What would it take to get me to acquit?
I would be a cheerleader for Donald Trump’s acquittal …
If you could show me how the “deep state” forged the Government Accountability Office’s report that determined that withholding $40,000,000 in military aid to Ukraine was illegal.
And if Alan Dershowitz could explain over coffee and bagels the legal reasoning that allowed him to both argue that Bill Clinton didn’t have to commit a crime to be impeached — and that Trump can’t be impeached because he didn’t break the law.
Ditto if you could point me to the jurisprudence that set independent counsel Kenneth Starr to spinning around like a top. As a special investigator searching for Clinton’s misdeeds, he said impeachment doesn’t require commission of a crime. As Trump’s lawyer, he says that it does.
I’d be pulling for Trump if I thought he wanted to borrow a lawn mower when he told the Ukrainian president: “I would like you do us a favor.”
I might believe Trump’s denial of ever meeting Lev Parnas — who spilled the beans about the president’s determination to ax the U.S. ambassador to Ukraine — but there’s a tape of the president and Parnas discussing Ambassador Marie Louise Yovanovitch. On it, Trump orders: “Take her out.”
I might have no problem with Trump outsourcing his Ukraine policy. President Franklin D. Roosevelt mistrusted the State Department and made a social worker, Harry Hopkins, his chief adviser on foreign affairs. But putting a delicate assignment in the hands of Rudy Giuliani? Someone who is convinced that the gizmo that hacked Hillary Clinton’s emails is stashed somewhere in Ukraine?
I might think acquittal was fair if you could show me that some Svengali mesmerized these six government workers who testified about what happened: Fiona Hill, a former member of the National Security Council; NSC member Alexander Vindman; David Holmes, who worked at the U.S. Embassy in Ukraine; Gordon Sondland, ambassador to the European Union and a big donor to Trump’s campaign; Laura Cooper, a Defense Department official; and William Taylor, the acting ambassador to Ukraine.
Perhaps a hypnotist said: “When I snap my fingers, you will all go to the impeachment committee and spin a web of lies about Trump putting the muscle on Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskiy.”
Hill, as you may recall, testified that it was a pernicious “fictional narrative” to theorize that it was Ukraine — not Russia — that interfered with the 2016 election.
Holmes testified he heard Sondland tell Trump that Zelenskiy would do “anything you ask him to.” Sondland testified he told Zelenskiy’s right-hand man that investigating former Vice President Joe Biden was the prerequisite to unlocking U.S. military aid. Sondland also testified that Trump was more interested in an announcement that Biden was being investigated than the investigation itself.
Vindman testified that he listened to the phone call when Trump asked Zelenskiy for a favor. Vindman reported his concerns to an NSC attorney who put the record of the phone call in a super-secret archive.
Taylor testified that Holmes told him about hearing Sondland’s phone call to Trump.
Cooper testified that she told Kurt Volker, U.S. special representative for Ukraine, that the Ukrainians were concerned about the embargoed funds. They were hard-pressed to hold off Russian aggression. Volker said he was working to resolve the impasse by having the Ukrainians announce the investigation of Biden that Trump demanded.
Did all those folks participate in a nefarious plot to bring the president down? Or did they collectively bear witness to Trump’s plot to smear Biden by pressuring Zelenskiy to come up with some evidence that Biden and his son were corrupt? By Trump’s theory, Biden had demanded that a Ukrainian prosecutor be fired because he had the goods on Biden’s son, who did business in Ukraine. But other nations’ officials joined Biden in charging the prosecutor with corruption.
So there you have it, the facts that would stand in the way of my voting for acquittal, were I a senator. But there’s one more thing. Some jurors like to size up a defendant’s character before rendering a verdict.
Consider Trump’s: He thinks his celebrity entitles him to paw women. Like a schoolyard bully, he tags rivals with insulting nicknames. Shifty Schiff. Lying Hillary. Sleepy Biden.
He called African nations filthy names. He claimed to know more about ISIS than the generals. He can’t abide Greta Thunberg’s fame as a teenage environment activist.
He cruelly mimicked a disabled reporter. He said Mexico was shipping rapists and drug dealers to the U.S. He called Puerto Ricans who were reeling from natural disaster too feckless to fend for themselves. He demeaned John McCain, who survived years of torture in a Vietnamese prison.
Does that sound like a man who should be taken at his word?