At last, the Senate’s impeachment trial of former President Donald Trump was set to become a trial in earnest. After Republican Rep. Jaime Herrera Beutler corroborated reports that House Minority Leader Kevin McCarthy did indeed have a heated telephone call with Trump during last month’s storming of the Capitol, the Senate finally voted to allow witnesses, presumably to force McCarthy to testify under oath.
And inexplicably, the House impeachment managers caved to pressure from Senate Democrats to drop the witness plan, giving the GOP the cover to acquit Trump that they could have only dreamed of. Despite the damning case laid out by the Democrats, this historic blunder has ensured that this impeachment ends as disastrously as it began.
Although a conviction was never likely, witnesses could have compelled further Republican defections from the party line. Just as crucial to the case that Trump incited the Capitol storming as his speech and post-election lies was the increasingly credible charge that Trump knew about the riot as he egged on the mob and refused to deploy the National Guard. Not only did Trump attack Mike Pence on Twitter even after he learned that his vice president’s life was in danger, but thanks to Herrera Beutler’s corroboration, we also know that Trump refused to deploy the National Guard despite McCarthy pleading to him directly. If McCarthy and Sen. Tommy Tuberville both had to confirm these facts under oath, voting to acquit Trump would constitute political suicide.
But Democrats decided not to, giving Republicans every out to acquit not just on the (admittedly weak) grounds that convicting a private citizen is unconstitutional, but also by claiming that Democrats refusing witnesses despite Republicans allowing them proves that this was nothing but a show trial.
And for many, there’s no question that it was, but regardless of the Democrats’ intentions, the simple fact is that telling an armed mob to go to Congress to “stop the steal” and then refusing to quell the violence while egging it on ought to result in a conviction, both to punish Trump in particular and set a precedent in general.
But now, Republicans have an excuse to acquit, and yet another Trump transgression will go into the record as normalized. We could have had a trial worth taxpayers’ time and money, and instead, we’ll wind up with a total waste.
