But, let’s get back to topic. President Trump was impeached on a party-line vote, after a House proceeding which left out three very important things: President Trump was not 1) given the presumption of innocence; 2) was not allowed to call witnesses; and 3) was not allowed to cross-examine witnesses (without the questions and their wording being approved by Chief Inquisitor Adam Schiff). Those are three hallmarks of fair trials and justice in this country, and the fact that the House Democrats denied them to the President, makes their assertions that the President is not acquitted because he didn’t receive a “fair trial” in the Senate is laughable. Going to the historical record, there never has been a “witness” in a Senate Presidential Impeachment Trial who had not already been a witness or been deposed in the relevant House proceeding. So much for the House managers’ new demand for witnesses in the Senate trial. They had ample opportunity to make their case, but failed to do so. The Senate had zero influence on the House proceedings, which is proper. The Senate was under no obligation - legal, moral or ethical – to allow the House to run the Senate trial. Just remember, it is the House that considers President Trump to be a dictator, yet they are the ones who ran a court as a dictator does, with no rights for the accused.
We have pointed out that “obstruction of Congress” and “abuse of power” are not real crimes, but are concoctions more or less made up on the fly. The House couldn’t find any actual crimes committed by President Trump, so they devised some charges and hoped no one would notice.
The House and Senate each performed its Constitutional duty. The conviction of the President was never really in doubt as it would have taken the votes of 20 Republican Senators, joined with the 45 Democrats and two independents, to remove the President, and that wasn’t going to happen. They are ecstatic that they did get one Republican vote, on one count; and claimed an historical first – the first time a Senator voted to remove a President of his own party. Sen. John Kennedy’s book, Profiles In Courage, featured the “not guilty” vote of Edmund Ross of Kansas, whose vote, which was contrary to the wishes of the Republican party leaders, was decisive in that trial. Had he voted guilty, President Johnson would have been removed. Sen. Romney’s vote may have been courageous or outrageous, depending on one’s politics, but it was not decisive in either direction. As a footnote, none of the Republicans who voted to acquit President Johnson ever held elective office after the conclusion of their term in the Senate, although Ross was appointed the Governor of New Mexico Territory by Pres. Cleveland (a Democrat) in 1885. Johnson became the only former President to become a US Senator, serving from Tennessee from March 4, 1875 until his death on July 31 of that year.
Given the intimations of the House Managers, we can anticipate additional impeachment proceedings. We are pretty sure that most Democrats and most Republicans do not look forward to them favorably, and would hope, as we do, that the House accepts defeat and gets on with its other business. Of course, their refusal to truly accept defeat in the 2016 election is what led to all of this in the first place, so those hopes probably are in vain. The most significant fall-out from the recently concluded impeachment trial is a rise in the President’s approval rating to the highest point of his presidency (four points more than President Obama at the same point in his first term), a huge fundraising boost to the President’s party, and disarray, disillusion and disappointment among the Democrats. If those are the results, maybe another impeachment would not be a bad thing after all.