McConnell being right is a rarity. Not everything he said about the Senate trial is strictly true so technically he’s only partially right. Nevertheless, it is an occurrence worthy of note and, for once, there may be a good reason for him not to be entirely accurate.
What he said:
“Given the rules, procedures, and Senate precedents that govern presidential impeachment trials, there is simply no chance that a fair or serious trial could conclude before President-elect Biden is sworn in next week.”
Strictly speaking, the first part of the statement – the reference to rules, procedures and precedents – is not true. If it was, it would apply to the confirmation process for a Supreme Court justice and it certainly didn’t in the rush to get Amy Barrett seated. Precedent went out the window along with the “McConnell Rule” which, in 2016, required that no SCOTUS replacement would be considered by the Senate in a presidential election year.
As for rules and procedures for Senate trials, none of them specify how long any part of the process should take. If McConnell had wanted it, a Senate trial could’ve been conducted inside a day.
But McConnell needed to a reason to precede the second part of the statement, the part that was true:
“…there is simply no chance that a fair or serious trial could conclude before President-elect Biden is sworn in next week.”
Place emphasis on the word fair and he’s absolutely right about this.
The Senate between now and the inauguration of Vice President-elect Kamala Harris (rather than President-elect Joe Biden) will look very different to the Senate immediately after VP Harris is sworn in. The most obvious and immediate change will be the party in the majority. This is because the membership of the US Senate is prescribed by the US Constitution.
Article 1 Section 3 Clause 1
The Senate of the United States shall be composed of two Senators from each state
Article 1 Section 3 Clause 4
The Vice President of the United States shall be President of the Senate
Post-inauguration, provided Alex Padilla, Jon Ossoff and Raphael Warnock are sworn in and seated, the Senate will comprise:
50 Republicans
48 Democrats caucusing with 2 Independents + Senate President = 51
Contrary to the media’s misconception, VP Harris gives Democrats the majority because of her position as the presiding officer, not because of her capacity to break ties. The latter is occasional while the former is full-time. Harris will continue to be the President of the Senate even when she is not casting a deciding vote.
To recap: from now until VP Harris is sworn in, Republicans will hang onto the majority with *51 Senators + Senate President to 46 Democrats + 2 Independents.
[*Appointee Loeffler retains her position until Senator-elect Warnock is sworn in; the senior Georgia Senate seat will remain vacant until Senator-elect Ossoff is sworn in.]
There’s no doubt McConnell has a very good idea how his current 50 senators would vote. Conviction requires a two-thirds majority (66 votes from 99 Senators) and right now the chances of there being 18 Republicans prepared to convict is the proverbial snowflake’s chance in Hades.
On the face of it, the chances won’t be much better when the Senate majority flips to Dems – getting 17 Republicans to convict will still be a very tall order. But there are signs that things may not be all they seem in the Senate. The first and most obvious one is McConnell’s astonishing about-face on the issue of impeachment. The New York Times story opened with:
Senator Mitch McConnell has concluded that President Trump committed impeachable offenses and believes that Democrats’ move to impeach him will make it easier to purge Mr. Trump from the party, according to people familiar with Mr. McConnell’s thinking.
Our own Joseph “Mufster35” Murphy picked up the story and wrote a highly entertaining take on it in Well, Well. Look Who Just Had A “Come To Jesus” Moment! As Murph pointed out, “this kind of an about face is totally out of character for him.” It certainly is.
Murph also zeroed in on the word purge.
One of the things that struck me about McConnell’s statement today regarding Trump’s impeachment was his statement that Trump needed to be purged from politics.
It’s a severe, even angry, word for McConnell to use in that it signifies complete eradication with no trace left. Given that Mitch spent almost 4 years lying, manipulating and misleading to support Trump, this is a monumental change.
The NYT story broke 2 days ago but McConnell’s demeanor towards Trump changed from quietly dismissing him in December to acrimony in his speech to a joint session of Congress on January 6. As NYT reported:
Mr. McConnell had broken with Mr. Trump just as the rioters were breaching the building, warning of a descent into a “death spiral” for democracy if the efforts [to reject election results in key swing states] were to prevail.
After the storming of the Capitol, McConnell again addressed the joint session, delivering a slap-down of the pro-Trump extremists in Congress and Trump himself.
“This failed attempt to obstruct the Congress, this failed insurrection, only underscores how crucial the task before us is for our republic,” Mr. McConnell said as the Senate reconvened to complete the electoral count disrupted by the mob.
The popular explanation for McConnell’s rapid turnaround is that he blames Trump for the Senate runoff losses in Georgia January 5. For Mitch it was a triple loss: two Senate seats and the Senate majority. But the argument doesn’t stand up to scrutiny when you consider McConnell was the force behind the Barrett turbo-charged confirmation because he thought then his party would lose the Senate in the November election.
As for Trump, McConnell essentially split from him a month ago.
Mr. McConnell has not spoken to Mr. Trump since mid-December, when the senator informed the president he would be recognizing Mr. Biden as president-elect after the Electoral College certified it.
McConnell had distanced himself from trump and he was angry with Republican senators who refused to accept the election results but still he steadfastly opposed a second impeachment – all the way up to January 12.
What happened January 11/12 to bring about such an acute change?
On January 12:
- Rep Mikie Sherrill posted a video address for her constituents which included this revelation:
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“I also intend to see those members of Congress who abetted him, those members of Congress who had groups coming through the Capitol that I saw on January 5th – a reconnaissance for the next day – those members of Congress that incited a violent crowd, those members of Congress that attempted to help our president undermine our democracy, I’m going to see that they are held accountable and, if necessary, ensure they don’t serve in Congress.”
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- FBI and DOJ held a joint press conference in which acting US Attorney Michael Sherwin talked about the initial charges they were filing from trespass and vandalism, to theft and firearm felonies, saying “these are only the beginning, this is not the end.”
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[The public are] familiar with those cases because of social media, but what the public isn’t familiar with is that the FBI working with the U.S. attorney’s offices across the country and the crux of those being in DC, we’re looking at significant felony cases tied to sedition and conspiracy. (Bold mine)
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Now join the dots:
- Members of Congress
- aided and abetted Trump to undermine American democracy
- arranged for groups to reconnoitre the Capitol Building
- incited a violent crowd
- FBI and DoJ are looking at “significant felony cases tied to sedition and conspiracy.”
If, as seems probable now, the FBI is investigating members of Congress, it’s within their purview to hold a confidential briefing with the gang of 8, i.e. the top 8 in the Senate and House leadership. Currently this would be Senators McConnell, Schumer, Rubio (unless he’s a suspect) and Warner; and from the House: Pelosi, McCarthy (unless he’s a suspect), Schiff and… well definitely not Nunes because he’s got to be a suspect!
Now imagine McConnell’s reaction if the FBI told him several of his GOP senators were implicated in plotting conspiracy and sedition. Imagine his reaction if the FBI told him they had credible evidence of a plot to assassinate him. This is entirely within the realm of possibility. Trump’s brutal vindictiveness is part of his psychopathy.
Ted Cruz is another narcissist and he’s relishing his self-styled role as leader of the pro-Trump coalition. Back in 2014, he founded the House Freedom Caucus and held meetings of his House rep followers in his senate office. His ego demands that he be in charge of something, and clandestine activity would hold considerable appeal for his sly nature.
Josh Hawley made himself the public face of the pro-Trump coalition as much out of vanity as ambition, and it’s these two traits which make him so susceptible to grandiose schemes. Roger Marshall and John Kennedy are fools, while Tommy Tuberville and Cindy Hyde-Smith lack the intelligence to know how much trouble they’re in and so dig themselves in deeper.
It’s feasible all six are under FBI investigation (plus several House members but that’s a story for another day). Both the FBI and DoJ are working quickly and prioritising cases from significant federal felonies down to misdemeanors. Members of Congress are going to score a position near the very top of the list.
Mikie Sherrill vowed, “I’m going to see that they are held accountable and ensure they don’t serve in Congress.” There’ll be investigators in the FBI and prosecutors at DoJ who share her determination.
And so we return to McConnell. He knows there’s a group in his Senate majority who will do everything they can to stop Trump being convicted. In light of that knowledge, it is true for Mitch to say that a Senate trial held now would not be fair. It would be sabotaged or subverted in some way by the pro-Trump extremists.
In another week the political composition of the Senate will change. How much it changes will depend on the wheels of justice grinding rather more quickly than they do in the proverb. Will a week be enough time for LE to charge the bad actors and force them out of the Senate? If so, that’s what McConnell really meant when he said a Senate trial would not be fair now.
But it would be fairer after… not after the inauguration, but after the criminals are removed from the Senate. The consequences would be considerable; not only would it change the metrics, but also impact on the Senators who remain. The shock may well be the stimulus needed to nudge enough Republicans to do the right thing. Whatever McConnell learned on and about January 11, it certainly shoved him in the right direction.
I am so happy you are here now. I have been pondering his abrupt about face too. Your take makes so much sense to me, especially after Mikie’s statement.
I love tackling these puzzles and I knew I was onto something big when I watched Mikie Sherrill’s vid and heard her say, “reconnaissance for the next day.” This is a woman who is not going to level an accusation like that unless she’s 100% certain. Then I saw Murph’s story on McConnell’s abrupt turnaround and realised this was another “dot” in the puzzle. Shortly after, I watched the joint FBI/DoJ presser and recognised yet another “dot”.
Three dots with a common thread that met in the spreadsheet I’d made just a couple of days before, a spreadsheet listing the elector objectors in the House.
To paraphrase Hannibal Smith in “The A Team”: I love it when a puzzle comes together!
There’s another possibility. There appears to be a strong belief that a fair number of Republican senators are privately opposed to the Trompador but are afraid to openly oppose him. That being the case, if they catch political flu when the impeachment trial is due, it reduces the number actually present and the required majority drops. It doesn’t require 66 votes to pass – it requires 2/3 of the senators actually present. If 10 are tucked up in bed sipping hot drinks, then the number becomes 60
Yeah, but you want to suggest a possible “group of 10” who’d be willing to risk the wrath of Trump and/or his supporters and vote to convict Trump?
I’ve seen this suggested before but there’s no sign that anyone is considering it. There is, however, strong indicators that several members of Congress will be taken into custody and consequently lose their seats.
Incidentally, I did say conviction required a two-thirds majority. I put in brackets that this would be 66 out of the current 99 sitting senators. That number would go up to 67 if all 100 senators were present, or go down if their were fewer which is what I was referring to when I noted that if senators were arrested, it would change the metrics.
This is extremely insightful and pretty well answers the questions being discussed in the comments to Murfster’s “GOP’s ‘exit strategy’ post of yesterday, as well as they can be answered at this point.
Thank you. Locating the dots them joining them up is the kind of puzzle I love tackling. My mother taught me. She was an Intelligence officer. She loved puzzles of all kinds from cryptic crosswords to code (she was invited to join an international cryptographers association and was one of their top codebreakers). She taught me how to think.
There’s a small team (I’m sure) of investigators and prosecutors at work directing the efforts to allocate resources to fill in ALL the dots and create a masterpiece of a final picture that everyone prosecuting the cases in court will be able to display for judges and juries. Being agnostic I can’t say I believe in the afterlife but maybe karma has enough bits of the essence of Joe Rochefort it can put together to visit them periodically and give them a hand.
Thanks for your take on this. Something is afoot, for sure.
I agree and I’m always suspicious when one of the major players acts out of character. I’ve found it useful in the past to pin down when it happened then check what else was going on at or around the same time. I’ve since learned that Reps Louie Gohmert, Gym Jordan, Matt Gaetz, Lauren Boebert, Marjorie Taylor Greene, Paul Gosar and Andy Biggs were all caught on CCTV taking groups around the Capitol the day before the attack.
None of those names surprise me, although I’d be surprised if Devin “PF” Nunes (For those who don’t get it PF refers to his standard descriptor by a blogger who goes by the moniker ShowerCap) didn’t turn out to be one of the gang. Or a top staffer that had the juice to get a group into the building. I can’t help but wonder if PART of the deafening silence from the Capitol Police is that there’s been a frantic effort underway to comb through footage of all those security cameras in the Capitol to ID people. A much darker prospect is that line officers who aided and abetted during the riot weren’t the only traitors. It’s possible the plotters had someone that had access to the security system to screw with the video file’s storage.
McConnell may be taking a huge risk if he schedules the A Senate trial after inauguration. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4x-lvlZiIZw
Constitutional lawyer and expert, Laurence Tribe, confirmed in this Wash Post op-ed that the Senate can constitutionally hold an impeachment trial after Trump leaves office. It’s because of the disqualification-from-office provision in Article 1 Section 3. He argues that it’s unconstitutional to invalidate a clause of the Constitution by evasion.
In Tribe’s words:
“Concluding otherwise would all but erase the disqualification power from the Constitution’s text: If an impeachable officer became immune from trial and conviction upon leaving office, any official seeing conviction as imminent could easily remove the prospect of disqualification simply by resigning moments before the Senate’s anticipated verdict.”
I knew that, but did you consider the risk as explained in the video link?
After the inauguration, it can be done in committee and a recommendation sent to the floor. Easier, because it won’t require taking lots of time from confirmations and other vital work.
Never trust a scorpion. It will sting u sooner or later.