Impeachment II

57Brave said:
Mitch McConnell and John Thune.
What is running through their minds?
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With McConnell it's a cold calculus of what's best for the party. Always is. My guess would be he just wants this all over and done with so the focus can be moved onto Biden.
 
The Democrats have a glaring weakness in their case. They've spent a ton of time showing how bad the riot was and how much danger the VP and members of congress were in. However, they have a problem with causation.

Suppose I was driving drunk. I maintained my lane but someone thought I was going to cross the center line and hit them. They swerved, went into a ditch, hit a tree and died. I'm then charged with vehicular homicide based on my driving drunk. The issue of causation there is pretty evident. It's going to be difficult to prove that my driving drunk caused the accident. The other driver misreading the situation and overreacting likely breaks the chain of causality.

A savvy DA will know that and will focus on the fact that the dead driver had 6 kids that are now orphans and that he went to church every Sunday and worked in a soup kitchen (the DA will go as far as the judge lets him). That kind of stuff makes the jury angry and want to punish someone for the bad results and so overlook the causation issues.

The Democrats have a clear problem in showing Trump caused the riot (what the articles of impeachment charge him with). They have him speaking to the crowd and making some vague reference to marching to the Capitol but there's nothing in there of him directing unlawful action. The actions of the mob likely break the chain of causality. The Democrats know this weakness and so are focusing on how egregious the crowd's conduct was instead of providing evidence of Trump actually inciting a riot.

This is why I thought they should have focused on his reaction to the riot. There was far better evidence there for impeachment. However that was a less sexy charge.
 
striker42 said:
The Democrats have a glaring weakness in their case. They've spent a ton of time showing how bad the riot was and how much danger the VP and members of congress were in. However, they have a problem with causation.

Suppose I was driving drunk. I maintained my lane but someone thought I was going to cross the center line and hit them. They swerved, went into a ditch, hit a tree and died. I'm then charged with vehicular homicide based on my driving drunk. The issue of causation there is pretty evident. It's going to be difficult to prove that my driving drunk caused the accident. The other driver misreading the situation and overreacting likely breaks the chain of causality.

A savvy DA will know that and will focus on the fact that the dead driver had 6 kids that are now orphans and that he went to church every Sunday and worked in a soup kitchen (the DA will go as far as the judge lets him). That kind of stuff makes the jury angry and want to punish someone for the bad results and so overlook the causation issues.

The Democrats have a clear problem in showing Trump caused the riot (what the articles of impeachment charge him with). They have him speaking to the crowd and making some vague reference to marching to the Capitol but there's nothing in there of him directing unlawful action. The actions of the mob likely break the chain of causality. The Democrats know this weakness and so are focusing on how egregious the crowd's conduct was instead of providing evidence of Trump actually inciting a riot.

This is why I thought they should have focused on his reaction to the riot. There was far better evidence there for impeachment. However that was a less sexy charge.
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I think the case is a lot more than that one speech. It is the big lie, and the way he used it to stoke the anger of his supporters. It is also his reaction once the Capitol was under assault. His behavior was that of a fire chief who not only doused the building with gasoline and struck the match, but also prevented the fire department from responding.

Liz Cheney put it well: The President of the United States summoned this mob, assembled the mob, and lit the flame of this attack. Everything that followed was his doing. None of this would have happened without the President. The President could have immediately and forcefully intervened to stop the violence. He did not. There has never been a greater betrayal by a President of the United States of his office and his oath to the Constitution.
 
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nsacpi said:
I think the case is a lot more than that one speech. It is the big lie, and the way he used it to stoke the anger of his supporters. It is also his reaction once the Capitol was under assault. His behavior was that of a fire chief who not only doused the building with gasoline and struck the match, but also prevented the fire department from responding.

Liz Cheney put it well: The President of the United States summoned this mob, assembled the mob, and lit the flame of this attack. Everything that followed was his doing. None of this would have happened without the President. The President could have immediately and forcefully intervened to stop the violence. He did not. There has never been a greater betrayal by a President of the United States of his office and his oath to the Constitution.
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Trump not stopping the riot is absolutely what he should be on trial for. It was dereliction of duty at best and aiding the mob at worst.

However, I disagree that his whole cultivation of the steal stuff makes him responsible for inciting a riot. Would it have happened without him? Probably not, but that's not the entire analysis of causation under the law.

If that's all there was to causation there are plenty who spoke at or organized BLM protests that turned into riots that would be criminally responsible.
 
I am reading the Trump defense will be " ignore what you saw"

Which is the past 5 years in a nut shell
 
Maggie Haberman
@maggieNYT
·
1h
Trump has been complaining about Castor every day since Tuesday.

Told aides he didn’t want to hear from Castor again. But Schoen

wasn’t hired/initially expected to do the whole thing,

so here we are.
 
Listening the the former Presidents lawyers, I understand why Graham ,Cruz and Lee were called in to Calvary
 
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