The garbage lurking behind the “impeachment is a political trial” argument

Unctuously intoning as if they “own” the Constitution, Trump’s legal team will argue that the upcoming impeachment trial is at best a “political trial.”

Correction gentlemen: the impeachment of a government official is founded on criminal violations of the law, not on smoke-filled, “back room” coup-category conspiracies.

Yes, the “precedents” may appear summarily weak, but slithering out of our amnesia and general disdain for history, we need to wake up to the inconvenient reality that these are not times for Constitutional finger-pointing.

We can slice and dice and smear the Constitution any way we want, but in the end the Constitution is a piece of paper. The Constitution is also an aggregate of social and legal deliberation, amended, interpreted and studied. And here is where the lawmakers among us must prove to the public their mettle and grasp of not mere political “reality” but justice and public welfare. Of course these politicians are “jurors.“ So is the defendant and his team. So is the public. “We,” as a social beast, are all “jurors.”

We do have the option to follow Rudy Giulani’s logic and conclude that it is the court of public opinion that ultimately matters. And hence, proceed willy-nilly towards some “unfortunate” version of mob rule.

February 8