22 November 2019

The Good Doctor

Two more witnesses appeared yesterday in the impeachment inquiry hearing. The testimony was highly revealing and inflicted more damage on Donald Trump's presidency. The New York Times published a good summary report (link here).

Dr. Fiona Hill, a Russia expert who formerly was on the National Security Council staff, provided further details about Trump's illegal extortion scheme targeting Ukraine.

And she resoundingly debunked Trump's absurd and oft-repeated claim that it was Ukraine, not Russia, that meddled in America's 2016 election.

"These fictions are harmful even if they are deployed for purely domestic political purposes," she said. "President Putin and the Russian security services operate like a super PAC. They deploy millions of dollars to weaponize our own political opposition research and false narratives."

Of course, such a warning will fall on Trump and the Republicans' deaf ears.

After the testimony, across town in Washington at the White House, senior administration officials and key Senate Republicans sat down together to hammer out details of the trial they'd like to see once the expected articles of impeachment are passed (details here). If you want to get a sense of how bizarre such a meeting was, when is the last time you heard of a jury sitting down with a defendant before a trial to agree on how it would be run?

The Senate sits as the jury in the trial that follows impeachemt. So when the White House approached them about such a meeting, they should have said, "Thanks but no thanks. Separation of powers means we alone will decide how the trial will be conducted."

While Senate Republicans up for reelection in 2020 and 2022 may think they're protecting themselves from being primaried by groveling before Trump, that security will hopefully vanish when they face a general election. They need to win their primary and then badly lose the general election to send the message to Washington that appealing only to your hardcore supporters is political suicide.

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