Impeachment trial - Day 11

Bullshit brags notwithstanding, why should Republicans go caucus in Iowa?  It's not like somebody else is going to get the nomination.

Impeachment manager Jason Crow, of Colorado, begins by citing historical speeches and documents to assert the importance of Congress in providing a check on the president’s behavior.

“What you decide on these articles will have lasting implications on the future of the presidency,” Crow says.

Val Demings, of Florida, then takes the podium.

She is outlining the facts of the case and explaining why they show Trump was using Ukraine to help influence the 2020 election.

  Guardian

Kenneth Starr, the former counsel in the Clinton impeachment, is talking about the song God Bless America by Irving Berlin. This is the beginning of a series of US cultural references: Martin Luther King Jr, the Lincoln Memorial, back to King, former supreme court justice Benjamin Cardozo and deflategate.

It is not immediately clear how they connect to the impeachment argument.

“Senators, we are not enemies, but friends,” begins lead impeachment manager, Adam Schiff, quoting Abraham Lincoln.

He spends some time fighting the defense’s claim that if the president does something which he determines is a “public interest” it is legal.

Operating under that logic, Schiff says other scenarios would be legal, such as : Trump giving Alaska to Russia or moving to Mar-a-Lago permanently and letting Jared Kushner run the country.

“He will not change, and you know it,” says Schiff.

[...]

Schiff warns that Trump will continue asking for foreign help in elections and that is a future Senators “invite” if they don’t [remove] the president.

[...]

“History will not be kind to Donald Trump – I think we all know that,” Schiff says.

[...]

“What we do here, in this moment, will affect its course and its correction. Every single vote, even a single vote, by a single member, can change the course of history.”

“Is there one among you who will say: enough?”

Not on the GOP side.

“You are decent, he is not who you are,” Schiff says.

Not on the GOP side.

Schiff is now comparing Trump’s impeachment trial to Nixon’s and Clinton’s, saying the findings which led to the Trump case were more harmful than the other two cases. What has changed since those cases, then, asks Schiff. “We have,” he says.

[...]

In his final sentences, Schiff says: “They gave you a remedy and they meant for you to use it.”