As the hour grew later the question and answer period in the Senate impeachment trial of President Trump turned towards the confrontational. By 8pm both sides had fixed their rhetorical bayonets.

Developments included:

  • Democrat Zoe Lofgren can’t seem to stop talking even when she has finished her point, thus stepping all over her own closing lines.
  • Adam Schiff advocated for the calling of “relevant witnesses.” He will no doubt find the Bidens and Ciaramella not quite relevant.
  • Both sides got unwelcome surprises as they asked questions of the other side that merely gave the opposition the opportunity to ignore the question and rely on talking points.
    Close

    This violates the legal truism that states an attorney should not ask a question they don’t already know the answer to.

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  • Jerry Nadler was made to look like a fool yet again by Alan Dershowitz, as Nadler claimed “all scholars except Mr. Dershowitz” agreed with the Democrat contention that impeachment didn’t have to involve crimes or criminal conduct. You could almost hear Dershowitz and the GOP licking their chops awaiting the chance to respond.

    When Dershowitz did, he let Nadler have it with both barrels, “By the way, the congressman was just completely wrong when he said I’m the only scholar who supports this position. In the 19th century, which is much closer in time [to the founding of the country and the drafting of the Constitution,] Dean [Theodore] Dwight of the Columbia Law School wrote that ‘the weight of authority,’ by which he meant the weight of scholarly and judicial authority, this is in 1867, is in favor of requiring a crime. Justice [Benjamin Robbins] Curtis came to the same conclusion.”

  • As Democrats tried to shoehorn bribery and extortion into the charges, though they are not contained in the articles of impeachment, GOP lawyer Patrick Philbin made the point that if they tried that in a normal courtroom the case would immediately be declared a mistrial.
  • Given a question he sent up to the Chief Justice, possible swing vote GOP Senator Cory Gardner may be leaning towards acquittal.

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  • Alan Dershowitz aggressively noted that the Founders set the number of Senators needed to remove a president so high, at a supermajority, because they feared a partisan impeachment like the one currently being fought out in the Senate.

The trial resumes Thursday.