There is an old legal adage, “When the law is against you, argue the facts. When the facts are against you, argue the law.” That was apparently at the center of why all five of the attorneys who were supposed to represent Trump for his upcoming impeachment trial quit abruptly. Trump was apparently insistent that the lawyers argue the case based upon the many time debunked lie that there was wide spread voter fraud and Trump, in fact, won the election. The attorneys knew that they did not have the facts to be able to mount a reasonable case based upon that. They insisted that they had to argue the law, i.e., it is unconstitutional to impeach a president after he has left the office because, simply stated, the facts were against them. Attorneys making knowingly false statements in a trial could also put themselves in jeopardy.
Apparently, Trump has hired two new attorneys and it will be interesting to see which side of the above-mentioned adage they land on. I’m betting that they will ultimately argue the case that it is unconstitutional to impeach a president after he is out of office. There just are not any facts that will stand up in a court of law to support the allegations of a rigged election and voter fraud. If those facts existed, they probably would have surfaced in the 60 plus court actions filed by the Trump campaign and they came up empty handed. It will be an interesting session to watch.
If Trump and his attorneys were to go down the path of ‘the big lie’ which gave rise to the insurrection on January 6th, it will put the Republican senators in a very awkward position and might well lead to his ultimate conviction. If the Republicans were to vote to acquit him based upon a case built around ‘the big lie,’ they would be giving credence to that lie. On the other hand, if Trump’s attorneys argue that the impeachment of a president after he is out of office is unconstitutional, it gives the Republican senators an ‘out.’ They can simply agree that the trial is unconstitutional and vote to acquit on those grounds. That will keep Trump’s rabid base somewhat happy and the senators can walk away relatively unscathed without having to make a really tough ethical decision. Everyone wins – except the Rule of Law and American democracy.
And speaking of democracy, the above-mentioned adage in the legal world could well be rewritten to reflect the reality of politics today. “When the demographics are with you, argue increased voter access. When the demographics are against you, argue for greater “election integrity (which is a code word for voter suppression)”. In virtually all of the Republican ‘swing’ states where Trump lost, the state legislatures are working like busy little beavers to enact laws to restrict voter access in preparation for the 2022 and 2024 elections. Given that there was no evidence of voter fraud in the past election as attested to by Trump’s own Attorney General, both Republican and Democratic election officials in all fifty states, and in more than 60 lawsuits across the country, these laws have only one purpose – to restrict voter access to help Republicans. Democracy at work? The Republicans are the loudest voices making accusations about voter fraud and election rigging and, ironically, that is exactly what they are trying to do in the upcoming elections. Referring to a saying that I used in a previous post, “those who accuse others of ‘doin’, are the ones who are actually doin the doin!”
It also turns out that there are striking similarities between the US and Myanmar (formerly Burma). There was a coup over the weekend in which the military reassumed control of the country and arrested the democratically elected leadership, including the country’s leader, Nobel Laureate, Aung San Suu Kyi. Myanmar was under brutal military rule for 50 years until 2011. Aung San Suu Kyi was under house arrest for 15 years during this time due to her anti-government activism. She was released in 2010 and in 2015 the country had their first democratic elections. Aung San Suu Kyi has been the de facto civilian leader since then in a power sharing arrangement with the military.
The military, itself, wrote a constitution in 2008 in which they guaranteed themselves a strong hand in the government regardless of elections in the future. For example, they guaranteed themselves one quarter of the seat in parliament in any future government. However, the fledgling democracy came crashing down when the military reassumed control in a coup this week amid allegations of ‘wide spread’ voter fraud. Sound familiar??
“Monday’s crackdown is centered around November’s parliamentary election.
The military-backed Union Solidarity and Development Party (USDP) performed dismally in the poll, prompting the party to demand a new vote, claiming bias and “unfair campaigning.”
The military also repeatedly disputed the election results. It claims, without providing evidence, that there are more than 10.5 million cases of “potential fraud, such as non-existent voters” and called on the election commission to publicly release the final polling data.”1
Sound familiar? The coup has been universally condemned by the UN and the international community, including the United States (although our words don’t carry quite the same force that they did in years past).
In Myanmar, the military worked against the elected leader. However, think what might have happened in this country if Trump had had the backing of the military on January 6th? I never, in a million years, thought I would ever write anything comparing the United States to Myanmar – but here we are. Democracy is fragile. We should never take it for granted.
It is sad but democracies seem to fail over time. James Madison warned us about factions in the Federalist Papers. “The latent causes of faction are thus sown in the nature of man; and we see them everywhere brought into different degrees of activity, according to the different circumstances of civil society. A zeal for different opinions concerning religion, concerning government, and many other points, as well of speculation as of practice; an attachment to different leaders ambitiously contending for pre-eminence and power; or to persons of other descriptions whose fortunes have been interesting to the human passions, have, in turn, divided mankind into parties, inflamed them with mutual animosity, and rendered them much more disposed to vex and oppress each other than to co-operate for their common good. So strong is this propensity of mankind to fall into mutual animosities, that where no substantial occasion presents itself, the most frivolous and fanciful distinctions have been sufficient to kindle their unfriendly passions and excite their most violent conflicts.”
What is so ironic is the Republicans are always complaining about our “entitlements” yet their hypocrisy shows that their entitlements are the only thing that matters and to hell with “We the People.”