Day 1151 The Hearing and Lessons Learned about the Law
Friday November 22, 2019
348 Days until the 2020 election and 433 days until the Inauguration
Then there’s the Republican repeating over and over again that Trump said, “No quid pro quo.”
Therefore, there must not be one? It’s the guilty man defense. (“I didn’t do it!” Okay, then explain the smoking gun in your hand.)
The thing that makes this so bad is they have a photo of Trump’s talking points. It looks like it was written by a grade school kid. “No quid pro quo” “No quid pro quo” “I want nothing” etc.
What is this The Colonel Klink defense? (For those of you too young to remember. There was a TV show “Hogan’s Heroes,” about American POWs during WWII. The lead guard was Colonel Klink. The famous saying of Klink, whenever Hogan asked him a question was “I know nuzing!”
Let’s review a few of the legal things the likes of Jordan and Nunes bring up:
“Have you ever heard of a courtroom where the accused doesn’t get to face his accuser?
That the accuser can’t have his or her lawyer present?” etc.
Well to answer that, “Yes” and “No.”
In other countries that is true. Not in America.
However these spiffy Republican lawyers keep conveniently forgetting this isn’t a trial. This is an investigation. Have they ever heard of an investigation where the target of the investigation is invited in to see what they’re investigating? To give the target the names of people bearing witness?
Then there’s the “In all these depositions the word ‘bribery’ comes up only once.”
Yeah, Bunky, right on. Why is that? Oh, it’s an investigation? In an investigation you ask for facts. Like “Did you see Mr. Smith pull out a gun and shoot Mr. Jones?” or “Did you see Mr. Ace give an envelope of cash to Mr. Beta and ask for a favor?”
Not “Did Mr. Smith commit murder?” (Objection: “You are asking the witness to draw a conclusion.”)
Likewise not,
“Was Mr. Ace committing bribery?” (that’s for the prosecutor to charge and the judge or jury to decide, not the person giving testimony to the facts of what they heard and saw.
Then there’s the “Oh it’s only circumstantial evidence.” argument. Chuck Rosenberg gave beautiful example. It’s one he says it used all the time in court to explain that circumstantial evidence is often as good as direct evidence. Here goes:
“Say you wake up in the morning and you see snow on the ground, in your yard, in the neighbor’s yard, over the whole neighborhood. You conclude that it snowed last night. That’s circumstantial evidence. If you had stood outside all night and watched the snow come down then you’d have direct evidence. In a court of law you are asked to use common sense and logic. In the case of ‘It snowed last night’ circumstantial evidence is as good as direct evidence.”
Let’s go to the argument “It’s only hearsay.” This is interesting. First off, remember the Intelligence Committee is conducting an investigation, not a court room trial. Also, they are doing this because the Justice Department did not – would not – do the investigation.
I had to look this up. You can too. Hearsay in a court of law is not allowed unless there is an exception.
Hearsay evidence is defined as “an out-of-court statement offered to prove” the point being made in court.
So if Tim is on the witness stand and said, “Sally told me that Ben shot Fred.” and was being used to establish the fact that Ben shot Fred it would be inadmissible as hearsay evidence; unless Sally was able to come to court to say so as well.
However, if what you are doing is to ask, “What did you hear?” or “What were you told by Sally?” Then I think the statement is allowed. Not as whether or not Ben, in fact, shot Fred; but rather that this is what Tim heard Sally say.
As far as I can remember all the claims of hearsay evidence raised by the Republicans were the latter case.
Then we get to the lies:
“The debunked Steele Dossier” – No, it wasn’t. In fact, the main points have been corroborated.
“Mueller found nothing” – Yes, he did. He found ten instances where Donald Trump met all three conditions of Obstruction of Justice. His investigation has lead to numerous people going to jail.
Then we get to the conspiracies theories:
“The Ukrainians did it” – No, they didn’t that’s a Russian intelligence talking point of disinformation.
“The Crowd Strike Serve is in Ukraine” – No, it isn’t. That’s a Russian intelligence talking point of disinformation and a cockamamy idea was cooked up by the far right.
Then there are the gaslighting lies (a special category imho):
– If you haven’t seen Nunes closing remarks on Wednesday, it is well worth finding because it’s a classic case of gaslighting. And Schiff’s response, is outstanding.
– Gaslighting refers to the idea of telling a person (the victim) that what they are seeing, hearing, or experiencing is in fact not the case, but something else. It is a form of psychological manipulation and uses persistent denial, misdirection, contradiction and lying. The term comes from a 1930s play called Gaslight and a movie by the same name where a husband tries to convince her wife that she is imagining the gaslights in their apartment going dim when he goes upstairs to the woman’s apartment he murdered searching for her jewels. When he turns up her gaslights their apartment below gaslights dim. He tries to convince his wife she’s imagining it.
Gaslighting and The Guilty Man Defense (“I didn’t do it.”) seem to go hand in hand with this crew.
– “The president said ‘no quid pro quo.” Well, isn’t that swell? Tim Allen said that you’d be amazed how many people in prison are there mistakenly.
Lastly, Chuck Rosenberg gave another wonderful explanation of why peoples’ testimonies often change during the course of a trial. He said that as a trial moves along a person who on a scale of 0 to 10 in truthfulness may have started out at a 5 or 6 (10 being completely truthful) sees the evidence mounting may decide to move more towards the truth.
Take the case of Gordon Sondland. In his behind closed door testimony he was towing the Trump line (no quid pro quo) but when he got to the public testimony decided to come clean. At least, a lot cleaner than he had before. People who know his lawyer said that the legal advise he no doubt got was. “This may be your last chance to avoid jail time if you lie.” And did he really want to go to jail for Trump? He’s independently wealthy. He doesn’t need a gig on Fox News. And who in their right mind would want to lie for Trump with the hope of being pardoned? (Roger Stone, I guess.) So, all of a sudden old Gordo’s memory is “refreshed”.
I only have one other point, maybe three. But I’m sick. I took a break and now I’ve forgotten all of them.
Carry on.
348 Days until the 2020 election and 433 days until the Inauguration
PS In the Tombs
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