Rep. Nadler: You Know What You Have To Do. You Have To Do It Now.

Rep. Gerald Nadler
U.S. House of Representatives
Washington, DC 20005

Dear Rep. Nadler:

This reaches you, I know, at a very distressing time. You're part of the group of House managers who are litigating the impeachment of president #45 (I do not use his actual name as to prevent myself from increasing attention to his brand, which is the only thing he cares about besides himself). Your role in this has been enormous.

Not only are you chair of the House Judiciary Committee, which screened and arranged for the actual articles of impeachment to be devised and prepared for the Senate, but you also had to take on some of the more cantankerous Republican members of that said committee. "I'm not going to take any crap," you said, or words to that effect, about people who dished out a lot of it. You didn't, and lots of us out here are glad for that.

You've had inside knowledge of the vital information and the process involved in acquiring it. You've made no bones about what it all says: 45 is, and has been, betraying the American people in attempting to get the Ukranian president to announce an investigation into Joe and Hunter Biden, the latter of whom sat on the board of directors of a Ukranian oil company, the former of whom got the latter that position. The other side insists that 45 was in fact trying to clean up corruption, not commit it. You know better and you were one of the first to see the evidence.

You're from New York, so you wouldn't know me back here in Wisconsin. Please know, though, that you have my complete backing in your efforts. We need to get rid of this roguish monster, and each day he remains is a threat to the republic.

You have brought that thinking forward with you to the Senate. Which brings me to the current situation, and the current problem. Unfortunately, you've made yourself the center of it. It's not a good look, and the more it lingers the more it becomes obvious what must be done.

Hard-charging you are, sir, and up to the moment in question, it was bracing. Adam Schiff, the lead House manager, is brilliant, smooth and wonderfully thorough: when he's finished, there's no place for 45's lawyers to hide. You, on the other hand, dish it out the way you got it--ferociously and pounding away with precision. I can feel the bullet points being checked off in your mind as you deliver them. Your anger is very evident and certainly justifiable.

But I also think that that led to what you said that's now hanging out there, awaiting address. You accused the Republican Senators of helping a cover-up of the information we all know 45's hiding: witnesses who could attest to this true intent and documents further proving it.

But there you went a comment too far. Now you've infuriated the Republican Senators. Why? Well, there could be a number of reasons.

One, for instance, is the simple fact that you've insulted them. You've violated Rule Two of dealing with the U.S. Senate: No one not actually a Senator should ever insult them or the institution. I think it was Hakeem Jeffries who said that the Senate itself is on trial. He got right up to the line with that one, but your comment crossed it.

That may surprise some, seeing as how this is politics, and people get called things: It's the language du jour, in fact of any jour. And it's even constitutionally defensible, where it says in Article I that no member of Congress "shall be questioned" about what they say in the chamber. In other words, no matter how nasty, nobody can be sued successfully for it, just like in a courtroom (which this now is).

But that's not the point. You insulted Senators. They don't like it. They don't have to, thought some of them deserve it. And now you've put what might have been a tipping point to risk.

We all know that the Senate will be voting on whether to allow those witnesses and documents right after the president's lawyers will spend one or two or three days spewing their weak and insouciant nonsense of a defense, at which they hinted with amateurish disdain in their opening points. That's the door through which an actual trial, not a token, pathetic excuse for a trial, proceeds. Your side needs four Senators to cross over. The betting was about even that that might happen.

Now, though, there's this thing out there: Your insult. You've already called them unfair, even criminals, in their behavior. And for all we know they very well might be. But there's a chance that a few of them might not. The one Democratic Senator who suggested that, ironically, is the Democratic Minority Leader, Chuck Schumer.

How did he do that? Indirectly, but that's how nearly all things happen in the Senate: with shades and shadows. Bluntness, which you put on display, doesn't fly very often there. It gets grounded in nuance within the status of Senators, who insist upon how important they are (some of that being correct). They usually roam the room like lions, growling in whispering tones until they absolutely have to speak, exuding tonal grandiloquence but usually coming up a bit short, with the rare exception of Michael Bennet's great takedown of Ted Cruz a year ago today.

To them, it's quite enough that they actually have to sit there for all that time and listen, two tasks they almost never otherwise follow, for these many days. I mean, the nerve. But the Constitution still matters at least some of the time, so they sit and drink water and milk (the only two things allowed; not even coffee, which absolutely mystifies me), trying to stay awake while people like you lay out the House's case.

It's making them tired, Congressman, nearly as tired as you are. And tired means crabby and a bit sensitive. And then you come along and say, as much: You're a bunch of cheats and crooks. You're helping the president trash the Constitution.

To some of these people, it's absolutely true and they know it. But at this particular point, it doesn't matter, doesn't matter, doesn't matter. And the reason it may not matter is first, some of whom you're addressing in fact don't yet know what you're talking about.

That's right. Some of them haven't been following all those weeks of impeachment inquiry at all, or if so, have a very incomplete notion of what this is really about. This is about as crazy as the rest of all this, true, but it might just be so.

Let me suggest two reasons. First, Senators are busy. They're busy all the time. They have stuff. Of course, so do you, sir. But remember: they represent their entire states, and cut them this much slack: They have a bigger job than you do. So their concentration on impeachment might not have been very great at all up to this moment: Sen. Chris Coons, Democrat from Delaware, said as much last night on MSNBC. Incredibly, while some of them may have heard about the major activities that brought all of them here, they may be dealing with the major issues for the very first time: Angus King, Independent from Maine, told MSNBC last night that he jotted on his notepad as he listened to Schiff, This is more serious than I thought. Some of them not named Martha from Tennessee may be giving up their enormous egos and genuinely listening; more than one interviewed Senator has said so. It means that for a few of them, your comment completely ambushed them and came across as simply partisan and disgustingly so, considering the vital matter at hand. So for Lisa Murkowski of Alaska to say so, might actually be so, whether you like it or not.

Now let's bring in Senator Schumer for Reason Two. I caught something he said in an interview for MSNBC yesterday: That many of the Republican Senators have probably picked up their information about the inquiry and trial from Fox News. Fox News is the main propaganda wing for Republicans, especially hard-baked backers of 45. And as Schumer said, whatever comes spewing from that fountain is deeply biased.

Bias is not only is what is said, but also in what is not said, what is left out. So you did yourself no favor, sir, in implying to someone who's been following only Fox News' version of the matter, that just because they happen to have what they think they know from one very slanted source, that makes them fools and/or crooks. I'm guessing that this applies to more than one Republican Senator. Again, it may easily be so. But the word is that they were listening to the last 45 minutes of Adam Schiff's presentation yesterday, marvelously done as it was, with fair raptness. What you did might have gotten it a big step closer to being about as handy as table napkins--used exactly once, then permanently discarded.

Can Senator Murkowski be included within that sub-group? Who knows? Does it matter now?

There's just one way to reduce the swelling impact of your accusation: Apologize. Yes, it's against everything you want to do. It's against what's clearly emerging as stone fact. A bunch of them don't deserve it. And we all know you won't mean it. But you have to do it, Representative Nadler.

How do explain? Tell them you got caught up in the moment. Tell them that you really meant to say that about 45, but goofed, or that you didn't necessarily (key word) mean to put them into the same basket with him. And tell them that you meant no disrespect to the Senate, nor to anyone individually. They won't believe it for a minute. But then you're on record about that, too. And they need to hear it.

Without it, the Republican Senators will have absolutely no qualms about denying you what you could utilize to make a devastating case against their party's leader, whose neck they are very, very wary of exposing. Even so, after hearing the president's defense, they can simply say that they've heard enough and that we can dispense with all this in the next twenty minutes, thank you very much.

And without it, a no-vote on witnesses and documents can't really be answered with accusations of cover-up any longer. Taking your apology into consideration, though, other Democrats (including you) can say that Rep. Nadler just jumped the gun a little bit, when in fact the Republicans meant to stonewall all this all along anyhow. (They, of course, could say that your comment forced their hand, but that lowers their rationale to pettiness.)

And without it, the president's lawyers, who are good at smearing, innuendo and outright lies (Cipollone's statement about 45 not having the chance to defend himself, for instance) will dive-bomb your comment and incessantly pound away at it. Smear artists like the endlessly sanctimonious Ken Starr and the ethically convenient Alan Dershowitz are waiting in the wings to get at that tomorrow. Take it out of their hands with an apology.

I think you'll survive the flak, sir. There are prices to be paid if you do apologize, of course. There are others if you don't. I congratulate you on your great efforts to rid us of this awful individual, who diminishes what we all have stood for every minute he stands there and taunts us. Like you, I just want to give it every chance to succeed as much as it possibly can.

It's difficult, especially now, to rise above this slash-and-burn creep. All the more reason to do so.

Please think this over, sir. Give our country, the one we're used to having, the best possible chance. And do it soon. Thanks for reading this.

Sincerely: Be well, be careful, and I'll see you down the road.


Mister Mark