Commentary
The impeachment trial of President Donald Trump is set to begin in the Senate. And perhaps the Democratic Party leadership doesn’t know it yet, but Trump has lured them into an ambush.
Here’s how Trump’s ambush unfolded over the past week:
On Jan. 15, the Democratic Party set the impeachment trial in motion by voting in the U.S. House of Representatives to send the two articles to the Senate, after delaying for 23 days.
The Democrats in the House then picked seven “impeachment managers” to run the prosecution side of the Senate trial. They selected Reps. Adam Schiff (D-Calif.) and Jerrold Nadler (D-N.Y.) to be the main managers, with assistance from four other Democrats: Reps. Hakeem Jeffries (D-N.Y.), Sylvia Garcia (D-Texas), Val Demmings (D-Fla.), Zoe Lofgren (D-Calif.), and Jason Crow (D-Colo.)
On Jan. 16, Chief Justice John Roberts came to the Senate chamber to solemnly swear in all the senators in preparation for the coming trial.
Trump swung the trap shut on Jan. 17 by revealing his full defense team, which includes constitutional law professor Alan Dershowitz, Ken Starr, Robert Ray, and Pam Bondi.
Dershowitz is one of the most famous lawyers in the country, and both Starr and Ray are former independent counsels who ran investigations of President Bill Clinton.
So what just happened here?
A team of political blowhards, wannabe lawyers, and posturing poseurs is about to go up against a suddenly unveiled Trump defense team that includes some of the top legal experts in the country.
It’s really not fair when you think about it.
There’s no way the Democrats can back out of this situation. The trial has to go forward now, and so Schiff and Nadler are about to take on a literal legal dream team.
Over the past few weeks, Democrats only saw and heard what they wanted to believe: That McConnell will instantly nuke the articles of impeachment with a quick vote and then, it will be over. So the Democrats can immediately do all this again.
That’s right.
Democrats have vowed that once the present impeachment farce is over, they fully intend to start it right back up again.
They fully intend to hold more impeachment hearings and they fully intend to vote on more impeachment articles. Which means they fully intend to put the entire country through all of this … again.
Trump is, of course, very well aware of this. That’s why he won’t allow it to happen again by dealing with it now.
The two impeachment articles are manifestly absurd on their face. They attempt to turn the president’s commitment to his job—such as crafting the nation’s foreign policy and engaging in anti-corruption efforts—into crimes.
Trump’s defense team very competently made that point in its succinct six-page response to the 111-page legal brief published by the House impeachment managers.
I reached out to prominent lawyer Lin Wood, to ask what he thought about the Democrats’ impeachment strategy.
Wood is one of the lawyers who represented the late Richard Jewell, whose mistreatment at the hands of both the FBI and the news media was the subject of a recent feature film directed by Clint Eastwood.
He also represented minor Nick Sandmann in his defamation case against CNN, which was recently settled for an undisclosed amount in damages. (Other lawsuits against media outlets and individuals related to the now-infamous Covington scandal are still ongoing).
Wood responded to my query by fully agreeing with the Trump defense team’s response:
“Democrats are outgunned because they are seeking to perpetrate a fraud on the American people through their ‘impeachment’ efforts.
“They seek power through an illegitimate exercise of the rarely used power of impeachment. A power to remove. They are not genuinely seeking removal from office for provable acts of high crimes or high misdemeanors. They are seeking to replace, not remove. Pure power grab,” Wood said.
“Assuming replacement is necessary, it is to be accomplished at the ballot box, not by impeachment. They know and fear that President Trump will win reelection at the ballot box. Explains why they have sought ‘impeachment’ from Day One of his presidency.”
Trump’s strategy to counter the never-ending impeachment efforts that the Democrats are engaging in will become very clear during this Senate trial.
Brian Cates is a writer based in South Texas and the author of “Nobody Asked For My Opinion … But Here It Is Anyway!” He can be reached on Twitter @drawandstrike.
Views expressed in this article are the opinions of the author and do not necessarily reflect the views of The Epoch Times.
