Trump’s second impeachment was, precisely as Republicans termed it, a show trial. Though it was not of the Stalinist variety, in which the full fury of a despotic regime is turned on the innocent. No, the Democratic impeachment managers, to the contrary, mounted a moving, professionally staged version of To Kill a Mockingbird in which prosecutors attempted to defend the Constitution. Jamie Raskin, reprising the role of Atticus Finch, mounted a convincing case and delivered an uplifting summation. But it fell on deaf ears of the GOP and the client, Justice, was condemned precisely like Finch’s client, Tom Robinson.
In the end, though, the Senate impeachment trial was nothing more than theater.
It hadn’t helped that the Democrats backed down at the last minute and refused to call witnesses. It hadn’t helped that several of the Maycomb, Alabama jurors — Klan members themselves — had been huddling with opposing counsel. It hadn’t helped that the impeachment process, as designed by the framers of the Constitution, is a joke. So much of a joke that during Trump’s first impeachment trial humor columnist Andy Borowitz joked that when El Chapo found out how impeachment trials were actually conducted he was outraged that his had witnesses!
This staged performance did reveal how broken the United States Constitution is. Operating precisely as designed, the Constitution shields America’s rulers from the whims of the little people. In addition to its broken courts, its broken presidency, its toothless House, and the highly undemocratic Electoral College, we have all seen in the last year alone how a partisan Senate can destroy accountability by any other branch of government. Indeed, the Senate is American democracy’s Achilles heel.
The almost religious reverence for the founders of the Constitution, who as Senator Ted Cruz put it, “fought and bled for freedom and then crafted the most miraculous political document ever conceived, our Constitution,” should really be questioned. The system they created is not merely showing its age. It’s just not working.
After the Senate’s impeachment theater, President Biden issued a bland statement lamenting the “trial” as a “sad chapter in our history” and naming the defense of truth the solution to re-uniting the United States.
But our problems go well beyond truth, as Atticus Finch might have argued — to recognizing and overturning centuries of white impunity. Not to mention ditching our dysfunctional form of government through a Constitutional convention — that is, before it self-destructs.
Speaking for many of us, Elie Mystal wrote in The Nation: “I Don’t Just Want Trump Impeached. I Want Him Jailed.” Mystal pointed to the racial injustices of recent arrests and selective prosecutions by courts, courts and legislators unwilling to pursue the many counts against Trump from the Mueller investigation and, finally, to the coup attempt that had no consequences.
Los Angeles Times editors have called for a Department of Justice investigation, impeachment or not. Lincoln Project co-founder George Conway suggested that the DOJ appoint a special counsel, a view shared by former federal prosecutor Renato Mariotti. And New York Magazine ran a piece reminding readers of what the prosecution of a former leader might look like: in 2012 Italy prosecuted its former authoritarian prime minister, Silvio Berlusconi, a man very much like Trump, on a host of charges ranging from sex with an underaged prostitute to bribery and tax fraud, even sentencing him to jail.
Although President Biden told the National Association of Black Journalists and National Association of Hispanic Journalists last August that he would not stand in the way of prosecuting Trump, in the next breath he said that it would be a “very unusual thing and probably not very … good for democracy.” By November Biden was telling advisors that prosecuting Trump wasn’t even an option. “I will not do what this president does and use the Justice Department as my vehicle to insist that something happened.”
Maybe Biden believes he can create bipartisan results, or even save the House from a Republican take-back in 2022. Maybe he thinks appeasing members of a party, 40% of whom believe in political violence, will brake what some see as an inevitable [cold?] Civil War. Good luck, Mr. President, but you’re kidding yourself.
But for all his reticence to prosecute a seditionist coup plotter, Biden still plans to pursue the extradition and prosecution of Wikileaks founder Julian Assange for publishing evidence of American war crimes. We may eventually get that Stalinist show trial after all.
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