President’s Counsel Ignore Bolton Bull on Senate Trial Day Seven

Jan. 27, 2020 (EIRNS)—The President’s lawyers stuck to their game plan today despite the raging national media frenzy surrounding the New York Times account of what John Bolton allegedly wrote about an August 2019 conversation with President Donald Trump. As we analyzed the alleged Bolton quote, it was, by even the Times’ account, about Ukraine investigating their illegal intervention into the 2016 election and Vice-President Biden’s role in that, not about Hunter’s seat on Burisma and investigating the Bidens, as claimed throughout the media blitz today.

Ken Starr first gave an overview of impeachment proceedings and the former Independent Counsel statute’s interplay with impeachment. He stated that in tossing the Independent Counsel statute, the Congress recognized that the statute was “a dagger aimed at the heart of the Presidency” and would make the President serve at the discretion of Congress, not the people as specified in the Constitution. He also stated that the House’s action was aimed specifically at “normalizing impeachment” and would produce the same result that Congress feared, when it let the Independent Counsel statute lapse after the Clinton impeachment.

Then, signaling that they are ducking nothing and are not defensive in the least, Jamie Raskin, who was part of the President’s team in the Mueller investigation, gave a completely spirited defense of Rudy Giuliani. She led with Carl Sandberg’s description of “the trial lawyers dilemma: If the facts are against you, argue the law; if the law is against you, argue the facts; if both the facts and the law are against you, yell like hell.” She demonstrated that the Democrats had indeed done a bit of yelling, but had also employed another favored trial tactic, creating a “shiny object” distraction by providing a completely false and inflammatory portrait of the President’s lawyer. She observed that Clarence Darrow said that to be effective, a good lawyer must sometimes be outrageous, irreverent, blasphemous, a rogue, a renegade, on behalf of their client. She said that after a two-year siege of the Presidency, two IG reports, and $32 million, Rudy Giuliani had been absolutely correct about the outrageous illegalities committed against his client, Donald Trump; in fact, spot on. If you were keeping score on the truth, it would be, Rudy 4, Mr. Schiff 0.

Former Florida Attorney General Pam Bondi followed by giving a complete presentation on the Burisma corruption saga in Ukraine and the role of Joe and Hunter Biden in it. This obviously was intended to demonstrate an intent to go full bore here, if the moderate Republicans and the Democrats continue their push for John Bolton and other witnesses. It also, by presenting the true, factual content of their conduct, should kill, in any reasonable mind, the continuing Democratic narrative that this is nothing but an insubstantial conspiracy theory.

Tonight’s proceedings are scheduled to be an analysis of the facts and law presented in the Democratic case, by former special prosecutor Robert Ray and by Alan Dershowitz. Both presentations will demonstrate that under even the most favorable interpretation of the facts presented by the Democrats, the two impeachment articles are insufficient as a matter of statutory and constitutional law, and would be, in a normal court of law, subject to a successful motion to dismiss following the Democrats’ initial presentation.