As expected, Democrats last week insisted that a Senate impeachment trial without witnesses should be considered a sham trial. Those statements, whether from the lips of Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer (D-N.Y.), House Speaker Nancy Pelosi (D-Calif.), or Judiciary Committee Chairman Jerry Nadler (D-N.Y.), are part of the Democrats’ strategy to extend their investigation in hopes of finding a nugget of incriminating evidence against President Trump.
Rather than passively accepting that, Republicans should highlight the sham investigation that Intelligence Committee Chairman Adam Schiff (D-Calif.) and Nadler conducted for House Democrats. The point should be to underscore the Democrats’ intellectual inconsistency. This video highlights the fact that Nadler refused to allow a hearing where Republicans could call witnesses:
The Judiciary Committee, traditionally the “impeachment committee,” didn’t call any fact witnesses. The first hearing consisted of three partisan Democrat activists and liberal law professor Jonathan Turley, who has criticized the current impeachment effort. The other Judiciary Committee hearing consisted of the majority and minority counsels answering questions about the Schiff report. Schiff wasn’t required by Nadler to testify about his own report.
A simple question screams out for attention. Where are the witnesses? We’re now told that a Senate trial must include witnesses. We are told now that it’s a sham trial if we don’t have witnesses. Pelosi even said that the Senate would be engaged in “a cover-up” if witnesses aren’t called.
Why didn’t Schiff testify about his own report? Why weren’t Republicans allowed to call a single witness in the House impeachment hearings? What have Democrats tried to hide? What exculpatory evidence are these Democrats trying to omit from the record?
A prosecutor who omits potentially exculpatory information from the judge, jury, and defense team might face serious sanctions. There has been lots of talk about fairness and fulfilling the House’s constitutional responsibilities and the rule of law. How is preventing potentially important information from being presented to the jury living up to those important responsibilities?
Democrats don’t want Schiff to testify because that might force him to explain whether the “whistleblower” worked with two of Schiff’s new hires at the National Security Council. If Schiff testified, he might be forced to say how many times he or his staff met with the faux whistleblower. If that happens, they might be forced to tell Congress if they worked with each other to conspire against President Trump.
Democrats didn’t permit Republican witnesses because actual fact witnesses would have disrupted the Democrats’ carefully crafted narrative. With the weakest articles of impeachment in our nation’s history, Democrats couldn’t afford to let Republicans offer exculpatory evidence or allow them to call witnesses who might provide truly “bombshell” testimony.
It isn’t that anyone should want the Senate to conduct an unfair trial. Republicans don’t need to shaft Democrats because these facts are on their side.
Neither article rises to the level of treason, bribery, or “high crimes and misdemeanors.”
The exculpatory evidence that Republicans tried to present during the impeachment House hearings will be introduced on the Senate side.
This time, the jurors won’t be a group of outcome-based partisan Democrats.
This time, Democrats won’t get a pass from the jury. This time, Democrats will need to prove their case. This time, America will see the difference between a one-sided set of hearings featuring partisan Democrat politicians and seeing the adversarial judicial system at work.
This time, America will notice the difference between a hurried sham impeachment investigation and a fair, properly conducted impeachment trial.