Friends of Padre Steve’s World,
Associate Supreme Court Justice Robert Jackson who served as the Chief American Prosecutor at the Major War Crimes Trials of Nazi War Criminals at Nuremberg said:
“The wrongs which we seek to condemn and punish have been so calculated, so malignant, and so devastating that civilization cannot tolerate their being ignored because it cannot survive their being repeated.”
Those words were not just applicable to the war crimes of the Nazis but the unconstitutional and violent acts of former President Trump and his Cult to overthrow the Constitution, system of democratic government, and laws of the United States. The crimes, especially the attempt to assault the Capitol and the Congress as it was in the process of exorcising their sacred oath to certify the votes of the Electoral College, normally a largely ceremonial event.
Today the House Impeachment Managers led by Congressman Jamie Raskin introduced their case against Donald Trump, the now twice impeached former President. Their presentation on the question if it was constitutional to impeach a former President was decided by a vote of 56-44 in favor of the constitutionality of the impeachment trial. The managers used massive amounts of legal and historical precedents to lay out the case that the trial was indeed constitutional. The video was the most damning since the Allied prosecutors at the trial of the Major Nazi War Criminals at Nuremberg.
Trump’s hastily gathered and woefully unprepared defense team was painful to watch, something attested to by numerous GOP Senators, most of whom stilled voted against impeachment. They behaved like mob lawyers who knew that the fix was in. Their defenses conjured the specter of American mobsters who were acquitted of murder, racketeering, extortion, kidnapping, torture, grand theft, bribery of public officials, police and judges. But then Trump has always acted more as a mob boss than President.
The remarkable thing was that six Republican Senators, including one, Senator Bill Cassidy of Louisiana who voted with Senator Rand Paul in a similar vote a week ago changed his mind based on the evidence presented and repeating that he was doing what an impartial juror was supposed to do. This is more members of the defendant’s party than in any impeachment trial in our history. Senator Cassidy’s words will hang over the heads of every Republican Senator.
The fact that the House Managers brought these charges and prepared such a remarkable opening in spite of knowing that the very real possibility if not probability that the fix was in regarding most GOP Senators voting for Trump’s acquittal was a profile in moral and political courage. It was courageous because it defied the wishes of many Americans, especially ones committed to violence and murder.
Mind you, unlike the President and members of the Cabinet, outside of the Capitol complex none of these men and women have any security protection from the government. No Secret Service, no Federal Marshals, nothing. This means that all of them are potential targets of the people who assaulted the Capitol on 6 January.
But before Congressman Raskin began the arguments based on legal, constitutional, and historical evidence he introduced a video that I can only say was second to the video presented by the Allied Prosecutors at the International Military Tribunal at Nuremberg. The timeline of the House Managers video was damning, it was unprecedented and it put anyone who watched it in the building, for almost every Senator and Representative regardless of party was a witness and a potential victim of Trump’s mob. .
I cannot imagine how anyone with any personal or moral integrity cannot cringe when they view that footage. even the Nazis a Nuremberg were shattered by the video shown by the prosecution. I wonder if just 17 Republican Senators can find enough moral courage and decency to convict Trump at the end of this trial. Mind you the only potential penalty the former President can face is not being able to hold public office again. There is no prison time, no financial penalty, no restrictions on any other freedoms he has. He can vote, he still receives his pension and Secret Service protection, and has no restrictions on his personal or business interests. Of course none of that will interfere with prosecution by various states where he is alleged to have committed crimes related and unrelated to the charge of the impeachment.
I have been in too many situations where people either armed and in person, or online threatened my life. I have been in combat situations where I was the only person unarmed in situations where even the good guys didn’t know who the bad guys were. At no time, even in combat situations was I unarmed, not that I didn’t insert myself into mobs of potentially murderous people to calm the situations.
I will continue to write about this throughout the impeachment trial but let no one misinterpret me; what happened on 6 January was an act that had it been successful would have upended the Constitution, overthrow the result of an election that the elections commissions of every state said was valid, and proclaimed the dictatorship of Donald Trump. There is no doubt about that.
We as Americans cannot allow a man who has done all that he could to overthrow our Constitution, Democracy, a legal election, and incite his cult to attack and kill at the Capitol which killed 6 people in the attack including Capitol Police Officer Brian Sicknick, was probably part of the reason two other Capitol Policemen committing suicide shortly after the attack. 140 more Capitol and Metropolitan Police were wounded including several critically injured losing limbs and eyesight. The insurgents called the police “traitors” , this from people who claimed they supported police. The assailants used flagpoles bearing Trump ans American flags as weapons, used a fire extinguisher to kill Officer Sicknick, erected a gallows of front of the Capitol as attackers shouted “Hang Mike Pence.” How anyone serving in the Senate can ignore these facts and instead bow down to Trump and the fear of his base shows they have no moral courage.
Since none of them have that it is imperative that regardless of its outcome, when this trial is over that any of the standing for re-election be hammered with this video and all of the documentation every day. There is no defense against the truth and every one of them need to be confronted on this with the assumption that most Americans, even those who at one time or another voted for Trump have not completely forgotten what they were taught in school, by parents and grandparents, political icons, pastors and Sunday School teachers. Thus during the trial and after Democrats presented these facts, this video documentary, and so much more at every one of them who vote to acquit the former President, a New York Sewer Rat, now Florida Swamp Rat.
But this was just day one. There will be more and it will be even more devastating to Trump and his Cult’s cause if only a few Republicans could vote their conscience and not the fear of what Trump’s cult might do to oppose their reelection. But then courage is a rare commodity in American politics, especially among Christians and alleged conservatives.
Jackson said in his opening at Nuremberg: “”The wrongs which we seek to condemn and punish have been so calculated, so malignant, and so devastating that civilization cannot tolerate their being ignored because it cannot survive their being repeated.”
Jackson’s words about the Nazi criminals are not morally different that the charge in the impeachment indictment of Donald Trump. If Republicans cannot see that then they are lost beyond redemption. In the Book of Genesis the Lord told Abraham if 100, then 50, then 10, then five people in Sodom who were righteous could be found the city would be spared. Today, the number for the GOP is 17 Senators. Will just 17 of 50 uphold their oath to the Constitution and the oath they swore to be impartial jurors in the impeachment trial? The question remains to be answered, but though I think between 6 and 15 might vote to convict, I doubt if most will follow conscience as they have none, precedent and history because they are ignorant, the evidence, because if they had the chance they would have taken part in the insurrection themselves, most have no honor and their only loyalty is to their personal power regardless of the moral, spiritual, legal, constitutional, personal and societal costs.
That is why no matter how this impeachment trial ends it will not be end of our troubles. Those of us who belief Trump guilty must apply every bit of pressure we can through letters, calls and emails to Republican Senators in the states we are registered to vote. If he survives we must use every bit of evidence against every House and Senate Member who swears their fealty to Trump and not the Constitution. We cannot quit regardless of the outcome. I will pen a letter to the one Republican Senator from my home of record until my residence is officially established in Virginia. In it I will do everything I can to shame her and throw up her heritage as the daughter of a former governor convicted of many crimes while in office and disbarred from the court. I hope if she has any sense of morality or shame that my letter will change her mind on impeachment. I hope that every opponent of Trump will write their Republican Senators to let them know that they will be help accountable by the electorate, not by violence or force for the rest of their political careers.
I only wonder if any Republican would dare to utter the words spoken by Ernst Janning, played by Burt Lancaster in Judgment at Nuremberg:
“I am going to tell the truth if the whole world conspires against it. I am going to tell them the truth about their Ministry of Justice. Werner Lampe — an old man who cries into his Bible now. An old man who profited from the property expropriation of every man he sent to a concentration camp. Friedrich Hofstetter — the “good German” who knew how to take orders, who sent men before him to be sterilized like so many digits. Emil Hahn — the decayed, corrupt bigot, obsessed by the evil within himself. And Ernst Janning — worse than any of them, because he knew what they were, and he went along with them. Ernst Janning — who made his life…excrement… because he walked with them.”
Will anyone in the GOP consider their lives excrement because they walked with Trump and his cult? That is a question for now and the ages.
So until tomorrow,
Peace
Padre Steve+
The Inglorius Padre Steve's World 