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Truly stunning incompetence. Trump’s lawyers appear not to realize it’s a show Trial. They are not there to persuade the senate. Rand Paul, by getting a vote on the constitutionality of the impeachment, garnering more than 1/3 of the senate. He has essentially mooted that line of argumentation. It’s not determinative in any way, either in the senate or the public.
While the democrats are providing powerful imagery and a compelling, if specious narrative, the defense is doing a very poor job at confuting that narrative, let alone going on the offensive.
One of the grounds of impeachment is that Trump made false statements regarding fraud. By avoiding this core issue, Trump’s lawyers are lending credence to that claim. This is the first quasi-judicial hearing where the evidence could have been presented. That should be the cornerstone. Not only would that confute the legitimacy of the impeachment, it would lay the ground for a run in 2024.Instead, these lawyers are ceding the premises which will validate the use of counter-terrorism against the right.
By the way, as this is going on Peter Navarro is reported that secretaries of state in two states have scrubbed voting evidence from their websites, rendering them inaccessible to the public. Shame on Trump’s defense team. They have made a footnote of what could have been a histoic victory.