Donald Fredovich and his Senate apparatchiks are overplaying a weak hand

Defendants don't get to tell grand juries their side of the story during the indictment process, and targets for possible impeachment don't get to tell their side of the story to the House or its committees. That's just not the way the process works. The reason is the same in both cases: the proceeding in question is not to establish innocence or guilt, but merely to consider whether there's enough evidence to go to the trouble of trying.

I don't think President Trump knows any better than to whine about not having been given an opportunity no other subject of impeachment proceedings has ever been given, but enough lawyers are surrounding him and in the Republican caucuses in Congress who do that it's a bit disturbing to hear them taking up an argument that is transparent legal and historical hogwash- especially since Mr. Trump refused to allow members of his administration, who presumably might have had something to say in his defense, to testify!

That in itself would have been suspicious. Suspicious as in becoming the first president or presidential candidate in recent history to refuse to make one's income tax returns public on the totally bogus ground- refuted both by the IRS and by historical precedent- that being under audit somehow prevents that.

Now, it seems, the Republican majority in the Senate- many of whom have already promised to perjure themselves when they take the oath to consider the evidence and do impartial justice in the impeachment trial- apparently wants to have a quick sham trial with few or no witnesses and ramrod through a quick acquittal in a transparently bogus trial. Donald Trump has been so transparently inept, dishonest, and flat-out unhinged that it's hard for people who don't have their head in the sand to miss the point. But then, a great many if not most Trump supporters do have their heads in the sand. I make no judgment about whether they are consciously lying to themselves or merely believing what they want to believe, but either way, it's hard not to reach the conclusion that they have made up their minds and simply refuse to be confused by facts.

Sort of like what Donald Fredovich does. Sort of like what the Senate is getting ready to do.

It's just one more case of Mr. Trump and his supporters playing the American people for fools. And one more case in which the real question is whether or not we are. The 2020 presidential election will, in essence, be a referendum on that question.

The Republicans think that we are. In fact, they seem to expect the sham acquittal of Mr. Trump in an obviously rigged trial to be perceived by the American people as a victory and even to enhance the chances of his being re-elected and the GOP retaining the Senate and perhaps retaking the House.

If we do perceive it that way and those things do happen, we, the people, are idiots- just like the president and his supporters apparently assume that we are.

But I don't think that's the way it's going to play out.  Mr. Trump and the Republican leadership have been lulled by a pattern of the people giving them the benefit of doubts which simply aren't there. But I don't think a trial which stifles the case for conviction is going to go over with the American people the way they think it will.

Of course, the president will be acquitted in a partisan vote which will obviously be a partisan vote. But the worst possible outcome short of conviction for the guy whose supporters are already staging Soviet-style primaries in which he is the only candidate allowed to run would be for the coming impeachment trial to be so obviously rigged that there is no chance for the evidence to be duly presented.

If they pull that off, as it appears that they intend to, the American people are not going to take it in quite the way they think. And if we let the Party Formerly of Lincoln get away with it, we are every bit the idiots they think we are.