Trump may still destroy the Republican Party yet: Legal expert
Former President Donald Trump may still lead to the downfall of the Republican Party as he turns to make his impeachment trial about the 2020 election.
Saturday night it was revealed that Trump's impeachment legal team resigned after Trump made it clear that his defense would fight to prove that the election was stolen from him.
This is the last defense the Senate Republicans wanted. They were hoping to make the impeachment about the constitutionality of the impeachment. The GOP has already tried to fight the impeachment on television by having leaders flood airwaves claiming that Trump shouldn't have been impeached as a non-president. Trump was already impeached, however, because under the Constitution, the House votes whether or not to impeach. The Senate has no role in whether or not the impeachment was constitutional. It already passed. It's akin to a lawyer arguing that a client is innocent of murder because there shouldn't have been a trial at all.
The GOP had Jonathan Turley speak to their caucus lunch so members could get on message about the "constitutionality" defense, but the "stolen election" case "crosses a line," said former federal prosecutor Elie Honig in a column for CNN.com.
"It's almost guaranteed that they're going to lose the case in the court of law," said Republican David Gergen about the Democrats. "But there is still the court of public opinion which matters a lot. And this is an opportunity now for the Democrats to make a very penetrating, persuasive case that, in fact, Donald Trump was linked and influenced that assault on the Capitol by those thugs on Jan. 6. And they can now drive home the point in the trial that it's a -- this constitutional argument is not the relevant issue. The relevant issue is whether you, in fact, Mr. Trump, launched this thing. And if Donald Trump comes and defends himself as apparently he may want to do, he may want to appear in public now to make his defense, it is going to be high wire but have an enormous impact on public opinion."
Former Deputy Attorney General Elliot Willims told CNN that the problem with Trump not wanting to use the constitutionality defense is that it will force all Republicans who ensure Trump's innocence will be forced to wear the "stolen election" narrative for the rest of their careers.
"The better route is to let the Senate vote on him and fail to convict him and have every Republican Senator who voted not to convict Donald Trump carry this with them for the rest of their careers," said Williams. "And maybe not today maybe not tomorrow but ten or 15 years from now when we look back on what people chose to do when they were in office this will be a stain on their careers and legacies."
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