Impeachment Manager Jamie Raskin made it clear that they did their part to hold the insurrectionist-in-chief accountable. Senate did not.
Impeachment Manager Jamie Raskin
Chuck Todd asked a question based on the premise that could create doubt about Trump’s culpability as the insurrection leader, not a dereliction of duty.
“One more of those what-ifs, insurrection versus dereliction of duty,” Todd said. “And I know you made a pretty compelling argument, I think in your closing argument, about how they were — you couldn’t disaggregate them. But if that — if it had been a dereliction of duty, it looks like you might have gotten two or three others.”
Jamie was prepared for a question like that. And he made sure to refocus on the real issue and the reason for the outcome, an acquittal of a guilty president.
“You know, remember, these Republicans who voted to acquit in the face of this mountain of unrefuted evidence were going to find some reason to do it,” Impeachment Manager Raskin said. “So if we had charged dereliction of duty, they would have said, “That’s not an impeachable offense. You’ve got to deal with that within the military system. The president is not bound by the code of universal military justice and the uniform code of military justice and so on.”
And that is the point. The impeachment managers were always chasing a moving target because Republicans would move it infinitely to justify their sycophancy.
“I mean, you know, you can always come up with a lawyer’s argument to get to where you want to go,” Raskin said. “And they did not honestly confront the reality of what happened to America, which was Donald Trump incited a violent mob to attack the Congress of the United States. So you know what, we have no regrets at all. We left it totally out there on the floor of the U.S. Senate. And every senator knew exactly what happened. And just go back and listen to McConnell’s speech. Everybody was convinced of the case we put forward. But, you know, as the defense lawyer said, “Just pick any one of these phony constitutional defenses and then you can justify it.” It could be First Amendment, it could be bill of attainder, it could be due process. All of them are nonsense. I thought that I successfully demolished them at the trial. But, you know, there’s no reasoning with people who basically are acting like members of a religious cult and when they leave office should be selling flowers at Dulles Airport.
Could it be any clearer?