Everyone reading this before the impeachment trial is over, please stop what you’re doing, bring up the contact websites or information for your representative and senators, and message them to call witnesses for the impeachment trial. It’s your last chance to stop Congress from allowing a historic chance at public accountability to lapse, to stop Congress from passively enabling retrenchment of white supremacist, oligarchical power.
For encouragement, see who is taking up the cause online with #CallWitnesses.
For a short version of the argument, the country needs the House impeachment managers to complete the Senate trial, not for Republican Senate “jurors” who’ve hopelessly thrown in with white supremacist fascism, but in the even more important court of public opinion. We need for Congress to use the monumentally historic national spotlight of the impeachment trial of an almost-dictator ex-president to expose the full extent of Trump’s depraved, violent coup attempt with witnesses: friendly as well as obligated, heroes as well as craven accomplices, depositions as well as live testimony. The impeachment managers can request that the Senate call Trump himself, Republican senators and representatives, sergeants at arms, police leadership and rank-and-file, Pentagon officials, National Guard commanders, insurrectionists, plotters, and more. Imagine the national attention that witnesses could command toward impeaching not just Trump but also white supremacism and despotism.
To not would mean that to say Democrats did everything they could for justice and democracy would be a lie. It would be another rediscovery of what the meaning of “appeasement” is. To try to risk nothing actually risks everything.
For the in-depth treatment, let’s take a thoroughgoing journey back through a short chunk of time.
Impeachment Case Aims to Marshal Outrage of Capitol Attack Against Trump, by Nicholas Fandos, New York Times, February 7, 2021
Several people familiar with the preparations said the managers were wary of saying anything that might implicate Republican lawmakers who echoed or entertained the president’s baseless claims of election fraud. To have any chance of making an effective case, the managers believe, they must make clear it is Mr. Trump who is on trial, not his party.
Right away we get to the Democratic leadership’s strategy of coaxing individual Republicans rather than holding their feet to the fires of accusatory evidence, headlines, press inquiry, and public outrage.
Though Politico is very much a a verify-before-trusting kind of outlet, this reporting from last week does square with everything else I’ve seen:
Democratic impeachment managers feeling muzzled, by Rachael Bade, Tara Palmeri, Ryan Lizza, and Eugene Daniels, Politico Playbook, February 8, 2021
[...] Several of the House impeachment managers wanted firsthand testimony to help prove their case that Trump incited the Jan. 6 riot, our sources tell us. But Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer, Speaker Nancy Pelosi and Biden administration officials have been eager for the process to move quickly, we’re told.
It’s been a source of frustration for some Democrats privately. Trump, these people have noticed, is already on the rebound politically, at least among Republicans. The GOP base has rallied to his defense, and many Republican lawmakers who witnessed the terror of the Capitol invasion are back in Trump’s corner.
That’s why there had been talk among the managers about calling individuals who could change minds—if not the minds of 17 GOP senators needed to convict, then perhaps a slice of the GOP electorate that still supports Trump. [...]
Schumer and other Senate Democrats argue, however, that they don’t necessarily need witnesses since Trump’s crimes were in plain sight and documented in videos and tweets. Privately, senior Democrats also note that 45 Senate Republicans have already decided they think the trial is unconstitutional because Trump is no longer president, so why bother dragging this out?
That’s what someone who puts maintaining the empire over justice and democracy would say.
Democrats risk committing a serious blunder at Trump’s impeachment trial, by Greg Sargent, The Plum Line, Washington Post, February 8, 2021
So acquittal is a foregone conclusion. If anything, Democrats need to make it as politically uncomfortable for Republicans as possible to acquit—and to extract a political price for it among the suburban moderates whom the GOP continues to alienate with its ongoing QAnon-ification.
It’s hard to see how insulating the GOP from Trump’s effort to overturn U.S. democracy helps accomplish that.
[...] A big political battle is coming over all this as well. Democrats must fully dramatize the GOP’s continuing radicalization when it comes to embracing such tactics, so the public understands the stakes of what will be nothing less than a full-scale war over the future of our democracy.
Thing is, it’s not a blunder, it’s a knowing choice. It’s just that the goals of party leaders’ strategy don’t necessarily align with their ostensible public platform or with the goals of people like me.
The missing elephant in the room at Trump’s trial: Ongoing GOP radicalization, by Paul Waldman and Greg Sargent, The Plum Line, Washington Post, February 10, 2021
Democrats have made a strategic decision that if they refrain from implicating the GOP in Trump’s misdeeds, then some Republican senators might be more gettable as votes to convict Trump.
But the result is this: At the highest-profile reckoning we’ll ever see into this months-long effort to overthrow U.S. democracy, a large part of the story simply isn’t being told. The role in this whole saga of the GOP’s ongoing radicalization, and its increasing comfort with anti-democratic tactics, openly authoritarian conduct and even political violence, is largely going unmentioned.
And there’s the rub. Democrats’ (and corporate press’s) false manufacturing of the possibility of nonexistent Republican good intentions.
A brief interlude into feints that should be charges: The impeachment managers invited Trump to provide testimony… voluntarily. It’s fully within their capacity to ask the Senate to subpoena Trump. (After all, when Republicans impeached Bill Clinton—over fibbing about a blowjob—they issued a subpoena and, after a fashion, got his rather infamous testimony.)
House Impeachment Managers Request Former President Trump Testify Under Oath Next Week, Rep. Jamie Raskin, February 4, 2021
In the letter, Lead Manager Raskin wrote, “Two days ago, you filed an Answer in which you denied many factual allegations set forth in the article of impeachment. You have thus attempted to put critical facts at issue notwithstanding the clear and overwhelming evidence of your constitutional offense. In light of your disputing these factual allegations, I write to invite you to provide testimony under oath, either before or during the Senate impeachment trial, concerning your conduct on January 6, 2021. We would propose that you provide your testimony (of course including cross-examination) as early as Monday, February 8, 2021, and not later than Thursday, February 11, 2021.”
So courteous. Recently, Raskin dared Trump’s defense team to have him testify under oath.
Raskin calls on Trump's defense team to have him testify under oath, NBC News Now, February 12, 2021 Rep. Jamie Raskin called on former President Trump's defense team to have him come testify under oath in the Senate so they can have answers to questions on his actions during the Capitol riot.
That’s cute and all. But that Raskin can request a subpoena of Trump anytime he feels like it honestly makes this an insult to justice. As long-time San Francisco politician Willie Brown has said (though not the way he meant it), “Power unused is power abused.” Exuent interlude.
I’m actually less concerned about Senate trial acquittal (a foregone conclusion without witnesses, a wildcard with them) than I am about the acquiescence of congressional Democrats to letting historically critical (and white supremacist, fascist, oligarchical, murderous…) portions of the insurrection story go untold. The court of public opinion is more important. Significant timely movement there by necessity takes open confrontation with Republicans. It takes making them angry, to their faces (and making oligarchs and white supremacists angry remotely [or not so remotely, in the case of the insurrectionists]). It takes making those masses of subconscious racists among political moderates and conservatives really uncomfortable or upset. There can be no substantial, lasting progress toward justice with placidness and placation. That’s the false peace of oppression that Martin Luther King Jr. and others rightfully lamented.
Instead, the likes of Sen. Feinstein want to be buddies with Republicans who’ve thrown in with fascism, and Majority Leader Schumer, Speaker Pelosi, and President Biden apparently yearn to collaborate with them (though we still haven’t seen the full fallout from Republicans enabling imminent threat to their lives). Having it out with witnesses would force the conflict out in the open, where popular pressure and media can break through oligarchs’ control. Truth, accountability, and reconciliation—the latter is oxymoronic without the other two.
Now on to present circumstances:
New details about Trump-McCarthy shouting match show Trump refused to call off the rioters, by Jamie Gangel, Kevin Liptak, Michael Warren and Marshall Cohen, CNN, February 12, 2021
[… House Republican leader Kevin] McCarthy insisted that the rioters were Trump's supporters and begged Trump to call them off.
Trump's comment set off what Republican lawmakers familiar with the call described as a shouting match between the two men. A furious McCarthy told the then-President the rioters were breaking into his office through the windows, and asked Trump, “Who the f--k do you think you are talking to?” according to a Republican lawmaker familiar with the call.
[...] A source close to Pence said Trump's legal team was not telling the truth when attorney Michael van der Veen said at the trial that “at no point” did the then-President know his vice president was in danger.
Asked whether van der Veen was lying, the source said, “Yes.”
Aside: Have to say, I find it darkly hilarious every time a Republican who’s signed up for Trump’s fascist program doesn’t quite internalize the totality of depravity that entails. Jeff Sessions was among the first; amazingly, McCarthy won’t be the last.
Democrats have one big weapon left against Trump. Will they use it? By Greg Sargent, The Plum Line, Washington Post, February 12, 2021
[...] Specifically, the impeachment managers can still call witnesses. And the case for this has gotten stronger, now that we are so close to showing that Trump may have knowingly endangered Pence’s life.
[...] Witnesses could also shed more light on what Trump was told by the lawmakers under siege inside the Capitol who were pleading with him by phone to call off the mob, and what Trump said as he refused. Heck, as Andy Kroll suggests, what about calling Pence himself?
Remember, many of these damning facts about the chronology are new—they’ve been shaken loose by the investigative process. It would be entirely appropriate to call witnesses now that these facts have raised urgent new questions.
[...] We all know the vast majority of Republican senators won’t vote based on the evidence. This is all about creating a full reckoning into the most comprehensive effort to overturn U.S. democracy in modern times—including through deliberately cultivated mob intimidation and violence—not for Republicans, who are beyond reach, but for the American people, and for history.
Herrera Beutler works hard to spread facts about Jan. 6, says her decision was personal not political, by Barry Holtzclaw, The Daily News [southwestern WA], Jan 17, 2021
Herrera Beutler said she was stunned when House Minority Leader Kevin McCarthy told her of a conversation he had with Trump on Jan. 6: “He said to the President, ‘You’ve got to hold them. You need to get on TV right now, you need to get on Twitter, you need to call these people off.’ And he said, the President said, ‘Kevin, they’re not my people.’”
She said McCarthy told the President, “Yes they are, they just came through my windows and my staff is running for cover. Yeah, they’re your people. Call them off.”
Trump’s response, as McCarthy told Herrera Beutler, was, “Well I guess these people are just more angry about the election and upset than you are.”
Herrera Beutler said the President’s failure to respond to the Jan. 6 attack was “a dereliction of duty, a violation of his oath of office to protect the Constitution.”
“A president who sees an attack happening like this has an oath by his office to do what he can to stop it, and he didn’t.”
House Republican pleads for Pence, Trump aides to speak out on Jan. 6 insurrection, by Kyle Cheney, Politico, February 12, 2021
"To the patriots who were standing next to the former president as these conversations were happening, or even to the former Vice President: if you have something to add here, now would be the time," Herrera Beutler (R-Wash.) wrote in a statement released late Friday, [...]
Another interlude, on what we’re up against:
It’s not just stupidity by which Trump’s impeachment trial defense gives Republicans the most threadbare of fig leaf arguments, it’s a dominance move:
Asha Rangappa @AshaRangappa_ Feb. 12, 2021 It looks like Trump’s defense is yet another loyalty test. Instead of giving GOP senators an easy legal fig leaf to hide behind, he wants them to sign onto yet another dishonest, absurd conspiracy theory, to force them to become even more closely tethered to him
It’s the consolidation of fascist power. A bunch of made men. Exuent interlude 2.
The Senate Must Call Witnesses in the Trial of Donald Trump, by David Atkins, Political Animal Washington Monthly, February 13, 2021
[...] As Greg Sargent noted, making the case narrowly about Trump lets the entire Republican Party off the hook for its radicalization and complicity in Trump’s crimes. Moreover, failing to call witnesses would leave crucial facts in doubt about the nature and the timeline of Trump’s actions on the day of the January 6th insurrection.
[...] The Pentagon appointees who refused to allow more assistance to the Capitol police in advance should be brought in to answer questions under oath. Those who were immediately close to the former President as the insurrection developed should be forced to testify about his words, actions and state of mind over those crucial hours, including but not limited to Mark Meadows.
Atkins’s full set of recommendations for witnesses:
- Minority Leader McCarthy and other Republicans on his call with Trump
- Senators Mike Lee and Tommy Tuberville
- Pentagon officials
- Mark Meadows and other presidential staffers
- Insurrectionists
And now, this one I really hope you’ll sit with. Beutler dissects each element of the impeachment political kaleidoscope and puts them back together in alignment to meaning.
Big Tent newsletter by Brian Beutler, Crooked.com, February 12, 2021
[...] this time around, Democrats have it in their power to call witnesses who could shed light on all facets of the insurrection, but that the same set of party members that initially wanted to bypass impeachment altogether has now decided that, with the trial’s conclusion foregone, calling witnesses would be nothing more than a waste of Senate floor time.
Let’s party here like it’s 2020 for a minute and dwell on why that instinct is wrong as a political and procedural matter, but also as a footing to protect the country from resurgent authoritarianism.
[…] The procedural objection is a red herring. Because Trump is no longer a sitting president, the trial doesn’t actually have to play out on the Senate floor, and the proceedings can be referred to committee if they require a significant investment of time.
[...] Are Republicans more likely or less likely to acquit Trump after uniformed police officers appear before the Senate and pin responsibility for their injuries on Donald Trump? If they intend to acquit him anyhow, under what circumstances would that vote hurt more: with or without such testimony?
[...] Most abstractly, but to me most importantly, the act of fact-finding is democratically restorative. It’s a way of demonstrating to free people that their elected leaders are answerable, and that their actions aren’t rooted solely in pursuit of power or hidden purposes. [...]
On a more partisan level, it’s a way for Democrats to show the voters who gave them consolidated control of government that they aren’t scared of confronting an opposition that has proven it would like to rule the country by force.
Why impeach without going all out? To go through the motions, to carry on the pretense of democracy for the masses, to cover for oligarchy, to tweak yet in the main serve the established order, to actively destroy the meaning of our political efforts… lest things fundamentally change.
if Democrats wielded legitimate official authority assertively on the public’s behalf… people would get ideas. Oligarchs would pull their money from the party, or they’d flip the table on society. Yet that’s the fight that we need to have out in the open for a just, multiethnic, multicultural society.
Yet sometimes objective reality is so overwhelming that it gives an opening to hope:
Sheldon Whitehouse @SenWhitehouse Feb. 12, 2021 Looks like Trump’s BS-artist attorneys may have crossed the line from BS to something much more serious. [CNN article]
A review of Trump’s abominable lawyers in which the authors did not yet know about evident lies. Pretty damning stuff, even without that. [Atlantic article]
Trump’s lawyers are likely under ethics obligation to clean this up: duty of candor to a tribunal. You don’t get as counsel to make misrepresentations; if you do, you have an affirmative duty to clean it up. Tomorrow just got a lot more interesting.
One way to clear it up? Suspend trial to depose McCarthy and Tuberville under oath and get facts. Ask Secret Service to produce for review comms back to White House re VP Pence safety during siege. What did Trump know, and when did he know it?
Please everyone advocate for us all.