CAN REPUBLICAN SENATORS ACTUALLY BE “FAIR & IMPARTIAL?”

…Speaker Pelosi handing out Impeachment pens

The Government Accountability Office (GAO) has said that the president has broken the law.

Now that the president’s actions with the Ukraine are the foundation for his impeachment, the other issue that will be decided during this event is that the Republican Senator's legacies will also be on the line.

How will they address and digest the evidence of the president’s actions with regard to Ukraine that has come out over the past weeks and months. It is not just the president’s legacy that will be affected by the conduct of the proceedings over the next few weeks. It will also be the legacy of the Republican senators and their overall party.

Many GOP Senators have gone against the lead of their House colleagues, who in the face of damning testimony have embraced the president’s explanations.  They are actually following his statements that his interactions with Ukraine were “perfect,” and that he was acting in the interests of the country, rather than for personal political gain. Or will they do as their oaths of being fair and non-partisan be how they will judge the president more on the real evidence?  Will they actually listen to all the evidence, but still let him off by stopping short of casting guilty votes?

The House managers, will begin to present their case next Tuesday, and they will come with the evidence that was developed during weeks of testimony and debate that resulted in the party-line vote to impeach Trump.  That evidence includes testimony from a series of accomplished career Foreign Service and national security officials outlining the months-long effort of the president to pressure Ukraine.

But that won’t be the only thing that senators sitting as jurors will have to consider.  It is likely that additional evidence will emerge from outside the chamber that will weigh on their decision-making.  Already, in one month since the House voted to impeach Trump, there have been a number of documents and statements that offer new challenges for the president’s defense and for those in his party.

Hours before Chief Justice John Roberts Jr. was sworn in as the presiding officer, and before he in turn swore in the members of the Senate, the Government Accountability Office (GAO) issued a report stating that the White House had broken the law.  The president did this by withholding the $391 million in military aid for Ukraine that had been authorized by Congress.  A spokeswoman for the Office of Management and Budget took issue with that finding saying that they were responsible for making sure the money was properly spent. 

How that statement has anything to do with the president holding back the congressional y approved money as a bribe for his personal benefit is beyond me.

The GAO is a totally non-partisan organization that their job is to make sure the different areas of the government are “accountable” for how they distribute any congressional approved expenditures.  And they have determined that the law was broken by the president not allowing the financing to be sent to the Ukraine, who were fighting and dying in a fight with a US adversary, Putin’s Russia.

The GAO report followed the release of documents given by Lev Parnas, an associate of Rudolph Giuliani, the president’s personal attorney.  This was also before the results of the House investigators were made public and the television interview of Lev Parnas on Rachael Maddow’s MSNBC program.

Those interviews and the House documents further highlighted Giuliani’s role in Ukraine.  It also included Giuliani’s efforts to force the removal of Marie Yovanovitch as US ambassador to Ukraine.  Parnas’s description of events also tied the president more directly to that activity.  Parnas is under indictment in federal court and his word must be viewed with serious skepticism.  However, what Parnas has said, plus the documents he has offered, make his statements to have been totally correct.

Shortly after the House’s impeachment vote, new emails from within the administration surfaced, including one from Michael Duffey, a senior official in the Office of Management and Budget.  The e-mails directed Pentagon officials to put a hold on the aid to Ukraine. The email was sent less than two hours after the so called “perfect” Trump phone call with Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky.  This was the call in which Trump had requested “a favor” of an investigation into the discredited theory about Ukrainian interference in the 2016 election, as well as into former vice president Joe Biden and his son Hunter.

There was also one other surprise during the time between the House vote and this week’s formalities. That was the statement from John Bolton, the former national security adviser, who said that, “if subpoenaed, I am prepared to testify at the Senate trial”. As one of a handful of White House officials with direct knowledge of the former events in the White House, Bolton was offering something that has made many Republican senators squirm.

All the members of the Senate have taken an oath to render impartial justice.  However, in the hyper-partisan climate that exists today, many lawmakers have already declared their verdicts.  Some Democrats, including some of the senators seeking the presidential nomination, have said they have seen enough to persuade them that Trump should be convicted and removed from office.

But on the other side are the Republicans who have declared Trump not guilty, and Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell (R-KY) said weeks ago he was working closely with the White House in preparation for the trial.

This is not how a “fair trial” should be conducted.

The Senate trial will give the president an opportunity for his team of lawyers to present a defense.  Whether they agree to having witnesses, particularly those White House officials who have not yet been heard from, is another matter.

Being a Republican during the Trump presidency demands the "patience of Job". The president is quick to be angry at any Republican who strays from absolute loyalty to the president.  At times, he has sought to punish those who have been disloyal.  Few have had guts to question him, and they have generally paid a price if they did. Their examples have shaped the behavior of many of the others in the party.

That’s a major difference between these impeachment proceeding and the one two decades ago involving President Bill Clinton.

That Senate trial ended in an acquittal, largely on party lines.  

But this last, year-long episode against the president did included some condemnations of the president’s behavior by members of his own party, both for what he did and that he lied about it.

Hopefully they will be, as their oath to be impartial or non-partisan will take hold after all the evidence is given.  But based on some statements from some Republicans, such as Senator Lindsay Graham, who has already said the he will not vote against the president.  It appears that it will take a true miracle to remove our criminal, “commander in cheat”.

Copyright G. Ater 2020