Americans love court dramas.
On American television, this is an old and respectable genre that invariably gathers a large audience at the screens. Law and Order, Boston Lawyers, Los Angeles Law, dozens of other TV shows and films - a full list of legal dramas can take more than one page.
Many outstanding works of American literature are also somehow built around legal proceedings - just recall Harper Lee’s magnificent novel “To Kill a Mockingbird,” a good quarter of which is the description of the trial of the black-skinned woman accused of raping a white girl. You must admit that it is difficult to expect anything else from the nation, one of the main “secrets” of which is the traditional respect for the judicial system, rooted in medieval British history. The flip side of this respect is the dominance of lawyers in the everyday life of Americans, which amazes citizens of other countries — it is rarely a controversial issue that is resolved without the involvement of “your own lawyer”.
But most of all Americans love judicial dramas, not invented, but real. When in 1974 the House of Representatives initiated an impeachment procedure against Richard Nixon, 80% of all Americans who had television sets watched the unfolding events in Washington in prime time.
The “monikageyt”, during which many unsightly facts of Bill Clinton’s biography became public, the Americans watched with even greater interest (which is not surprising - all the bigots in the world are very susceptible to shaking someone else’s dirty laundry). It is safe to assume that the trial in the “case” of the 45th US President Donald Trump, which began in Washington, will permanently replace the citizens of the most powerful superpower in the world with watching their favorite police series and talk shows. One can only judge by the fact that when in November last year a public hearing on the impeachment procedure began in the committee of the House of Representatives of the United States of America (that is, by and large - a preparatory procedure, few people are interested outside Capitol Hill), they were watched by more than 13 million people all over the country. Moreover, the largest number of viewers was the favorite of the president of Fox News.
What can we say about this trial, which started in the US Senate on Tuesday, January 21! Here already a good half of the nation has stuck to the screens of TVs and monitors - both those who support the president and those who cannot stand him, considering it a fiend of hell.
The first day of the hearing did not present any special surprises. The Senate, the majority of which are Republicans, has blocked all Democrat attempts to impose its impeachment scenario on the upper house. The proposals of the leader of the democratic minority, Chuck Schumer, failed to request the documents relating to Trump’s contacts with Kiev with the White House, the State Department and the Office of Management and Budget. Republicans voted against these initiatives in a very disciplined and complete manner, so the hopes of the "donkeys" to get the four votes of "defectors" from the camp of the enemy have not yet been realized. With 53 votes to 47, the senators rejected Sumer’s demand to summon Mike Mulvaney, the head of the White House apparatus, for testimony to testify.
Resistance to the “frontmen” of the Democrats, violently running into the president, Schumer and Schiff, was organized by the leader of the Republican majority in the Senate, Mitch McConnell.
On his initiative, the Senate, with the same margin of 53 to 47, approved a resolution that would allow him to conduct an expedited process of considering charges against Trump. McConnell made small concessions to the Democrats, agreeing to give the elected House of Representatives prosecutors and a team of lawyers defending the president, 24 hours a day for three working days to provide their arguments.
Initially, he insisted even for two days, but faced opposition from the Republicans themselves: several senators, including Susan Collins and Rob Portman, said they could not agree to such a tight deadline. Senators can understand: even three days to consider the arguments of the parties mean that they will have to spend 16 hours a day in the courtroom, but you need to eat and sleep sometime. And still, according to the McConnell procedure, everything will happen twice as fast as it did during the impeachment of Clinton.
After the parties have laid out their arguments on the table, the procedure takes 16 hours for the prosecution and the defense to answer the questions of the senators. This process is limited only by the number of hours, and can last at least a week. Then a four-hour debate should take place, and this is perhaps the most important and interesting thing in the upcoming show. During the debate, senators should determine whether to call witnesses to the process and request any additional documents. If they decide that it is not necessary, the upper house will only have to vote on each of the two articles of the prosecution (Trump, I recall, is accused of abuse of power and obstructing the investigation of the congress).
The result of such a vote is not difficult to predict: to accuse the president, not a simple majority of votes is needed, but two thirds (67 people). This is unrealistic, and everyone understands this. Therefore, the main intrigue of the process initiated by the Democrats is whether they will succeed in convincing the vacillating Republicans to vote for calling witnesses after the debate. This, in principle, is possible - given that the Chief Justice of the Supreme Court, John Roberts, can also vote for calling witnesses, and with a general vote of 50 to 50, he will have a casting vote. Thus, Democrats need to be convinced to vote for calling witnesses of only three Republicans. In the “risk zone” are the already mentioned Susan Collins and Lisa Murkowski: in 2018, they already spoiled Trump's blood during the approval procedure of Supreme Court judge Brett Cavanaugh. The British Financial Times also names other names: Mitt Romney (former Obama rival in the 2012 election) and Corey Gardner.
And the witnesses that the Democrats want to call can tell Trump a lot of interesting things. One such witness is John Bolton, a former adviser to the president on national security, who has a big tooth on Trump.
Not only for dismissal without any special explanation (it is believed that Bolton lost the confidence of the White House owner, convincing that the power in Venezuela is about to transfer to Juan Guaido), but also because the blue dream of Super Bolt Bolton is the elimination of General Kasem Suleimani - was already after his resignation, Bolton. Bolton is a vindictive and vengeful man, and the Democrats are not without reason expecting him to post some killer dirt on the former boss at the hearing.
Trump himself is not particularly concerned about what is happening in the Senate. That is, of course, he pays attention to the events on Capitol Hill on his Twitter, but the impeachment attempts did not force the president to refuse to go to the economic forum in Davos, where Trump was telling world leaders about the economic boom in the United States as if nothing had happened, “ like the world has never seen before. ”
“We win as never before!” Trump claimed in Switzerland while his enemies Chuck Schumer and Adam Schiff were on a rage on the other side of the Atlantic, demanding to bring as many witnesses to the president’s “crimes” as possible and submit as many documents as possible proving his "guilt".
I recall that the main “crime” of Trump, the Democrats consider his call to Ukrainian President Vladimir Zelensky, during which the American leader allegedly “pressed” his Ukrainian counterpart, forcing him to launch an anti-corruption investigation against the Biden family - the most former US vice president Joe Biden and his Hunter’s son, who for five years after the coup in Kiev was a member of the board of directors of the gas company Burisma, receiving $ 50,000 a month simply “for his name”.
“Read the transcripts!” Trump succinctly wrote on his Twitter when a debate began on the subject in the Senate.
Indeed, the transcripts of his conversation with Zelensky are available to everyone. There is no secret here - in contrast to the name of the “informant”, who leaked to the Democrats data on negotiations between the owner of the White House and the Ukrainian president, which, in fact, began the current story of impeachment.
It is assumed that the informant is a CIA staff officer appointed to the White House, that is, a typical representative of that very deep state, which had long (and to no avail) fought Trump in the old days of the “Russian saga” of special prosecutor Mueller. However, the interest of journalists is not only the identity of the conspiratorial Tsereushnik, but also his contacts with the Democratic Party and personally with Biden Sr., who, as you know, is so far the main rival of Trump in the upcoming presidential election.
In this sense, Democrats' demands to call as many witnesses as possible to the Senate may play a trick on them.
Whether Schiff, Schumer and other opponents of the president want it or not, the president’s lawyers will beat the most vulnerable spot of the accusation they have built - the identity of the mysterious informant and his relationship with the Biden family.
So it’s still unclear for whom the trial in Washington is a great danger - for the “Teflon” President Trump or for the “respectable” Joe Biden, whose dubious fraud in Ukraine as a result of interrogation of witnesses in the US Senate may become known to the whole nation. And then goodbye hopes for the White House. What is there at the White House! And in this case, Biden is unlikely to be able to count on a victory in the primaries. This means that the socialist Bernie Sanders, the idol of radically-minded youth, is guaranteed to break free. But in a fight with Donald Trump, Sanders has even less chances than Biden’s "grandfather": he is too left for the respectable "silent majority" of American voters.
So for Democrats everywhere you go, a wedge is everywhere. The so-called impeachment works for the current president of the United States. It would be useful to recall that Clinton’s popularity, despite all the dirty linen that was brought to light during the “monikageyta”, also grew after impeachment. By the time Clinton was found innocent of the crimes he was charged with after a five-week Senate trial, his approval rating was higher than after his first election as president.
Almost certainly the same awaits Donald Trump. These are the laws of the show!
The author’s point of view may not coincide with the position of the publisher.