13 November 2019 — 0713 mst
Mac Thornberry’s defense of Trump: he’s guilty as hell, but
was denied due process and therefore shouldn’t be punished
Mac Thornberry represents the nation’s most Republican congressional district, the 13th in Texas. Carried by President Trump with 80 percent of the vote, the district has a Cook Partisan Index rating of R+33. Thornberry is not running for re-election, but he is running, and running hard, to defend Trump against impeachment — and he’s not letting the facts get in the way. According to the Washington Post:
The former House Armed Services Committee chairman and steadfast critic of Russia on Sunday called Trump’s use of foreign aid to elicit a political probe from that nation “inappropriate” but accused Democrats of running a “tainted” and “one-sided” probe.
“There’s a reason we let murderers and robbers and rapists go free when their due process rights have been violated,” Thornberry said on ABC’s “This Week.”
Thornberry is invoking the exclusionary rule — illegally obtained evidence is inadmissible — but the exclusionary rule does not apply here. The facts that the House is considering, including the whistleblower’s facts, were obtained legally. But even if they were not, if they are true facts they should not be excluded from consideration. Too much is at stake to stiffarm the truth because of how it was delivered into the sunlight. The claim that Trump is being denied due process is bogus and a red herring.
Impeachment is not a criminal justice proceeding; those are handled by the courts. It’s a political proceeding established by our constitution, entrusted solely to the House of Representatives, to provide a remedy for great offenses against the nation. The House alone determines the process for investigating accusations that the President’s conduct merits impeachment. That process must be fair to the nation and designed to unearth the relevant facts, not to suppress them.
Trump is not being denied the opportunity to provide facts. But he’s doing his best, by ordering members of his administration not to answer the House’s questions, not to honor the House’s lawful subpoenas, not to cooperate with the House’s inquiry, not to provide facts. In doing so, he’s determined to deny the nation its constitutional right, and obligation, to conduct a full and fair impeachment inquiry. Trump is attempting to deny due process to the American people, who, unlike Trump, his delusions and ambitions notwithstanding, are sovereign.
Thornberry knows this — and he also knows that Trump is guilty of using the resources of the United States to attempt strongarming the Ukrainian chief of state into digging up dirt on Joe Biden, a potential opponent in the 2020 election. Trump was employing lawfully appropriated funds to try to subvert our democracy. Hence Thornberry’s apt comparison of Trump’s acts to murder, robbery, and rape. He knows Trump is guilty as hell of an impeachable offense.
But he also knows his district is the reddest all; that Texas approves of Trump 49 to 47 percent (Civiqs); that Texas opposes impeaching Trump 52 to 47 percent (Civiqs). His moral compass is a wetted finger in the Texas wind. His highest loyalty is to Trump the man, not to the nation. It’s not a case of “don’t bother me with the facts.” It’s a case of “the facts don’t bother me.” Indeed, there may be no set of facts that could convince him that Congress must remove Trump as President to protect the nation. He’s concluded that Trump must remain President, no matter what he’s done, no matter what he’s doing. Therefore, there’s no defense of Trump that Thornberry finds too shameful or stupid.
For Thornberry, and for tens of millions who voted for Trump, the facts don’t matter much, or at all. What matters is what they believe is a transcendent Truth: that Trump, louse, lout, liar, sociopath, and demagogue, mean as an angry diamondback rattler, is all that stands between them and a secular dystopia that they fear the Democrats, godless, diverse, and redistributionist, will impose on the nation. They believe their backs are to the wall, that their survival is at stake, and that they must do what must be done to prevail. That Trump is guilty as hell matters to them not.
Writing at New York Magazine’s Intelligencer, Andrew Sullivan, a traditional conservative, observes:
And most important of all, Trump has turned the GOP — one of our two major parties with a long and distinguished history — into an accomplice in his crimes. Senator Lindsey Graham, perhaps the most contemptible figure of the last couple of years, even says he will not read witness transcripts or follow the proceedings in the House or consider the evidence in a legal impeachment inquiry, because he regards the whole impeachment process as “BS” and a “sham.” This is a senator calling the constitutional right of the House of Representatives to impeach a president illegitimate.
And the GOP as a whole has consistently backed Trump rather than the Constitution. Sixty-two percent of Republican supporters have said that there is nothing Trump could do, no crime or war crime, no high crime or misdemeanor, that would lead them to vote against him in 2020. There is only one way to describe this, and that is a cult, completely resistant to reason or debate. The tribalism is so deep that Trump seems incapable of dropping below 40 percent in the national polls, and is competitive in many swing states. The cult is so strong that Trump feels invulnerable. If Trump survives impeachment, and loses the 2020 election, he may declare it another coup, rigged, and illegitimate. He may refuse to concede. And it is possible the GOP will follow his lead. That this is even thinkable reveals the full extent of our constitutional rot.
We face a reckoning. Will we have the wit and fortitude to reclaim our constitutional democracy from a man who would be king? Or will the man would would be king’s apologists and enablers — the Mac Thornberrys and the voters who send them to Congress — prevail? A free and generous America hangs in the balance, and I do not know which way it will tip.