The Trial of the Century — So Far
During and after the second impeachment trial of Donald Trump, even Republicans admitted the House Managers had done a masterful job of presenting their case. Having voted the trial constitutional by a margin of 55 – 45, the Senate subsequently acquitted Trump with Republicans contending the trial was an unconstitutional abuse of power. And, as I have written earlier, that became the painted hook on the Senate wall upon which they hung their acquittal hats, all 43 of them.
The entire proceedings seemed scripted and predicable — that is, until Saturday morning, originally scheduled for closing arguments. That was when the leader of the House Managers, Representative Jamie Raskin, of Maryland’s 8th Congressional District, announced that overnight the Managers had learned of a phone conversation between House Minority Leader Keven McCarthy and President Trump at the height of the insurrection on the 6th. Representative Jaime Herrera-Beutler, Republican of Washington, had issued a statement saying McCarthy had described the conversation to her, a conversation in which McCarthy had begged Trump to forcefully call off the mob. Trump had dismissed the request cavalierly, saying, “Well, Kevin, I guess these people are more upset about the election than you are.”
Herrera-Beutler, one of the ten House Republicans who voted for impeachment, had said she was willing to testify under oath about the conversation with McCarthy, and that’s what Manager Raskin said was going to happen. Instead, Hellzapoppin happened.
Trump defense attorney Michael van der Veen, who is a personal injury lawyer, not a civil liberties lawyer, objected strenuously (to be kind about it; as I was watching I thought the Republicans were going to have to peel him off the Senate ceiling), saying if Herrera-Beutler were called to testify, he had at least a hundred witnesses he wanted to call, starting with Nancy Pelosi, and, by the way, he would depose all of them in his office in Philadelphia, because “that’s how these things are done.” At this point, the bell sounded and the fighters went to their separate corners to decide what to do next.
The House Managers, having made their point, and realizing that nothing short of something akin to the parting of the Red Sea, would persuade seventeen Republicans to vote to convict, and even that might not be enough, decided not to call Representative Herrera-Beutler as a witness. Instead, they and the defense team compromised by reading her statement into the record of the proceedings, thereby sparing us of more of Mr. van der Veen’s histrionics.
Shortly thereafter, Donald Trump was acquitted — again.
This was a show trial. With the conclusion foregone, the House Managers knew their real audience was the American public, not the 100 Senators in the chamber. It remains to be seen whether they won their case with the public. An Ipsos poll conducted Friday evening after the Defense had wrapped its case, if you could call it that, but before the Herrera-Beutler bombshell, revealed 55% of Americans believe Trump was “fully” or “largely” responsible for inciting the violence, but only 50% believe he should have been convicted. Strangely, 53% said he should be barred from holding public office again. The poll, which had a confidence level of 4%, shows in stark relief how deeply polarized this nation remains.
There will be more Trump litigation, a lot more. We may never see the end of it. Mitch McConnell, after voting to acquit, specifically mentioned this in a fiery speech (for him) putting Trump on notice that criminal and civil penalties are appropriate for what he did.
And today, it begins. This morning, Representative Bennie G. Thompson (D-Miss.), the chairman of the House Homeland Security Committee, filed a federal lawsuit accusing former president Donald Trump, attorney Rudolph W. Giuliani and two extremist groups whose members have been charged in the 6 January storming of the Capitol with illegally conspiring to intimidate and block Congress’s certification of the 2020 election. Citing an 1871, rarely used law aimed at the KKK, Thompson is suing in his personal capacity and is joined by the NAACP.
So many miles to go
With the conclusion of the world’s fastest impeachment trial, the Biden presidency can take center stage. Job #1: Defeat the pandemic and, in the words of someone who knew a thing or two about national division, “bind up the nation’s wounds.” However, right out of the gate we keep getting reminded just how delicate an undertaking that’s going to be.
Case in point: The scary growth of far right extremism in America and around the world got a boost from the Covid-19 pandemic.
Using historical data-sets from Germany, Kristian Brickle, of the Federal Reserve Bank of New York, concludes influenza mortality during the pandemic of 1918 – 1920 was directly correlated with both lower per-capita spending in the next decade, especially by the young, and the rise of extremist parties in 1932 and 1933, primarily the National Socialist Workers Party (the NAZI party). In her study, Pandemics Change Cities: Municipal Spending and Voter Extremism in Germany, 1918-1933, (May 2020, Revised June 2020), Brickle shows how Germany suffered high mortality in the pandemic, mortality that varied significantly across the country’s municipalities and regions. This variation represented tangible differences between cities and regions that reflected the beliefs and preferences of the inhabitants. In effect, the pandemic served as a means to exacerbate beliefs already held. One of these exacerbated beliefs was distrust for and hatred of minorities, predominantly Jews. Hence the significant increase of the deep-seated antisemitism of the late 1920s and 1930s.
Although Brickle’s work does not blaze a new trail — she builds on the work of many others — her research paints a clearer picture of what can be the unfortunate and unforeseen consequences of a pandemic. The United Nations and others have documented an “explosion” of antisemitism throughout the tenure of the Donald Trump presidency, but with a significant spike during 2020, the first year of the Covid-19 pandemic.
Joe Biden is going to need all the help he can find.
