Dem. Senator Leahy to Preside Over Trump Impeachment Trial Rather Than Chief Justice Roberts
Well, at least we know where the judge stands.
If the pending impeachment trial of former President Donald Trump was going to be viewed as anything but a partisan attack on a political enemy, the chance went out the window Monday with the announcement that one of Trump’s most vocal critics in the upper chamber is going to be the man running Trump’s show trial.
And Vermont Sen. Patrick Leahy of Vermont has already shown his cards.
According to Fox News, Leahy, the Senate’s senior Democratic member, who has served since 1975, will preside over Trump’s trial because the Constitution only requires the chief justice of the Supreme Court in cases of presidential impeachment.
Since Trump is no longer the president, the duty will fall to a man who is not only from the same state that keeps electing a nutcase like socialist Sen. Bernie Sanders, but is a rabid anti-Trumper to boot.
Trump has been accused in a single article of impeachment, by a Democratic-run House of Representatives, of “incitement of insurrection” related to the Jan. 6 incursion in the Capitol by a mob of Trump supporters.
It matters little to those who believe Trump to be the worst traitor to the nation since Benedict Arnold tried to sell the plans for West Point that the then-president specifically urged his followers to protest “peacefully and patriotically.”
What will matter to Trump supporters, however — and any reasonable American, for that matter — is that the man who is going to preside over his trial has already pronounced the now-former president guilty as sin.
In a statement posted to Twitter Jan. 7 describing the disturbance that left a Trump supporter shot to death and a Capitol Police officer dead of still unexplained causes, Leahy wrote:
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“It will be remembered because the President of the United States encouraged his supporters to commit these felonies — to march to the Capitol, to ‘show strength’ and ‘to fight.’”
(Leahy, after a lifetime in politics, has apparently never heard the words “strength” and “fight” in anything but the context of violent confrontation.)
Those aren’t the only words the worthy gentleman from Vermont has had to say about Trump.
On Jan. 12, there was this one:
Nixon committed crimes nowhere near as serious as those by President Trump, and yet Nixon knew he had to resign. Trump’s crimes trying to overturn our elections and openly instigating a riot causing deaths warrant his immediate resignation or removal. https://t.co/R0KPH6px7C
— Sen. Patrick Leahy (@SenatorLeahy) January 12, 2021
“Nixon committed crimes nowhere near as serious as those by President Trump, and yet Nixon knew he had to resign,” Leahy wrote. “Trump’s crimes trying to overturn our elections and openly instigating a riot causing deaths warrant his immediate resignation or removal.”
The next day, there was this:
We must act together now not just to hold President Trump accountable, but to ensure that no future president, no matter their party, places at risk our democracy in service of their own selfish, illegal, and authoritarian ambitions.
— Sen. Patrick Leahy (@SenatorLeahy) January 13, 2021
“We must act together now not just to hold President Trump accountable, but to ensure that no future president, no matter their party, places at risk our democracy in service of their own selfish, illegal, and authoritarian ambitions.”
Not to worry, though. In a Twitter post on Monday, Leahy assured the country he takes his responsibility to be impartial “extraordinarily seriously.”
When presiding over an impeachment trial, the president pro tempore takes a special oath to do impartial justice according to the Constitution & the laws. It is an oath that I take extraordinarily seriously. My comment here on presiding over Pres. Trump’s impeachment trial: pic.twitter.com/Y93RedVb8w
— Sen. Patrick Leahy (@SenatorLeahy) January 25, 2021
It’s a good thing he does since it’s a solid bet that most of the country — and most of the world — isn’t going to.
This isn’t the stuff of American democracy and traditions of due process. This is banana republic stuff, the kind of show trials Stalin used to stage.
But Americans, 75 million of whom cast their vote in good faith for a man Democrats are trying to erase from public life, are expected to believe that an impeachment trial feature a presiding judge like Patrick Leahy is going to be anything but a laughably obvious exercise in raw power?
According to The New York Times (a publication that’s no friend of Trump), Leahy could have a key role in how the case develops and even — despite his presiding role — could even cast a vote on the verdict.
“The role was largely ceremonial in the first impeachment trial of Mr. Trump a year ago,” The Times reported. “But as the presiding officer, Mr. Leahy could issue rulings on key questions around the admissibility of evidence and whether a trial of a former president is even allowed under the Constitution. (Mr. Leahy is also still expected to have a vote in the trial, like other senators.)”
Well, that vote won’t be any surprise. As JustTheNews noted, Leahy voted to convict Trump during his first impeachment trial, which was just as ginned up as this one.
Americans know where the judge stands in the Trump impeachment trial. There are going to be elections to come in this country, despite Democrats’ best attempts to destroy them now.
Every Trump voter from the 2020 election, and every American voter who cares about the future of the greatest country on earth, is going to have to remember this.
It’s a farce that cannot stand.
This article appeared originally on The Western Journal.
