The real reason Senate Democrats pulled the plug on impeachment witnesses at the last minute
When Senate Democrats pulled the plug on impeachment witnesses at the last minute, Palmer Report pointed out that they obviously had a darn good reason for doing so, even if they weren’t yet revealing it. To be clear, the notion that they “caved” because Republicans threatened to hold up their agenda, is nonsense. Republicans don’t even have the votes to do that. After chewing it over for a few days, I believe that there’s only one plausible reason they pulled the plug.
My initial suspicion was that Democrats pulled the plug on impeachment witnesses because they didn’t want that testimony to interfere with the criminal cases against Trump. But in hindsight there has to be a little more to it.
Keep in mind that some of these would-be impeachment witnesses were people like Kevin McCarthy, who probably would have just lied to protect Trump, and gambled that House Democrats couldn’t nail him for lying to Congress.
If McCarthy had lied on live national television during his impeachment testimony to protect Trump, it would have made him forever useless as a criminal witness against Trump, even if he later came clean. No way could prosectors call him to testify in the criminal trial.
So the only truly plausible explanation for the lack of witness testimony is that Democrats saw nothing to be gained now by impeachment witnesses like McCarthy lying to protect Trump (final vote would have been the same), and thus decided to protect the criminal prosecution.
“But what criminal prosecution?” Late last week the Washington DC Attorney General’s office leaked to CNN that it was trying to figure out how to charge Trump under DC law. The unspoken implication was that if DC can’t find jurisdiction, the DOJ will bring the charges instead.
Once prosectors investigate and determine the real story, interview surrounding witnesses, and put someone like Kevin McCarthy under oath, there’s a good chance he’ll get scared and just tell the truth about his phone call with Trump, in order to protect himself.
Convicting Trump in an impeachment trial would have been a mere slap on the wrist in comparison to convicting Trump in a criminal trial. And Trump wasn’t going to be convicted in the impeachment trial anyway. So why screw up the criminal case that’s clearly coming?
Everyone wants to know WHEN the criminal cases against Trump will be brought. My answer: who cares? He’s already out of power. What matters now isn’t haste, it’s thoroughness, to make 100% sure the trial juries end up convicting him. It’ll certainly happen long before 2024.
Financial fraud charges are super easy to get a conviction on (New York). Election fraud charges are fairly easy to get a conviction on (Georgia). Insurrection charges will be much more difficult to get a conviction on, because it’s a grey area. Every witness will matter.
Ask yourself why the House impeachment managers seemed downright victorious when wrapping up. They didn’t “cave.” They didn’t have the rug pulled out from under them by Senate Democrats who were afraid of the GOP. They knew they had something much bigger going on.
