| | | Do Republicans think Trump is guilty? Watch their words
My takeaway from the impeachment hearings that ended Thursday is that Republicans must know that President Trump is guilty. What makes me so sure? The sense of deja vu that overwhelmed me as the committee’s Republican members and staff grilled witnesses.
When Devin Nunes, the ranking Republican, called the investigation “a drug deal,” I got a flashback to a scene in the Leighton Criminal Court Building of me sitting at the defense table with my kid brother, a criminal defense attorney, and a client charged with some kind of mayhem.
Brother Bob’s experience had taught him that innocent people didn’t often knock at his office door. State’s attorneys only pursued rock-solid cases because when running for reelection, they’d tout their astronomical percentage of convictions. Bob’s only shot was to chip away at a witness’ testimony, suggesting he had a motive for lying.
That approach to cross examination was recently chosen by Steve Castor, a Republican committee consul, when Alexander Vindman testified about Trump’s now famous phone call with the Ukrainian prime minister.
Castor asked Vindman, a member of the National Security Council, about being offered the post of Ukrainian defense minister. The Ukrainian official who made the offer has said it was a joke. But Castor insinuated that Vindman, who was born in Eastern Europe, had divided loyalties. “But I am an American,” Vindman shot back. “I came here when I was a toddler and immediately dismissed those offers.”
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Rep. Brad Wenstrup joined the bad-mouthing, theorizing that Vindman’s testimony was psychologically unreliable. “Lieutenant Colonel Vindman must have been hearing some voices,” Wenstrup said. “I think that’s pretty bizarre.”
Another example of casting doubt on a witness came during the testimony of the ambassador to Ukraine that Trump had fired.
Trump tweeted: “Everywhere Marie Yovanovitch went turned bad.” That was a bit much even for Republican impeachment committee members, who backed away from Trump’s words and made nice with her.
This strategy of picking away at the witnesses raises the big question: Why haven’t Trump or Republicans offered a traditional defense of rebuttal witnesses and documentary evidence to counter the prosecution?
My brother had to play the hand he was dealt. Could Republicans similarly lack face cards? Their second line of defense would suggest that.
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Official after official testified that they were part of a bizarre scheme to game next year’s presidential election. It hinged on the Ukrainian president agreeing to announce a corruption investigation of Joe Biden, the presumptive Democratic candidate, whose son did business in Ukraine. President Volodymyr Zelenskiy was also to say that it was Ukraine, not Russia, that tampered with the 2016 U.S. election. In return for becoming his country’s Benedict Arnold, Zelenskiy would get military hardware and a photo op with Trump.
Republicans gleefully noted that none of the witnesses could definitively tie Trump to what was an extortion attempt. Yet nobody had to finger Trump. He did it himself. “I would like you to do us a favor," Trump told Zelenskiy in their phone call.
Or at least that is what he said according to an after-the-fact summary of the call. Those who listened in on the phone call were so shocked by what they heard that the verbatim transcript was removed to a supersecret hiding place. Why hasn’t it been released if it was “perfect,” as Trump has said, and if there was no quid pro quo?
Despite the mountain of evidence the hearings produced I wouldn’t bet on Trump being removed from office. More likely the Republicans who would try him in the Senate will ignore the facts as resolutely as their colleagues on the House’s impeachment committee.
I’m prepared to receive that news on a split screen in my mind. On the left, I’ll see Fiona Hill testifying. A former foreign policy expert on the National Security Council, she is looking impeachment committee members right in the eye.
“Some of you appear to believe that Russia and its security services did not conduct a campaign against our country — and that perhaps, for some reason, Ukraine did,” Hill says. “This is a fictional narrative that has been perpetrated and propagated by the Russian security services themselves.”
On the right screen I’ll see my brother. A client has been convicted in a case Bob knew was virtually unwinnable.
“Well, at least we made them squirm,” Bob says. “The jury was out for two days.”
rgrossman@chicagotribune.com |
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