The second impeachment of someone who isn't even in office begins Tuesday. Sounds useless.
The especially useless Rand Paul got up and tried to make it so by getting his largely corrupted Republican colleagues to say that tomorrow's impeachment trial was unconstitutional. He got them on record as saying so.
The historical precedent for refuting this apparently doesn't matter. They made something else up--a universe of falsehoods is out there--and that's the story they're sticking with in a display of rogue solidarity.
So the Democrats will, of course, have to go it largely alone. Maryland's Jamie Raskin, who should have done the last impeachment anyhow and carrying around the burden of his son's recent suicide, will lead his party's accusers in a Senate trial that, as Republicans will say with typical cynicism, has already been decided.
They'll say, almost as one: We've voted on this. The event wasn't pretty, granted, but we need to move on.
I don't want you to be merely outraged by it. I want you to be bored and eye-rollingly tired first. The Republican Party gets more and more ridiculous by the day, blindly defensive without the slightest thought of justice or propriety. Look at what they've done in just over the last month:
- They have perpetuated the Big Lie that somehow, in some way that hasn't been verified in any way, the presidential election was stolen;
- They have not supported the arrest and potential imprisonment of the perpetrators of the assault on the Capitol, which led to the deaths of five people, including a member of the Capitol Police who in fact voted for the candidate they supported, too, thus complicit in their silence;
- They have not expressed outrage and disgust at threats to the very lives of Nancy Pelosi, Mike Pence (one of their own, supposedly), and Alexandra Octavio-Cortez;
- Their leader in the House actually went to the residence of the former president (whose name I will still never use; he will never be good enough to be mentioned in this space), a perpetrator of sedition, to make sure things were all right by him, instead of supporting his arrest and imprisonment;
- A Congressional majority of them in the House supported the breakdown of the Constitution by refusing to confirm that the Electoral College had met, voted, and declared Joe Biden the winter of the presidential vote;
- They gave a standing ovation to a new member whose claim to fame so far involves bringing a weapon to the floor of the House and wanting to shoot Nancy Pelosi in the head, actions so inherently dangerous that Democrats (but with a few brave Republicans in tow) took away her committee assignments, a punishment she neither understands nor regards (but will soon learn); and
- Several Republican members of the House doubled down on resisting reasonable restrictions (see above) and also tried to get to the floor of the House with weapons, absorbing a $5,000 fine from the Speaker (the next offense carries a $10,000 additional fine).
Even the former president's most vocal supporters haven't stopped screaming foul, as if saying so makes it so. But their days are coming. Facts are stubborn things, said John Adams in his defense of British soldiers at the Boston Massacre, and they have consequences beyond their mere voicing and the lies that accompany them. Smartmatic, the parent company that had its voting machines placed in doubt by the likes of Maria Bartiromo, the now-fired Lou Dobbs, and Jeanine Pirro, has filed a libel suit against Fox News for $2.7 billion. Watch for the settlement of that one out of court.
Dominion Voting Systems, an offshoot of Smartmatic, has filed suit against rogue lawyer Rudy Giuliani--who also spoke to inspire the crowd to assault the Capitol on January 6--and associate Sidney Powell for $1.3 billion, also for specious, false claims of vote corruption. A spokesperson for Smartmatic appeared on the CNN show Reliable Sources Sunday, noting that the My Pillow guy, Mike Lindell, another blind and horribly naive supporter of the former president, "is practically crying out to the sued. We just may accommodate him."
When someone wants to settle out of court, there must be agreement from the other side. There can be admission of wrongness, too. We will see if Dominion and/or Smartmatic settles. They may not. They may make the sued bring whatever "evidence" they have.
If these cases come to trial, they will not be closed. The sued would be wise to settle and pay heavily to avoid embarrassment. When an entire company sues you, your pockets better be deep, either for the settlement or the lawyers necessary.
It is only fair to say here that in the interim, articles have also been written noting that it would be possible to rig machines so they counted votes twice. Yes, that is true--there are books that have been written to that effect far before this; I recommend one called Steal This Vote--and the sued will probably cling to this. But they have to prove that someone actually did act fraudulently; they have to come up with names and places, not to merely speculate. In other words, they have to have a factual basis for claims that inspired knuckleheads to charge the Capitol justifiably. They won't because they can't.
The machines don't cheat by themselves; someone must actually control them to do so. Nobody did. Wild claims don't change that. The counters, too, took oaths to support the Constitution. Unlike many Republicans who couldn't hold childish tempers in check, they actually did so.
But the whole nation will view the second impeachment trial. We will view, again, the awful film of an awful event. Perhaps new film will emerge. The House managers, too, now have the testimony of those who were there. They have the simple fact that federal authorities have already arrested, as of Sunday, 235 people for criminal charges stemming from the assault; that number grows daily.
The public revelation of these items serves as its own justice, token votes to resist notwithstanding. What the Democrats do with it is another issue. If they want to hold the former president and his minions accountable, they must repeat the lies and damage they've created until at least the next Congressional elections.
Depending who the Republicans nominate next, it could and should extend into the next presidential campaign. If they do not apologize, if they do not sufficiently explain, there's no reason why not. Republicans will try to distract and get us to move onward. Democrats must once again stubbornly resist.
There have been other vestiges to justice. One occurred during an otherwise boring Super Bowl game, when the NFL, through Jim Nantz and CBS, hosted the family of Brian Sicknick, one of the Capitol Police who died defending the institution and the perfectly constitutional events that were taking place there. The NFL was making a comment: This was unfair. It was unjust. It was not necessary. We honor him.
Make no mistake: Democracy is on trial here. Justice's final determination will take quite a while, as long as Republicans aren't beholden to the facts. More persuasion is necessary. More work to be done.
Be well. Be careful. Wear a mask. One day closer to a second vaccine shot. With some luck, I'll see you down the road.
Mister Mark
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