Proof of Intent
A friend reached out last night to do what we often do at critical cross roads of history; opine about what happens now. My friend pondered “it will be interesting to see what kind of investigative case the House Impeachment Committee sends to the Senate”? Knowing intuitive judgments are unreliable and intent is the hardest thing in law cases to prove, I just started typing.
This case is clear. Trump (and his enablers) committed sedition by slandering our elections and ignoring the Article III constitutional authorities of our judiciary. The insurrectionists revolted because they believed their President. These are demonstrable facts.
In our Republic, the judiciary is the final authority on election law. They are the arbiter of elections disputes and our courts have rendered their judgment — the election was legally won by Joe Biden. They found no evidence of massive voter fraud and in many cases their decisions even implied Trump’s lawyers were perusing frivolous law suits.
The final say in our law-and-order Republic is the Supreme Court. They deemed these election fraud cases unworthy of even a hearing. The laws were followed in all the relevant states and the Supreme Court affirmed this fact. To say otherwise is a demonstrable lie.
The President and his enablers knew election fraud was a lie because the Supreme Court told them. They had a constitutional obligation to accept these rulings and an ethical obligation to affirm these results for their constituents. They still have a moral obligation to do so unequivocally for the sake of our nation.
Trump yelled fire in the theater of American Democracy and the insurgents trampled our Constitution running from the phantom flames. And this was not an accident, this was not a protest run amuck. This was planned. How else to explain why the Trump campaign copyrighted Stop the Steal months before the 2016 election? Why else telegraph the narrative that Trump could only lose if the election was rigged? When he lost, Trump and his enablers weaponized slander in order to incite a revolt.
To the Republicans in Congress, unity and impunity are not cognates. Stop conflating these words — you can’t ask for the latter and expect the former. The time for unity was after the election results were known. You chose instead to yet again be coopted by a juvenile lie from a person Senator Lindsey Graham most fittingly described as a despicable human being. You again aligned yourself with a man child, an emotionally unstable and stunted human being devoid of any morality.
For remaining doubters like Vice President Pence, Trump yet again proved Lindsey right. On January 6th, the man who professes only losers, suckers, and pussies play by the rules, said as much to his own Vice President. When Pence resolved to follow the law, Trump painted a target on him for the insurrectionists to shoot at. If not swiftly reined in, he and others will no doubt do the same to Liz Cheney.
If our Republic is truly a nation of law and order, then the application of law is the only thing that can restore order. But, the fate of Donald J. Trump is not the greatest stake in the Senate impeachment trial. What is at stake is truth. If the Senate trial accomplishes nothing else, it must convict slander. It must affirm the truth of election results and without equivocation communicate that to America. If the Senate does not, America will sink deeper into the abyss of a post-truth age, and the world’s greatest democratic experiment, our Republic, will revisit the worst chapter of our history, the Civil War.