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February 14, 2021 · 02:10

“Then say they were not slain. But dead they are ….” The High Cost of Those Who Voted to Acquit

Friends of Padre Steve’s World,

I have watched every minute of the second impeachment trial. As one of the Deans of the Joint Forces Staff College once noted “Steve, you a a historian masquerading as a Chaplain.” Back in seminary I was asked by many classmates “why are you in seminary and not in law school?” As a historian I have spent a lot of time studying and writing about various criminal trials involving American politicians and International War Crimes Tribunals. If it would result in divorce I might at my late age go to law school, but I have put Judy through enough over our marriage. That being said I might take up a Legal Studies Masters degree on a part time basis. I think that would complement my History and Theology Masters Degrees. Since there are no History PhD. programs close to me that I would be interested in pursuing this might be the best.

I watch high profile legal cases with great interest, especially the lawyering and I have seen and read about some amazing lawyering resulting in convictions or acquittals of of the accused. These lawyers for former President put on an amazing display of ignorance coupled with incompetence, but then they are the only people willing to represent Trump and none of them have exactly great legal reputations to begin with.

The men representing the twice impeached and disgraced former President who besides impeachment is under investigation for multiple criminal charges including rape, attempting to pressure officials to change the results of the election and even more civil charges regarding gross financial and fraud charges.

These lawyers have embarrassed their profession. I know too many excellent attorneys military and civilian to count these jokers among them. David Schoen is best known for representing mob bosses, Trump’s ally Roger Stone during the Muller Investigation and most recently the late Jeffery Epstein. Interestingly Schoen began his career rathe nobly in civil rights cases, something he seems to have little interest in today. Schoen is the sharpest of the three but during the trial he has only spoken for about 45 minutes and will not be available for the closing. He is also said to have threatened to quit the defense Thursday night but Trump talked him out of it. If the impeachment trial ends tomorrow it won’t matter because he will be out of a job because he announced that he will not work on the Jewish Sabbath which ends at sundown Saturday.

This meant that the bulk of the defense was shouldered by Bruce Castor, a former prosecutor in Pennsylvania who most notably refused to charge O.J. Simpson while serving as District of Attorney for Montgomery County. He also promised Simpson that he would never would be convicted. He was wrong. Simpson was eventually convicted. In his initial statements on Tuesday regarding the constitutionality of the impeachment trial his representation was so bad that Trump Wanted to fire him and  Senator John Cronyn said “”The president’s lawyer just rambled on and on.” “I’ve seen a lot of lawyers and a lot of arguments, and that was not one of the finest I’ve seen.”

Castor did nothing to help his defense of Trump or his lawyering reputation on Friday. The other member of Trump’s defense team is personal injury lawyer Michael Van Der Veen who has made a career of litigating car crashes, motorcycle and bicycle crashes and dog bites. Van Der Veen managed not only to be ineffective but insulted and potentially alienated Senators who might vote in favor of acquittal and was cautioned on his profane language by Senate President Pro-Tem Patrick Leahy.

The defense team used just two and a half hours of their sixteen allotted hours in which they repeatedly played the same out of context videos of Democrat politicians and entertainers using the word “fight”  while saying that Trump’s “free speech rights under the First Amendment were being denied” and using the dog whistle of videos showing mostly Black, Brown, Jewish, and Women opponents of Trump using the word fight in civil rights cases, Black Lives Matter demonstrations, and debates on policy questions that never resulted in violence or assaults on the Congress of the United States. The videos were spiced together without any context, not in any chronological order, and enhanced with chilling ominous music. Almost everyone shown in the video now called the #FightClub video are Black and Brown Women of Color, Jews, and other Democratic politicians and entertainers.

Say what you want about the House Managers video presentations on Tuesday, Wednesday and Thursday they stuck to the facts at hand to document the insurrection minute by minute. They did not add music, and they put each video, statement and tweet in context. The counsels for the defense did not. They pieced together a vile and racist video worthy of Joseph Goebbels and Julius Streicher. The abject racism of Trump’s Counsel and Trump’s GOP in the Impeachment Trial are undeniable and irredeemable.

All arguments used by Trump’s Counsel were false equivalence arguments that would play well on the Sean Hannity and Tucker Carlson propaganda shows, and possibly give GOP Senators an off ramp to acquit Trump. But none would stand in a real criminal trial which this is not, despite the facts that all of these attorneys have attempted to compare it to in order to deflect blame from Trump were nothing more than smoke and mirrors and not even very good ones, but good enough for 43 Republican Senators to vote to acquit.

After the traveling Trump clown attorneys finished on Friday the Senate went to the question and answer session where the Impeachment Managers and the former twice impeached President’s legal team answered written questions from the Senators. Once again the twice impeached, under criminal investigation former President’s bumbled their defense refusing to answer any factual questions from Republican or Democratic Senators. They never once actually answered a question but attempted to deflect and deny everything even questioning the actual evidence, saying that they were not permitted to see it though they had it on 9 February as a condition of the bipartisan agreement on the rules of the impeachment trial. They lied. They continued to lie in their closing statement repeating the same distortions, deflections and twisted arguments they made the previous day and went on to make unsupported and scandalous statements about Democrats who had supported the Black Lives Matter movement, and spoke out about the racist, unconstitutional, and criminal actions of Trump and his administration. Their defense on Friday and Closing arguments were difficult to watch, especially those of Counsel Van Der Veen who accused the Democrats of “trying to cancel culture, cancel the Constitution, and cancel the votes of 74 million Trump voters.”


This was despite the fact that for the past four years Trump and his administration have displayed contempt for the Constitution, and bulldozed the institutional guardrails designed to protect Americans from tyranny until the final day of his administration, issuing orders and appointing political hacks into sensitive jobs in the civil service, including the Departments of Defense, Homeland Security, Justice, and intelligence services. Nothing like this has every been attempted by any administration in American history. Likewise they attempted to cancel the votes and in some states are still attempting to cancel the votes of the 81 million Americans who voted for Joe Biden by trampling our laws and Constitution. If there is a Cancel Culture movement it is by Trump and his GOP cult who try to narrowly decline culture in its pre-Civil War White Protestant and White Supremacy context. Nothing else matters to them.

But overnight other evidence testified to by a Republican Senator and Representative came into play.

First there were the words of Senator Tommy Tuberville who testified that he told Trump about the break in at the Capitol and the threats to Vice President Pence wo was then fleeing for his life with his Secret Service detail, family, and his military aide who held his nuclear football. Minutes after being told by Tuberville that Pence was in danger and he had to flee, Trump tweeted a threatening message to his enraged and homicidal followers about how Pence had failed. Tuberville confirmed his comments Friday night, but voted to acquit today.

Republican House Member Jaime Herrera Beutler of Washington State who was with House Minority Leader Kevin McCarthy who gave a statement undisputed by anyone, including McCarthy. Just before the gavel fell to open the Saturday session Lead Impeachment Manager Jamie Raskin decided that the Managers wanted to call Herrera Beutler as a witness and depose her via Zoom since she was in Washington. In an incredibly angry tirade the defense led by Van Der Veen. threatened to call “hundreds of witness” in response. The Senate the voted on the motion to call witness and agreed by a 55-45 vote to do so. Then it recessed to discuss the matter. After about an hour of negotiations the Senators, especially the Democratic leadership bowed to the pressure that a call for witnesses, depositions and testimony pressured the Managers to accept a compromise regarding Herrera Beutler’s statement. It was read into the record and admitted in written form. It  read:

“In my January 12 statement in support of the article of impeachment, I referenced a conversation House Minority Leader Kevin McCarthy relayed to me that he’d had with President Trump while the January 6 attack was ongoing. Here are the details:

“When McCarthy finally reached the president on January 6 and asked him to publicly and forcefully call off the riot, the president initially repeated the falsehood that it was antifa that had breached the Capitol. McCarthy refuted that and told the president that these were Trump supporters. That’s when, according to McCarthy, the president said: ‘Well, Kevin, I guess these people are more upset about the election than you are.’

“Since I publicly announced my decision to vote for impeachment, I have shared these details in countless conversations with constituents and colleagues, and multiple times through the media and other public forums.

“I told it to the Daily News of Longview on January 17. I’ve shared it with local county Republican executive board members, as well as other constituents who ask me to explain my vote. I shared it with thousands of residents on my telephone town hall on February 8.

“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.”

I am glad the statement became part of the record but wish she had testified in person, as well as the many insurgents who said that they “acted on the invitation and orders of President Trump.” The Managers said that they reached out to other Republican targets of the insurrection but none would come forward, and that to subpoena them would be an attempt to force potentially hostile witnesses into the dock. Thus they decided to compromise remembering that a witness subpoenaed during Trump’s first impeachment trial had not yet testified. I appreciate that reasoning but wish it had been different.

I think that the Senate should vote to suspend the proceedings as depositions of witnesses are taken was right but the pressure put on the Managers to compromise was ill-considered. But Raskin and other Managers were realistic and admitted that no amount of witnesses would have persuaded that they were already going to vote to acquit based on the technicality rejected by the Senate on Tuesday that a former office holder could be impeached and tried by the Senate.

Unfortunately all of the Democrats seemed to forget something that British Chief Prosecutor Sir David Maxwell-Fyfe told the American Chief Prosecutor Associate Supreme Court Justice Robert Jackson as he wore out the trial judges reading documentary evidence into the record. Maxwell-Fyfe told Jackson: 

“As legal strategy  your documentary approach has been unassailable. But as drama, it is, I regret to say, absolutely stultifying. A trial is a show, Robert. Like it or not, it’s a show… And it’s ours to lose. A trial is a show, Robert. Like it or not, it’s a show. And those four learnt men sitting on the bench are as impressionable as any audience….

Witnesses will give this trial a human face. One compelling witness can outweigh a tonne of documentary evidence.” 

Unfortunately I do not think any number of witnesses would have persuaded any number of the Republican Senators who voted to acquit.

A guilty verdict would have been true justice, despite the fact that as a private citizen Trump can be tried in multiple jurisdictions for criminal and civil actions.  But the complaining party at the bar are not simply election officials Trump threatened, Republican and Democratic politicians who admitted that the results of the election were legitimate, but the 81 million people who voted for Joe Biden who Trump tried to cancel their votes and rights as citizens whose votes had been held as valid by every state and every one of over 60 courts from State Courts, up to the Supreme Court of the United States and multiple recounts in every contested state. In spite of that Trump persisted in proclaiming the Big Lie that he “won in a massive landslide, but that his victory was stolen.” Something he repeated on 6 January as some of his insurgents were breaching the Capitol as he encouraged those at the Ellipse to go to the Capitol. He promised to go with them but never did, instead laughing and reveling as the attack was broadcast on television, as was captured in a video taken by his son Donald Junior.

Not only this but the complaining party are free and Democratic societies around the world who look to the United States for leadership for what we were once considered, the best example of a successful pluralistic and multi-ethnic democracy. They have been disappointed and since Trump took office authoritarian governments back by groups like the Nazi Brownshirts and Mussolini’s Fascist paramilitaries have taken power in now former democracies in Eastern Europe, and are growing in influence around the world. This is in large part due to the distain for our Constitution, Republic and democracy.

This failed attempted insurrection or coup against the American Capitol to kill Vice President Pence, Senators and Representatives regardless of their political party in order to stop the ceremonial certification of the Electoral College Ballots, something that Pence had told Trump multiple times that he could not do under the Constitution and would not do.

Trump didn’t tell his private Army that Pence had promised to do his  but instead let them hang on the hopes that Pence would stop the proceedings. When Pence opened the count and promised to do his Constitutional duty, Trump  further inflamed his insurgents by telling them how Pence had failed them, this as they were racing through the Capitol building hunting for him and chanting “hang Mike Pence.” 

I could go on but I am going to stop for the night. The House Managers put on an amazing case that proved beyond a reasonable doubt that Trump was guilty as charged.Though they failed to convict they convinced the largest number of Senators from the accused party to vote against him. The votes of Mitt Romney, Susan Collins, Lisa Murkowski, Ben Sasse, Richard Burr, Bill Cassidy, and Pat Toomey were courageous. Regardless of if they were coming up for re-election in 2022 or 2024, or if the were retiring every one of them put a target on their backs. It won’t be Antifa or anyone on the Left who tries to kill them, but Trump’s violent armed Cult goons.

But to finish I will close with a Robert Jackson’s quote from Shakespeare’s King Lear in his closing at the Major War Crimes Trial at Nuremberg to finish this article adapting it to Trump. Trump stands “before the record of this trial as bloodstained Gloucester stood by the body of his slain King. He begged of the widow, as they beg of you: “Say I slew them not.” And the Queen replied, “Then say they were not slain. But dead they are ….” If you were to say of these men that they are not guilty, it would be as true to say that there has been no war, there are no slain, there has been no crime.

That is true of every Republican who voted to acquit Trump Saturday, and every one who voted in the House or Senate not to recognize the results of the Electoral College vote. But the lives of those lost on 6 January 2021, especially Capitol Hill Police Officers cries out “Say they are not slain. but dead they are.” Their blood forever stains the hands of Trump and his insurgents who attempted to overthrow the United States Government by force and violence but who were acquitted by 43 members of the Senate, both true believers and followers of Trump, or cowards desperate to remain in office through the votes of those of Trump’s Cult who fully approve of violence and murder in the pursuit of power.

For the moment Trump and his Cult appear to have escaped justice, but even now over 200 of the insurgents have been arrested and charged, and many others being investigated and sought out. Hopefully thousands will be rounded up and their terrorist organizations exposed and broken up so they cannot commit such violence again. Likewise, as previously noted, Trump himself and many of his close associates are under criminal investigation by Federal and State authorities for a multitude of crimes. Likewise Trump faces criminal action for sexual assault and rape accusations, and financial crimes which threaten the ruin of his personal financial, real estate and entertainment empire. There are also a host of civil lawsuits that he can no longer use his office to escape prosecution.

Even so Trump broke his silence of over a month since the attack claiming that he was innocent and this was only the beginning of his movement. This means that he has tacitly given the authorization to his murderous followers to begin a protracted insurgency against the United States Government, State Governments and political opponents.

If you have not served in a country undergoing an insurgency you have no idea of the brutality. One of my major areas of study before and after I went to Iraq to serve with our advisors was Counter Insurgency Operations.Trust me, from history, theory, and practice I do know what I am talking about, and no local or state, and very few federal police agencies, or emergency services agencies are trained or equipped to deal with what we are about to face and regardless of the outcome our democracy will never be the same, provide that our foreign enemies don’t inflict terrible damage on our country first.

On that happy note I say goodnight.

Until tomorrow,

Peace,

Padre Steve+

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February 11, 2021 · 14:59

The Impeachment Prosecutors Open: The defendants denounce the law under which their accounting is asked. Their dislike for the law which condemns them is not original. It has been remarked before that: “No thief e’er felt the halter draw with good opinion of the law.”

Friends of Padre Steve’s World,

I watched the second day of Donald Trump’s second Impeachment trial transfixed by the masterful way in which the House Impeachment Managers presented the documentary evidence and connecting the dots from the election night until 6 January. I struggled to think of a title for the article because the evidence was so overwhelming and massive it was hard to find just one thing.

The evidence is so overwhelming that if this were a normal criminal trial the defense attorneys would be doing all they could to make a plea bargain deal. But this is not a normal criminal trial and a large part of the Republican Senators serving as jury has sworn their undying fealty to Trump and will not honor either their oaths to the Constitution or the one they took as impeachment jurors. There is no crime evil enough for many of them to hold him accountable for his actions.

I was reminded of the closing arguments of Justice Robert Jackson at the major War Crimes Trial of senior Nazi leaders by the International Military Tribunal. In his closing Jackson said:

The defendants denounce the law under which their accounting is asked. Their dislike for the law which condemns them is not original. It has been remarked before that:

“No thief e’er felt the halter draw with good opinion of the law.”

Many of those involved in the insurrection before during and after said that they were acting on the orders or invitation of Donald Trump. They called the police defending the Capitol “fucking traitors” as they violently assaulted them, even using the Thin Blue Line Flags, symbols of support for police to assault individual police officers.




The images of the attacks by the terrorists were connected with his tweets in real time on that day, including threats against his own Vice President were starting. Watching former Vice President Pence, Senator Mitt Romney, dozens of Senators barely avoiding potential death from the angry mob which was calling for the deaths of Pence, Speaker Nancy Pelosi and others which repeating his tweets by megaphone in real time to further enrage the mob. During the assault at least five people died or were killed, including Capitol Police Officer Brian Sicknick, mortally wounded the attackers who slammed a fire extinguisher into his head. Two officers committed suicide in the following days, 140 more police officers were wounded. How any American could not hold the twice impeached former President responsible for his role over many months beginning before the election to radicalize his base into following his command to come to Washington on 6 January for a “wild time” which he further incited to attack the Capitol that day, something based on his previous orders they came to fulfill.

Trump wanted Pence, Pelosi, Romney, Liz Cheney, Chuck Schumer and others dead. It was a deliberate attempt to seize the Capitol and assassinate them and others. Had it not been for the courage of the outnumbered Capitol and DC Metropolitan Police, the former Vice President, many Senators and Representatives would have been killed, the Capitol taken, the Electoral College certification stopped, and Trump proclaiming himself as President.

But the House Managers were very smart to trace the insurrection back to Trump’s actions before the election and after. In the sixty days after the election, beginning at 2 AM on election night. It was then that the former President spent spinning lies and conspiracy theories about how the election was being stolen from him, and inciting violent revolts and threats against the attorneys general of several states, and elections commissioners at state and county level who were then still engaged in counting votes and in which some states would involve multiple recounts none of which changed the results.

Despite that Trump’s legal teams fired off a volley of over 60 factually and legally unsupported lawsuits which were shot down by Republican majority State Supreme Courts, US District, Appeals, and even the United States Supreme Court. Undeterred, Trump continued trying to overturn the votes, including trying to force the Attorney General Georgia, on 2 January to find the exact amount of votes to make him the winner or the race. On Wednesday Georgia announced that Trump is now being investigated on criminal charges for trying to influence the results of the election.

In spite of all those facts Trump continued to incite his followers. He told them to “walk to the Capitol” and “fight like hell”. In a fiery speech lasting over twenty minutes he urged them to fight more than 20 times, while only once telling them to be peaceful. He described how the election had been stolen and that in such a case “normal rules do not apply.” 

Within an hour Trump knew his private army was already inside the Capitol because even Republican Senators and Members of the House were doing all they could to get him to stop the attack. In fact 14 minutes after the terrorists breached the Capitol and Mike Pence and his family was being evacuated by his Secret Service detail Trump tweeted:

“Mike Pence didn’t have the courage to do what should have been done to protect our Country and our Constitution, giving States a chance to certify a corrected set of facts, not the fraudulent or inaccurate ones which they were asked to previously certify. USA demands the truth!”

It was hours before a joyful Trump who thought the insurgents had stopped the . When he finally released a prerecorded statement he told the  insurgents “we love you” called them “patriots” and told them to “go home in peace.”

I will not go into the full timeline and events. I could but the presentation of the Impeachment Managers, Congressman Jamie Raskin, Delegate Stacy Plaskett, Congressman Eric Swalwell, Congressman Joaquin Castro, Congressman Ted Lieu, Congresswoman Madeline Dean, Congressman David Cecilline, and Congressman Joe Naguse is so damning, so overwhelming that I cannot top them.

Instead I simply put one 39 minute segment of the evidence presented by the impeachment managers at the top of this post. However, these is so much more.

Watching the events took me back to Iraq in 2007-2008 and one of the boarding missions I was on during the UN Oil Embargo on Iraq in 2002. I never believed that in my lifetime that I would see an American President attempt to overthrow an election defeat and urge his supporters to commit violence when all legal means had failed.


But besides his direct attack on our Constitution, Republic and democracy before the election until 6 January is just one of many crimes that he and his administration could be prosecuted. I am thinking of the deaths of over 400,000 Americans from COVID-19 a deadly virus that Trump knew as early as a year ago was deadlier than many people thought, but then undermined every effort to contain it or help its victims.


Then there was the treatment of refugees and would be immigrants on the United States – Mexican border including the separation of families, locking children in cages without adequate sanitary or living conditions, and the alleged forced sterilization of women in the custody of the Immigration and Naturalization service and Border Patrol in private prisons on the border, his support for far right racist and White Nationalist extremist groups including Neo-Nazis in actions all over the country which have included attacks on Synagogues, Mosques, and Black Churches.

Likewise the use of heavy handed and brutal police assaults on mostly peaceful Black Lives Matters Protesters, while ignoring looters taking advance of those demonstrations to commit crimes. The most egregious of these was led by the former President himself in broad daylight in Lafayette Park where massive numbers of Metropolitan Police, US Marshals, and numerous other Federal law enforcement agencies backed by the National Guard with active duty Army units in reserve attacked unarmed people doing nothing more than singing or chanting near St John’s Church. The attack on the protesters was notable for its lack of restraint and the President, Attorney General, Secretary of Defense and Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff being involved. The SECDEF and Chairman of the JCS quickly distanced themselves from the attack and condemned it, but few others in the Administration or GOP Senators or Congressmen raised a single protest.

On Friday the former President’s defense team is planing on showing videos of BLM protestors, but more focused on the criminal looters in order to draw a moral equivalency argument. They will also show videos of House and Senate members calling for justice after the race based murders of Black Americans by police and ordinary citizens. But none ever called for an attack on the Congress, the White House or the deaths of their opponents. They insisted that the justice system from local police, sheriffs and prosecutors to the Department of Justice obey the laws against unreasonable force and violence. That will be their argument beginning Friday. They will show rioters and burning buildings but not put them in context. It will be like how the Nazis used the Reichstag Fire to seize complete political and police control and shut down opposition political parties and publications.

Sadly, that tactic may work because it plays to the inherent and often violent racism of the GOP base, and many Senators lack the moral, physical, and political courage to confront that base. Of course there are some in the Senate many in the House, and even more in the State and local GOP that are completely on board with all of this, and even now are censuring, banishing, and challenging any GOP office holder that is that 100% in for Trump. This is not the Party of Lincoln, Grant, Teddy Roosevelt, Eisenhower, Reagan or either Bush. Instead it has become a fascist, racist, theocratic, authoritarian party committed to destroying the Constitution, our Republic, Democracy, and institutions. Despite their election loss they will continue to overthrow the Republic through legal and violent means, just like Hitler’s Nazis.

As a scholar of Weimar, the Nazi Era, the Holocaust and all of the Nuremberg Trials I do not make such comments flippantly, but only in the gravest situations. Trump and his political supporters have sown the wind and our national and people are now reaping the whirlwind that President Trump is most responsible. If he is not found guilty it will green light future Presidents and elected officials to do the same or worse. Police were murdered, 140 wounded, lives threatened, our Capitol building, a symbol of liberty around the world was desecrated.

This impeachment trial is not over, but the great trial facing our country has just begun. The violence is not over.

Until tomorrow,

Peace,

Padre Steve+

 

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February 10, 2021 · 02:06

The Damning Opening of Trump’s Second Impeachment Trial: Will those Who Walked With Him Make “his life…excrement.”

 

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+

 

 

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