Brane Space: Seriously? Trump's Morally Dubious Legal Team Calls Impeachment A "Perversion of the Constitution"

Two of the perverts' pals errr...lawyers, on Trump's trial team: Alan Dershowitz (left) and Ken Starr:

"If the Senate goes along with McConnell with a big whitewash then you will have a situation where the Senate will have been on trial, and it may lose its Republican control in 2020." -  Harvard Constitutional Law Prof. Lawrence Tribe, on All In, Friday .

"Amidst all of this who does Donald Trump pick to represent him at his impeachment trial? Alan Dershowtiz and Kenneth Starr. These two famous attorneys who represented Jeffrey Epstein more than a decade ago and helped him get a sweetheart deal. This was back when he was facing a federal indictment for sexually abusing underage girls back in 2007. You remember the deal right? It was for only 13 months and he was regularly allowed to leave jail, to apparently return to his decades long abuse of girls and young women"- Chris Hayes on 'All In', Friday night

Maureen Dowd, in her recent (Jan. 19) column best summed up the creeps that Dotard has chosen as the top lawyers to defend him, first turning to Ken Starr:

"The Starr chamber was a shameful period of American history, with the prissy Puritan independent counsel hounding and virtually jailing Monica Lewinsky and producing hundreds of pages of panting, bodice-ripping prose that read more like bad erotica than a federal report, rife with lurid passages about breasts, stains and genitalia.....Even Trump was appalled. “Starr’s a freak,” the bloviating builder told me back in 1999. “I bet he’s got something in his closet.” In other interviews, he called Starr “a lunatic,” “a disaster” and “off his rocker,”..

Starr, who once clutched his pearls over Bill Clinton’s sexual high jinks, is now going to bat for President “Access Hollywood.”

In 2007, he defended Jeffrey Epstein. By 2016, Starr was being ousted as president of Baptist Baylor University for failing to protect women and looking the other way when football players were accused and sometimes convicted of sexual assault"

It was the Starr Report, co-authored by the newly (SC)- installed right wing weasel Brett Kavanaugh, which laid out the spurious case for Clinton’s impeachment and removal from office, based on Monica Lewinsky's illegally- obtained taped spiels with Linda Tripp. As I pointed out in my Sept. 14, 2018 post, that tape "evidence" ought to have been inadmissible given procuring it was a felony under then Maryland law. (One cannot secretly tape the words of another over the phone without informing them first.)

Ms. Dowd then fixes attention on Dershowitiz:

"And then there’s Dershowitz, whose past clients have included such sterling fellows as Epstein, Claus von Bülow, O.J. Simpson and Harvey Weinstein. How did he miss Ted Bundy?"

All of this is relevant now as we read in the press (e.g. Denver Post, Jan. 19th)

"The Trump team called the Senate's formal impeachment summons to the two articles of impeachment 'a dangerous attack on the right of the American people to freely choose their president."

Which is a pile of ripe merde. First, it did not amount to any "attack" on an American's "right" to freely choose a president. It DID remind us that when a deranged and low IQ minority faction exercises such right without regard to common sense we all pay - in that we get a demented demagogue capable of doing untold damage to the Republic. The Trump team that made such a wacko remark to the media then needs to be reminded of the words of James Madison - who defined the mischief of 'minority faction' in Federalist No 10, i.e.:

"Citizens - whether amounting to a minority or majority of the whole - are united and actuated by a common impulse of passion (to cast their votes) adverse to the rights of other citizens or the permanent and aggregate interests of the community".

This is exactly what the Trump voters ('the minority") did, motivated by passion and recklessness via Trump's often violent rallies to give a middle finger salute to the rest of the country - thereby militating against the majority's interests. They knew just as well as anyone the degenerate and destructive nature of this filth, but cast ballots for him anyway. Enough, namely 77,000 in three key states (Pennsylvania, Wisconsin, Michigan) , to put him over the top in electoral votes.

But it then fell to the state Electors to correct the voting anomaly. To do their sworn duty, i.e. not to rubber stamp a malicious choice, but to set it right and prevent an unhinged, authoritarian demagogue from attaining the highest office. Alexander Hamilton, for his part, held that the same electors could ensure the integrity of the office through their own discretion which may diverge from what the people themselves voted for (particularly if motivated by passion as opposed to reason).

Thus we read in Federalist # 78:

"The process of election (by state electors) affords a moral certainty that the office of President shall never fall to the lot of any man who is not to an eminent degree endowed with the requisite qualifications...."

Read that last sentence again: The office of the President shall never fall to the lot of any man who is not to an eminent degree endowed with the requisite qualifications.

The FACT of Trump's debased being and premoral character was exposed for all to see in the recent  blistering editorial from a prominent evangelical magazine, Christianity Today. That, combined with his brazen extortion of the Ukrainian President (Volodymyr Zelenskiy) shows clearly he is a human maggot and unfit to run a dog kennel- far less a nation. So no one on God's green Earth (not even the inimitable commenter "Publius" - suddenly exposed as a rabid Trumpster) can tell me with a straight face that Trump, aka Dotard, is "endowed with the requisite qualifications".

Secondly, the Trump team shows itself to be ignorant buffoons by asserting an Article 1 power exercised by the democratically elected House, can in any way be interpreted as an "attack" on a lawless renegade, rogue president. One who aspires to absolute power, as when he appointed Bill Barr as his personal "Roy Cohn". Thus, the Trump team's further hysterical blather (ibid.):

"This is a brazen and unlawful attempt to overturn the results of the 2016 election and interfere with the 2020 election"

Is just fulsome codswallop of the most head -spinning form, especially given it is precisely Trump's extortion effort which marked the actual interference effort in the coming election - stopped in its tracks thanks to a patriot whistleblower. Further, the nonpartisan GAO has further reinforced Trump's criminality by referring outright to what he did as a crime. The specific law at issue is the Impoundment Control Act of 1974.

But for sheer brazen ignorance of the Constitution it's hard to rival Alan Dershowtiz who has repeatedly expelled this verbal vomit on assorted appearances the past few days (e.g. in an interview with MSNBC host Ari Melber):

"The abuse of power - even if proved - is not an impeachable offense. The Founders never gave congress the authority to overrule the president because he abused his power. So then they (congress) have to prove treason,, bribery or other crimes and misdemeanors."

This twaddle so amazed MSNBC host Chris Hayes on Friday he had to replay the segment for senior Harvard Law Professor Lawrence Tribe - who responded thusly : (See e.g.: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ADCUGx9wHhE

"I almost don't know where to start. My colleague has it upside down. I knew the Trump defense was going to rely on to a large extent on alternative facts, but I didn't know they were also going to use alternative law.

There is no legal principle that says something has to violate a federal criminal statute to be impeachable. When the impeachment power was put in the Constitution there were no federal criminal statutes. As the House report accompanying these articles of impeachment says, what is being charged against the president happens to be a federal crime: felony bribery. And on top of that yesterday we learned from the accountability office that the president is indeed breaking the law, the impoundment control act.

So that's why I don't know where to start since Alan is completely wacko on this. So I don't understand why the president thinks it will help him to have this kind of bizarro defense."

Well of course it's likely to have more than a little success because the Trump team knows there are millions of dumb clucks - fed on FOX News claptrap and propaganda - who start with lower IQs and will be dumb enough to believe anything Trump's team churns out.

Prof. Tribe even gives an example from Dershowitz own recent book on how far he's willing to take this asinine bull pockey, citing a hypothetical president like Trump allowing Putin to take Alaska - "like he took Crimea." And as Prof. Tribe adds: "That would be pretty bad, says Alan Dershowitz, but it wouldn't be a federal crime and would not be impeachable."

That's how far down the rabbit hole of irrational bullshit we've been led by these liars, Reich framers and PR artists. Indeed, they totally ignore as well Trump's efforts to have repealed the Foreign Corrupt Bribery Act - which would have allowed outright bribery, say by a foreign power. (As reported in the new book, 'A Very Stable Genius' by Philip Rucker and Carol Loennig).

The latest tally of Trump's lies is now 16, 241, not counting all those he will likely spew in the wake of publication of Rucker's and Loennig's book. What is clear is that this shameless liar, sex pervert (pussy grabber) and bellicose buffoon has indisputably picked the legal team that best jibes with his dubious character. Oh, and all the Repuke traitors and enablers who will now do their damndest to protect his sorry, fat orange hide over the country and the Constitution.

As for the rest of us - the normal, rational part of the populace, we expect Trump's team will be allowed a total propaganda cover up - especially after Moscow Mitch has delivered his "resolution" for 12 trial rules, which includes that all the evidence presented must now be voted on. This despite the fact the House impeachment procedure and evidence assembly was impeccable, well organized. E.g. from the first link given below:

"Legal experts Benjamin Wittes and Quinta Jurecic, in an article for The Atlantic, assert that there is an enormous difference between the two: while the House brief is professionally organized, the one from Team Trump is a rambling mess that reads like “the scream of a wounded animal.”

Potemkin trial anyone? Buckle your seat belts, kiddies, for a wild Senate trial the next few weeks, including Moscow Mitch trying to contain the damning revelations. And, if allowed at all (by vote), then only disclosed past midnight EST. Oh, and also if Bolton does wish to testify (and enough Repubs join the Dems to vote for it), no public hearings will be allowed because of "national security implications". Translation: the revelations may produce too much damage to Herr Trump. E.g.

Trump’s lawyers, Senate GOP allies work privately to ensure Bolton does not testify publicly

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