“It wasn’t a real trial so it’s illegitimate and Trump is still guilty”…
…is one of the more bizarre of the Democrats’ criticisms of the goings-on in the Senate, if you go by the laws of logic. Impeachment trials use the word “trial” as a sort of shorthand for some sort of legal proceeding, but it is not one that is constrained by all the procedural paraphernalia of an ordinary trial – including the rules of evidence.
The Democrats believe they can pretend otherwise. The reason is quite simple: they want to say it doesn’t count and Trump is still guilty, as “proven” in their own investigation and witness-questioning that followed none, and I mean none, of the protective rules involved in a trial. They want to pick and choose what parts of a trial they require Republicans to follow in the Senate, and what parts Democrats can ignore in the House (and the Senate, too, if the Democrats ever got a chance to interrogate witnesses there, too).
This serves to set up the Democrats’ continual, perpetual bleat of “he’s guilty forever, he will never be unimpeached” – although in accomplishing this supposed feat the Democrats violated the due process they insist that Republicans must follow in the Senate “trial” portion of the proceedings.
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