.”

 

[GreyhoundFan]

 

[apple1]

13 minutes ago, GreyhoundFan said:

 

In addition to Dershowitz being a narcissistic sociopath -- somebody's got dirt on him. I don't know what (could be Epstein-related, or something else entirely) - but there has to be some dirt somewhere.

[GreyhoundFan]

#Dershowitzlogic is trending on twitter. Here are some good ones:

 

[GreyhoundFan]

 

[GreyhoundFan]

I love The Onion!

 

[fraurosena]

George Takei has the right of it. 

 

[fraurosena]

People should remember that the Senate does not vote to 'acquit'. They vote if a president ought to be removed for the acts they performed in office. That means that the Senate does not pass a verdict on the fact if Trump actually committed the offenses or not, they only pass a verdict on the merits for removal.

Pronouncing certain acts do not merit removal does not equal acquittal, as an acquittal states a person did not commit the offenses charged. Not even his own defense lawyers (I use the term lightly) have attempted to deny that the offenses charged were committed, in fact they readily admit it. 

Of course, this will not stop Trump from proclaiming his total exoneration and acquittal...

[Alisamer]

Is Trump's "base" really THAT big and powerful? It's so obvious Trump is incompetent. It's so obvious Trump is corrupt. It's blatantly obvious he's committed crimes, and cares nothing at all for the country or it's people. 

I don't get why Republicans haven't attempted to band together, say "this has to stop." and get him out of office, already. He's ONE GUY. He can't have dirt on ALL of them, and most of the ones in the senate would be able to quickly retire comfortably if necessary.

His base is gullible, and there's plenty of proof of wrongdoing. While some of Trump's supporters are just up in his ass and will follow him off a cliff, I think lots of them might eventually accept "we're going to do all the stuff he promised you, but without breaking the law this time." Trump's "base" would likely form a new party, of course, but the Republicans with working brain cells who aren't white supremacists would probably breathe a sigh of relief. 

Then again, I don't understand how people who claim to be super patriotic would follow a guy who "loves" North Korea's dictator, cozies up to Putin (many Trump supporters grew up during the cold war! WTF? Russia was considered the archetype of evil back then!), and stomps on the constitution that he's never read. 

Also, I think Pence may have had the same goal as Melania. Tie yourself to the old unhealthy guy, and take over (the presidency, for Pence; his fortune, for Melania) when he kicks the bucket. It's probably part of why Pence always looks like he's lost in his head meditating. He's probably praying for God to hurry up the inevitable. 

[fraurosena]

41 minutes ago, Alisamer said:

I don't get why Republicans haven't attempted to band together, say "this has to stop." and get him out of office, already. He's ONE GUY. He can't have dirt on ALL of them, and most of the ones in the senate would be able to quickly retire comfortably if necessary.

You have a little flaw in your thinking if you believe that Trump is pulling the strings of Republicans. He's not. He doesn't have the dirt. It's the Russians.

It's common knowledge the Russians hacked the DNC, and I think it's only a matter of course that they also got into the RNC. Plus, they've been secretly funding a lot of them, via all sorts of legal and illegal means. 

So, if anyone is pulling strings, it's Putin. How else can it be that out of 53 Senators, there are only four (!!!) that might not vote along party (i.e. Russian) lines? 

And the absolute worst of the worst of them, is MoscowMitch. He did not get that moniker for nothing. He is the one, after all, that stopped Obama from making the Russian interference in the 2016 elections public...

[Alisamer]

5 minutes ago, fraurosena said:

You have a little flaw in your thinking if you believe that Trump is pulling the strings of Republicans. He's not. He doesn't have the dirt. It's the Russians.

It's common knowledge the Russians hacked the DNC, and I think it's only a matter of course that they also got into the RNC. Plus, they've been secretly funding a lot of them, via all sorts of legal and illegal means. 

I do realize this, but it also brings up my other question again - how are Trump's supporters, who claim to be so pro-America and patriotic, many of whom grew up fearing Russia as the USAs greatest adversary, not absolutely disgusted by this? If you asked them, they'd likely claim to hate Russia. But here they are, actively promoting Russia's agenda by supporting their biggest asset in the US.

[GreyhoundFan]

20 minutes ago, Alisamer said:

I do realize this, but it also brings up my other question again - how are Trump's supporters, who claim to be so pro-America and patriotic, many of whom grew up fearing Russia as the USAs greatest adversary, not absolutely disgusted by this? If you asked them, they'd likely claim to hate Russia. But here they are, actively promoting Russia's agenda by supporting their biggest asset in the US.

Because to them, "owning the libs" is priority three, right behind guns and saving the babyeeez. They'll follow anyone who pushes those three mandates.

[meep]

On 1/28/2020 at 1:10 PM, front hugs > duggs said:

I feel like CNN took this very important Impeachment update like 5 paragraphs longer than it needed to be:

I am going to print this out, frame it, and hang it up on my wall. 

[fraurosena]

1 hour ago, Alisamer said:

I do realize this, but it also brings up my other question again - how are Trump's supporters, who claim to be so pro-America and patriotic, many of whom grew up fearing Russia as the USAs greatest adversary, not absolutely disgusted by this? If you asked them, they'd likely claim to hate Russia. But here they are, actively promoting Russia's agenda by supporting their biggest asset in the US.

I second @GreyhoundFan’s point, and add that they are sheeple. Some of them by nature, but a lot of them by nurture. No thinking, critical or otherwise, allowed! Simply, blindly, follow the leader.

[GreyhoundFan]

 

[GreyhoundFan]

 

[GreyhoundFan]

From Joe Scarborough: "Trump’s confederacy of dunces"

Spoiler

A confederacy of dunces stumbled onto the Senate floor this week to launch their bewildering defense of President Trump. This misfit band of lawyers brought with them arguments so stunningly stupefying, logic so fatally flawed and a cynicism so brazenly transparent that one suspects Baghdad Bob was viewing the entire spectacle with grudging respect.

On Day One of Trump’s impeachment defense, the president’s team dismissed his personal lawyer Rudolph W. Giuliani as a minor player in the Ukrainian affair. Trump lawyer Jane Raskin said he was little more than a “shiny object designed to distract you.” Never mind that Trump pressured Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky to contact Giuliani, assuring him that “Mr. Giuliani is a highly respected man. He was the mayor of New York City, a great mayor, and I would like him to call you.”

Before Trump made the not-so-perfect call that would eventually lead to his impeachment, Giuliani ran frequent strategy sessions from the second floor of the president’s Washington hotel that were focused on getting Ukraine to investigate the Bidens. Giuliani repeatedly pressured U.S. diplomats and State Department employees to push his “drug deal” (as former national security adviser John Bolton described it). At the same time, America’s Mayor kept feeding Trump a steady diet of conspiracy theories that played into the president’s preexisting prejudices against Ukraine. Far from being a bit player and “shiny object,” Giuliani helped build the Democrats’ case for Trump’s impeachment better than anyone else in the president’s inner circle.

If the claims about Giuliani were not preposterous enough, senators were also forced to endure Kenneth Starr’s self-righteous and hypocritical warnings regarding “the culture of impeachment.” Starr had, after all, once run a four-year investigation into obscure land deals, suicide conspiracy theories and intimate sexual details involving President Bill Clinton. Starr would later claim that Clinton’s abuse of power was the “capstone” of his impeachment case, but that did not stop the former independent counsel from mournfully warning senators Monday that “the commission of a crime is by no means sufficient to warrant the removal of our duly elected president.”

If it is true that Trump killed irony years ago, Starr’s opening statement single-handedly exhumed irony’s corpse from its tomb, dragged it across the Senate floor and demolished all obstacles in its path before finally scattering the bones back into the grave, one by one. As Lawfare’s Benjamin Wittes said, “Does Ken Starr know he’s Ken Starr?” That embarrassing performance seemed only to confirm Trump’s previous assessment of the former Clinton prosecutor as a “lunatic” and a “disaster.”

Such insults were never thrown in the direction of Pam Bondi, another member of the president’s legal team. Bondi had safely placed herself in Trump’s good favor by refusing to pursue claims of fraud against Trump University when she was Florida’s attorney general. In 2013, the Orlando Sentinel reported that Bondi’s office was deciding whether to join in the lawsuit against Trump. Four days after the article went to print, Bondi’s reelection efforts were boosted by a $25,000 check from Trump’s foundation. Soon after, Bondi announced she would be not suing the reality TV star.

Such shamelessness in the service of Trump carries with it certain benefits. For Bondi, it was the honor of trotting out the conspiracy theory that then-Vice President Joe Biden had a Ukrainian prosecutor fired for investigating Burisma, of whose board his son Hunter was a member. If it were possible to embarrass the former Florida attorney general, then she would certainly be distressed to learn that Rupert Murdoch’s Wall Street Journal dismissed her theory as “discredited” months ago, or that the European Union, the Obama administration and the United States’ closest allies demanded the ouster of the same investigator, in part because his investigation into Burisma had been shelved.

But neither Bondi nor Starr can be shamed. The same holds true of the other attorneys on the president’s defense team, who sullied their reputations this week defending a shameless huckster, and whom history will judge harshly as those whose dunce routines continued to enable this dangerously unbalanced man.

 

[Xan]

5 hours ago, Alisamer said:

Then again, I don't understand how people who claim to be super patriotic would follow a guy who "loves" North Korea's dictator, cozies up to Putin (many Trump supporters grew up during the cold war! WTF? Russia was considered the archetype of evil back then!), and stomps on the constitution that he's never read. 

They like the bully.  They like someone who isn't afraid to offend. They absolutely love that he's "owning the libs".  They don't care that he's ruining our country and cutting off alliances.  They don't care that he's a criminal and a con man.  Everything that I didn't understand about the people in 1930's Germany, I understand now.  It's a mob in search of scapegoats.  If their life isn't going well, it's got to be someone else's fault and they want their bully leader to fix it.  

I watched a program recently about WWII Germany.  The point was made that more people were turned in by neighbors to the SS troopers than the SS found themselves.  Once they drink the Kool-Aid, they're just part of the mob.

They'll never abandon Trump.  He honestly could murder someone and none of them would care.

[GreyhoundFan]

From Dana Milbank: "The impeachment trial hurtles toward its worst-case conclusion"

Spoiler

As President Trump’s impeachment trial speeds to a close, perhaps as soon as Friday, likely without any witnesses, the result looks to be a worst-case scenario.

In the beginning, the president’s lawyers made a relatively benign argument: He didn’t do it. No quid pro quo.

But House managers tried their case too well. Evidence piled up on the Senate floor over the past 10 days that the president withheld military aid to force Ukraine to announce probes of his political foes. And former national security adviser John Bolton’s firsthand account leaked about the quid pro quo.

In response, Trump’s defenders shifted to a far more sweeping, and dangerous, defense. They stepped away from denying misconduct and instead declared that the president can do as he pleases — or, as Trump puts it, that the Constitution gives him “the right to do whatever I want as president.”

It was a tactical move — perhaps the only way to avoid calling Bolton as a witness, by rendering the facts of the case irrelevant — but with grim consequences. Now, when they acquit, senators won’t just excuse Trump’s behavior. They will endorse the belief that a president can do as he pleases — the law be damned.

“If a president did something which he believes will help him get elected — in the public interest — that cannot be the kind of quid pro quo that results in impeachment,” Trump lawyer Alan Dershowitz declared Wednesday.

Another of Trump’s lawyers, Pat Philbin, added that it would be perfectly legal for Trump’s campaign to take as a gift a foreign government’s “credible information of wrongdoing” by a political opponent.

On the Senate floor Thursday, Democratic senators probed for limits to what one called this “insane” doctrine: Could a president take any election help he wants from a foreign government? Could he withhold a city’s disaster aid if the mayor doesn’t endorse him?

“What we have seen over the last couple of days is a descent into constitutional madness,” said Rep. Adam Schiff, the lead House manager.

In the Nixon-Frost interview of 1977, President Richard Nixon uttered the infamous words: “When the president does it, that means it is not illegal.” Now, “we are right back to where we were a half-century ago, and I would argue that we may be in a worse place,” Schiff said. “Nixon was forced to resign. But that argument may succeed here now.”

This is how the stakes have changed during the Senate trial. At first, Republican senators planned to acquit Trump for his behavior. Now they are voting to bless his claim that anything he does is, by definition, legal.

Conservative legal thinkers have tried for decades to demolish the post-Watergate restraints on the presidency. But this demolishes far older ones. The president need no longer yield documents or testimony to congressional oversight. And the president can ignore any law if it helps in his reelection — as long as he believes his reelection is in the public interest. (Dershowitz, in a series of tweets Thursday, denied saying what he said, and his colleagues halfheartedly walked back his claim.)

Is it in the public interest to shut down media outlets Trump regards as “fake news”?

Is it in the public interest for him to ignore court orders that frustrate his agenda?

Could he cancel the election if he thinks his second term is in the public interest?

The Trump White House has already moved to block publication of Bolton’s book, saying its release would harm national security.

The Justice Department decrees that a sitting president can’t be indicted. (Robert Mueller cited that in declining to decide whether to charge Trump.) Now the Senate is saying a president can’t be impeached if he’s acting in his political interests.

Once Republican senators accepted this argument, prospects faded that Bolton would be called as a witness. The trial degenerated into farce.

On Thursday, Sen. Rand Paul (R-Ky.) attempted to unmask a person he suspects of being the whistleblower whose complaint started the impeachment probe by forcing Roberts to read the name. After Roberts refused to play along, Sen. Ron Johnson (R-Wis.) led a backdoor attempt to unmask their suspected whistleblower in another question.

Trump lawyer Jay Sekulow attacked three Democratic senators by name. Trump lawyer Eric Herschmann boasted about prescription drugs and dead terrorists.

But the consequences of this farce are not funny. What will Trump try next now that he knows he can’t be indicted and can’t be impeached, regardless of the legality of his actions?

“God help us,” said Sen. Mark Warner (Va.).

Earlier in the trial, Schiff warned the senators: “Right matters, and the truth matters. Otherwise, we are lost.”

With their votes to acquit, senators will embrace a new concept: Right is whatever the president says it is.

We are lost.