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Related: Editorials & Other Articles, Issue Forums, Alliance Forums, Region ForumsTrump's Impeachment Brief Is a Howl of Rage
https://www.theatlantic.com/ideas/archive/2020/01/answer-president-donald-j-trump-raises-questions/605227/Trumps Impeachment Brief Is a Howl of Rage
The document released by the presidents lawyers reads more like the scream of a wounded animal than a traditional legal filing.
11:55 AM ET
Quinta Jurecic
Contributing writer at The Atlantic and managing editor of Lawfare
Benjamin Wittes
Contributing writer at The Atlantic and editor in chief of Lawfare
Over the weekend, as the Senate prepared for the impeachment trial of Donald Trump, the newly appointed House impeachment managers and the presidents newly appointed legal team both filed their initial legal briefs.
At least, one of them was a legal brief. The other read more like the scream of a wounded animal.
snip//
By contrast, the White Houses Answer of President Donald J. Trump to the articles of impeachment, filed by the presidents personal lawyer Jay Sekulow and the White House counsel, Pat Cipollone, does not read like a traditional legal argument at all. It begins with a series of rhetorical flourishesall of them, to one degree or another, false. The articles of impeachment are a dangerous attack on the right of the American people to freely choose their President, the presidents lawyers writeas though the impeachment power were not a constitutional reality every bit as enshrined in the founding document as the quadrennial election of the president. The articles are a brazen and unlawful attempt to overturn the results of the 2016 election and interfere with the 2020 election, and are constitutionally invalid on their face, they write, as though the presidents right to extort foreign leaders for political services were so beyond reasonable question, it is outrageous that anyone might object to it.
This document reads like one of the presidents speeches at his campaign rallies. The language is a little more lawyerly, if only a little. In Sekulow and Cipollones hands, Trumps cries of Witch hunt! have turned into lawless process that violated basic due process and fundamental fairness. His allegations that Democrats are a disgrace have turned into an affront to the Constitution. And Trumps insistence that theres a plot to destroy his presidency has become a highly partisan and reckless obsession with impeaching the president [that] began the day he was inaugurated and continues to this day.
But the message is unchanged. Its not a legal argument. Its a howl of rage.
snip//
But the flip side of Trumps insistence on his own preeminence is his grasping need for other people to reaffirm him. And so the presidents defense, the argument and the team alike, has another purpose: Its a message to Republican senators. It says to each of them that no, the White House will not make a factual argument on the merits of the casenot a real one, anyway. And no, it will not make a real legal argument either. It, rather, will announce that, per George Orwell, two plus two equals five. And it will demand of the senators that they get in line to endorse that proposition, preferably on television, where the president can see. It will be a failure of loyalty if they are not willing to do this. And they will be subject to retaliation.
Its not a strategy that would work in court. But the Senate is not, at the end of the day, a courteven when its sitting as the trial court of an impeachment. The Senate is a body composed of people who, as the past few years of Republicans willing subjection to Trump have shown, are exquisitely sensitive to this sort of pressure.
And the more absurdly bombastic the defense gets, the stronger this message becomes.
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Trump's Impeachment Brief Is a Howl of Rage (Original Post)
babylonsister
Jan 2020
OP
saidsimplesimon
(7,888 posts)1. He kinda looks like the Wolf Man
character from a horror movie.
Yo_Mama_Been_Loggin
(108,157 posts)2. K&R
UniteFightBack
(8,231 posts)3. I stopped reading it after a few lines it was so unprofessional. nt