If you watched the coin toss at the Super Bowl, the Kansas City Chiefs won the toss. They chose to defer receiving the kickoff until the start of the second half. That is because it is usually better to be last, than first.
There is a reason the prosecution must present its’ case first; it is to give an advantage to the defense. For that reason, good prosecutors wait until they have all the evidence, and can confirm every item of evidence before they present their case. For example, if there is any evidence that could be interpreted as exculpatory the prosecution is likely to present it first. The biggest mistake in any court is to present something as evidence only to have it rebutted effectively by the defense. The second biggest mistake is to ignore exculpatory evidence. Both are big mistakes.
The presentation by the House Managers is impressive only to people who are easily impressed. Serious people instantly see the potential for a devastating rebuttal. One of the smartest people on Fox News is Shannon Bream. Behind that pretty face and engaging smile is a deadly legal mind. Shannon is the Chief Legal Analyst for Fox News for a reason. She instantly recognized that video is going to be the name of the game. Today I had Fox News on the radio as I drove to work. Fortunately, I heard Shannon Bream before turning the radio off as soon as Chris Wallace made an entrance. She warned that this video may come back to haunt Democrats. Wallace, of course, was too in love with the Democrats to notice.
It is really this simple. Democrats rushed this through, without the aid of skilled legal professionals. The House Presenters are a class of incompetent clowns. Good at generating lots of emotion, some of which could even be genuine, but incapable of putting on a solid presentation immune from rebuttal. They are making so many mistakes that the biggest challenge for the Trump attorneys is deciding what to attack first.
If I were to make a recommendation to the Trump team it would be this. Start by presenting the parts of the video Democrats left out. Some will assume that means the part where Trump said to walk peacefully and patriotically. But that is not what I mean at all. What I mean is the numerous specific examples that Trump gave regarding evidence of systemic fraud. I will quote him directly:
“In every single swing state, local officials, state officials, almost all Democrats made illegal and unconstitutional changes to election procedures without the mandated approvals by state legislatures, that these changes paved the way for fraud on a scale never seen before….So just in a nutshell, you can’t make a change on voting for a federal election unless the state legislature approves it. No judge can do it. Nobody can do it, only a legislature.
This was not written by Donald Trump. It was written by a skilled constitutional attorney and every word was chosen carefully. Democrats never even attempted to refute any of this.
“In Pennsylvania, the Democrat secretary of state and the Democrat state Supreme Court justices illegal abolished the signature verification requirements just 11 days prior to the election…There were over 205,000 more ballots counted in Pennsylvania. Now think of this. You had 205,000 more ballots than voters…Over 8,000 ballots in Pennsylvania were cast by people whose names and dates of birth match individuals who died in 2020 and prior to the election. Over 14,000 ballots were case by out of state voters…More than 10,000 votes in Pennsylvania were illegally counted, even though they were received after election day…The day before the election, the state of Pennsylvania reported the number of absentee ballots that had been sent out. Yet this number was suddenly and drastically increased by 400,000 people…Just that one element. 400,000 ballots appeared from nowhere right after the election.
I could go on and on, but you get the point. These statements were ignored by the House Impeachment Managers. All the defense needs to do is replay this part of Trump’s speech and point out that House managers did not refute ANY OF THIS.
Trump does not need to prove election fraud; it is more than enough that he made very specific credible allegations that Democrats did not even attempt to refute.
We can be certain that Trump’s attorneys will shred the video presentations made by the House Managers. This is actually very easy to do. The selection editing is off the wall. But there is more. For example, some of the video was shot by John Sullivan, who is connected with Antifa. The House managers either didn’t realize that or didn’t care. Eric Swalwell made graphic use of a tweet without realizing it had been photoshopped and was an obvious fake. Cicilline quoted Mike Lee, only to have Mike Lee angrily deny the conversation and demand it be stricken from the trial record. Even Schumer folded quickly on that, because he can’t afford to have Mike Lee testify as a witness. They jumbled up events, got them out of sequence and ignored the timeframe they considered so relevant. They also missed a lot of what was on those videos. For every video of so-called violent acts, there were hundreds if not thousands of people in the same location who clearly were not violent. Remember the CNN reporter standing in front of a police station on fire and explaining that the protests were mostly peaceful. Kind of like that.
I believe the Trump legal rebuttal will be focused and beyond brutal. Frankly, I think this will result in a major embarrassment for Democrats. Even people who desperately wanted to see Trump impeached and humiliated will be furious. Furious that this critical task was turned over to people so obviously incompetent.
Matthew 20:16. KJV “So the last shall be first and the first last.” The English revised version says: “So the last shall be first, and the first last.” This obviously was not written about the Trump impeachment trial, but it is still probably the best explanation for the predictable outcome.
TDM