The GOP Senators voted against allowing witnesses and new evidence at Trump’s impeachment trial because, their leader McConnell said, they have seen and heard enough evidence, which was collected during the House investigation.
The problem is that much of the evidence and testimony that the House could have collected was blocked by Trump and his lawyers.
Trump was clear about this when he said “Honestly, we have all the material. They don’t have the material,” at the Davis conference recently.
Because of this, the House investigators could only collect what they could — which was pretty damning. But the GOP Senators and Trump attorneys worked very hard to double-talk and ignore and creatively devise (invent) false explanations for the most damming evidence collected by the House.
One of the most ridiculous was put forth by Trump defense attorney Alan Dershowitz, as described by Susan Glasser in The New Yorker: “For more than a week, House managers prosecuting the impeachment case against Trump have argued that the Senate’s failure to convict him would make Trump an unaccountable leader; in effect, a dictator or a king. When Dershowitz spoke, it was if he completely agreed with them. Two days earlier, Dershowitz had told senators that Presidential ‘abuse of power’ should not be considered an impeachable offense under the Constitution. On Wednesday, he took that further—much further. ‘If a President does something which he believes will help him get elected in the public interest, that cannot be the kind of quid pro quo that results in impeachment,’ he argued. Dershowitz was offering Trump—and all future Presidents—a free pass. His argument seemed unbelievable: as long as the President thinks his reëlection will benefit the country, he can do anything in pursuit of it without fear of impeachment.”
This means that if the GOP Senators opened the door to more evidence and witness testimony, they might come into contact with such powerful evidence that they couldn’t double-talk their way around it or explain it away — something they have done throughout the entire impeachment proceeding.
This would mean that they might have to find Trump guilty instead of acquitting him.
Any option other than acquittal is not acceptable to their dictator, Trump.
Therefore, they have to end this proceeding as quickly as possible, and not risk seeing and hearing new evidence, evidence that they could not ignore without being impeached and removed themselves.
Hmmm. Impeachment of Senators based on gross incompetence, conspiracy with the accused in a presidential impeachment proceeding, and performing their jobs in bad faith and with corrupt intent. Maybe that’s an idea worth looking into.