The opening of Donald Trump’s impeachment trial sparked viral interest in the comedy “My Cousin Vinny”. In the 1992 film, actor Joe Pesci sees a New York rascal who has just obtained a license to plead and is called upon to defend a young cousin accused in Alabama, with a friend, of a crime he does not did not commit.
The lawyer cousin is inexperienced, rude, and the film’s funniest moments take place in court, where Vinny tests the judge’s patience with his ignorance. In the seaside resort of Mar-a-Lago in Florida, where he bitterly exiled himself from social media playing golf and plotting revenge, Donald Trump screamed on television when he realized his defense seemed to want to defeat the character played by Joe Pesci.
The former president’s allies, used to revealing all the amateurism that dominated the White House until January, were perplexed. The first lawyer to speak, Bruce Castor, quickly got his place as a joke on late night talk shows, in an inconsistent monologue in which he said: “We changed what we were going to say because that the Democrats’ presentation was well done. “
In fact, the argument put forward by Democrats, reliving the terror of the invasion of the Capitol on January 6, in speeches and video montages, spoke for itself. But Bruce Castor’s performance only confirms the fact that Trump has been radioactive as a client since the first arraignment. In addition to being a notorious crook, the ex-president, after January 6, is a kiss of death for the reputation of law firms.
The contrast of arguments for and against impeachment in Tuesday’s sitting (9) changed the vote of a single Republican senator, Bill Cassidy of Louisiana, who joined five party colleagues to vote in favor of the constitutionality of the impeachment trial of a former president. Veteran Senate observers find it impossible to garner 17 Republican votes to condemn Trump, acquitted on the first indictment.
The expected absolution does not reflect the lack of indignation of the men and women who feared for their lives as the maddened crowd pounded on their office doors. This only reflects the ethical abdication that dominates a party still hostage to the extremism instigated by Trump.
A poll by the New York Times in 19 of the 50 US states shows that 140,000 Republican voters have canceled their party membership since the Capitol invasion.
Defense incompetence in the Senate is the least of the former president’s problems. Georgia prosecutors have announced a criminal investigation into Trump’s efforts to defraud the state’s presidential election results. Important, but not the only one, to investigate is the infamous phone call in which Trump sent Georgian Chief Electoral Officer Brad Raffensperger to “find” the number of votes necessary to defeat Joe Biden.
New York state is still the epicenter of the former Trump Tower resident in Manhattan’s legal troubles. Trump is facing civil and criminal lawsuits here that may not lead to jail time, but frightening financial penalties for a businessman rejected by the banks and with over a billion dollars (5 billion of dollars) of debt maturing in the next three years.
New revelations about the weeks between the election and the inauguration of Joe Biden, leave little doubt that Trump tried to make a coup possible. There is no financial penalty imposed by US courts to remedy this crime.
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