Here’s How To Show Trump Should Be Convicted Which We All Can Agree Upon

The House Managers have finished their overwhelming  case against Trump seeking his impeachment . The defenders of Trump will proceed with his defense tomorrow. I am sitting here thinking their defense will consist of the following assertion: “Do not believe what your lying eyes are telling you.”

In other words Trump has no defense. But that never stopped a lawyer from presenting a case for his client. I think of some of the lawyers who ended up attempting to defend a person accused of rape. They get up for their final argument and assert right off the bat that the victim should not be believed because the rape never happened. Then conceding that it happened they then argue that the defendant was not the one who committed the rape. After asserting that, they accept that the defendant was the one who is accused of the rape but suggest that the victim consented to it. It usually never works but when you have nothing but have to  say something so you just toss everything  up against the wall hoping something will stick.

Having been a defense lawyer I have found myself in this position. I still recall saying to myself just before standing  up to present my final argument, “what the hell am I going to say?”  I always managed to come up with something – the only one in the court who believed what I said and thought I did a good job would be my client – but  nothing altered the result.

Back to the Trump impeachment trial.

I suggest we can agree on the following things:

(1) Before the election Trump said he could not lose the election and if he did the election would have been fixed. (2) Once the election was held and all the challenges to it defeated in the court Trump still maintained the result was fixed. (3) Trump held a rally on January 6, 2021. (4) Congress had an obligation to count the electoral votes to determine the winner of the 2020 election and it intended to do it on January 6, 2011. (5) The electoral votes would demonstrate that President Biden won the election. (6) Trump continues to this day to say he won the election because he set the table so that win or lose he would claim he won.

I suggest those facts are agreed upon by all others than perhaps believers in the Deep State or QAnon. Those folk have strange beliefs that are difficult to understand especially when it comes to Democrats. I do not address them.

Nor do I address the folk who believe it was Antifa or some other right wing group that was behind the insurrection. They believe that even in the face of contradictory evidence which shows all those who have been arrested are Trump followers.

What else can we agree upon: (6) there was an attack on the nation’s Capitol building; (7) the Capitol police were overwhelmed by the attackers; (8) the attackers took over the halls of Congress; (9) the Congress members, senators and reps, fled from their chambers into safe areas; (10) that the mayhem in the Capitol was widely publicized on all the news channels.

Now this: (11) Trump in his January 6 speech urged his followers to go to the Capitol; (12) that contemporaneous with his speech the attackers began an assault on the Capitol police officers.

Then add in: (13) Trump was aware of the attack on the Capitol; (14) he was aware the police  lines could not hold; (15) he was urged by members of Congress and those who had access to him to call off the attackers; (16) he did not take any action to do it to for over two hours.

I suggest if we can believe in numbers 1 through 16 then you should be able to say Trump should be convicted.