By Hugh Hewitt
President Trump embraces
Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell (R-Ky.) at a campaign rally in
Lexington, Ky., Monday. (Susan Walsh/AP) (Susan Walsh/AP)
There are three paths before
Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell (R-Ky.) when it comes to any articles of
impeachment the House of Representatives eventually sends the Senate’s way. One
is short: a quick dismissal by the Senate of the House charges. One is long: an
extensive trial that would let the president and his defenders expose wrongdoing
by Democrats and their ”permanent bureaucracy” allies. The third — the only
approach that is obviously wrong but that may also be the most likely outcome —
would be a far more limited trial that would serve only to reward Democrats for
their bad behavior before reaching the foreordained conclusion that the
president will not be removed from office.
“How long it goes on really
just depends on how long the Senate wants to spend on it,” McConnell told
reporters when asked about the Senate trial procedures Tuesday. “I will say I’m
pretty sure how it’s likely to end. If it were today, I don’t think there’s any
question it would not lead to a removal,” he said. “So the question is how long
the Senate wants to take. How long do the presidential candidates want to be
here on the floor of the Senate instead of Iowa and New Hampshire?”
Those questions greatly
benefit from being reframed: What’s in the best interest of the Constitution,
the Senate and President Trump? Looked at this way, the arguments for the first
or second approaches become clear, along with the risks of the third.
A long, drawn-out deep dive
into what the president has long inveighed against as a rigged system would
improve the president’s reelection chances. That would include a look at the
activities in Ukraine of Hunter Biden and sweep in findings from U.S. Attorney
John Durham’s probe into 2016 election-related controversies. Taking no
prisoners and insisting on an accused right’s to put on a full defense, Trump,
with the consent of McConnell and the GOP majority, could force proceedings
that will turn the tables on his partisan accusers and rebut the idiocy,
introduced by the Steele dossier, that he is some kind of “Russian asset.”
There’s a lot of appeal to
such a deep dive, and I have advocated it myself. But I am also torn about how
to proceed, because there is a substantial cost, which is the legitimization of
Rep. Adam B. Schiff’s (D-Calif.) process, already irretrievably compromised by
alleged ex parte contacts with the “whistleblower,” secret hearings, and
circumscribed rights for the minority and the president. The assault on due
process, accelerated by leaks and inflamed by deep wells of hatred for the
president in much of the media, is too far advanced to correct.
But it could be rebuked, and
to do so, McConnell need only take a page from the playbook of . . . Mitch
McConnell.
When Supreme Court Justice
Antonin Scalia died on Feb. 13, 2016, it took McConnell about an hour to
declare that the Senate would not consider a replacement nominee until after
the November presidential election. This bold move on behalf of the
Constitution will always be McConnell’s crowning achievement as leader: He let
the people decide the direction of the court. The vacancy proved to be a key
motivator in Trump’s stunning upset.
Americans who supported
McConnell can be counted on to back him now if Senate Republicans decide that
bogus articles of impeachment do not merit the Senate’s sustained attention.
Peremptory dismissal — think of it as a motion for summary judgment — would
serve future presidents of both parties even if it would deny Trump the
high-profile political theater he delights in and almost invariably has
succeeded in dominating since he came down the escalator. I’d love to see a
competent defense team unravel Russiagate or Spygate or whatever you call the
last three years of guerrilla political war waged by “the Resistance.”
But the price of defining
“high crimes and misdemeanors” down is steep. “That which gets rewarded gets
repeated” is far more than a cliche, it’s an iron law of politics. If House
Democrats succeed — in their own eyes and the eyes of their base — in getting
the Senate to infuse their Star Chamber proceedings with respectability, then
future House majorities have a road map for their own vendettas (and
fundraising machines). If McConnell embraces “the Reid Rule” again — the Senate
majority makes the Senate’s rules and can change them whenever it cares to,
named for the senator who first used it (to pack the U.S. Court of Appeals for
the D.C. Circuit in 2013) — he can guide the Constitution to a safe if not soft
landing. Again.
If he does so, McConnell
will be assailed by Democrats and their Manhattan-Beltway media elite annex.
Again. But the leader will have done the Constitution a great service. Again.
The one path he cannot allow
the Senate to follow is to hold a trial in which the House sends over its
prosecutors to blather about the president’s telephone call and quid pro quos
for a few weeks, after which the Senate, entirely predictably, falls far short
of the two-thirds vote needed to convict and remove. That way is all pain and
no gain, except for endorsing the precedent of sham show trials. Not at all,
Mr. Leader, or all the way please.
Hugh
Hewitt, a Post contributing columnist, hosts a nationally syndicated radio show
on the Salem Network. The author of 14 books about politics, history and faith,
he is also a political analyst for NBC, a professor of law at Chapman
University Law School and president of the Nixon Foundation.
