Teresa Hanafin writes the “Fast Forward” feature for the Boston Globe:
It’s been a little difficult to keep up with the Republicans’ changing defenses of Trump:
He did not pressure Ukraine to find dirt on the Bidens.
Okay, so he did, but there was no quid pro quo.
Okay, so there was a quid pro quo, but that’s not why he held up the military aid.
Okay, so that was the reason he held up the aid, but it was because he worried about overall corruption in Ukraine.
Okay, so we can’t find any examples of when he cared about corruption, but but but …
I was ready to give up, and then celebrity defense lawyer Alan Dershowitz got up at Trump’s impeachment trial and you know, the guy never disappoints. He gave a breathtaking defense of Trump’s efforts to coerce a foreign government to smear his top political opponent, telling the senators that if the president believes that his reelection is in the national interest, then he can do anything he wants to fix the election. His words:
If the 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.
I seem to remember a previous president saying, “When the president does it, that means that it is not illegal.”
Several observers have said that they wish the Democrats would ask a logical question: Why would a US president ask a foreign government to investigate a US citizen, subjecting that citizen to a foreign court, especially if he believes that country is one of the most corrupt in the world?
As former FBI special agent Asha Rangappa has written, “Having a U.S. citizen investigated by a foreign country is not ‘foreign policy.’ It is actually against our normal practice, which is *not* to subject our citizens to foreign courts, where we don’t know that they observe our rights and due process guarantees.
“We need to stop this ‘foreign policy’ nonsense. There is no *U.S. national interest* in an individual citizen being prosecuted abroad — especially when those interests are expressed in laws passed by Congress and can be prosecuted here.”
In other words, when Trump suddenly felt the impulse to look into the Bidens and Ukraine — not at any time in 2017, and not at any time in 2018, but only when Joe Biden started running for president — why didn’t he ask our Justice Department or the State Department to investigate?
A question from GOP Senators Susan Collins of Maine and Lisa Murkowski of Alaska highlighted Trump’s dubious timeline: Did Trump ever previously mention the Bidens and corruption to former Ukrainian presidents, or other Ukrainian officials, or to any of his Cabinet members, or to any of his aides, or, in fact, to anybody?
And Mitt Romney of Utah asked for the specific date when Trump ordered the hold on military aid and his rationale. Trump’s lawyers dodged both questions, essentially refusing to answer.
There’s another very disturbing thing going on: Senator Rand Paulof Kentucky wants to publicly reveal the name of the person he and other Republicans think is the whistleblower by asking questions that contain her/his name. Chief Justice John Roberts has warned the Republicans to stop, but Paul says he’s going to keep trying because intimidation and threats is SOP in Trump’s GOP. Let’s be clear: The person assumed to be the whistleblower has received death threats. Death threats.
Let’s see what happens when questioning resumes at 1 p.m. today. Tomorrow, it looks like Mitch McConnell and the Republicans will refuse to gather more information and vote to acquit Trump.
Diane Ravitch's blog 
Getting DEATH THREATS … very disturbing … fascists thugs.
I hope Moscow Mitch gets his.
Obscene.
“Hegel remarks somewhere that all great world-historic facts and personages appear, so to speak, twice. He forgot to add: the first time as tragedy, the second time as farce.” –Karl Marx, “The Eighteenth Brumaire of Louis Napoleon”
TRAGEDY: “Well, when the president does it, that means that it is not illegal.” –Richard “I Am Not a Crook” Nixon, in an interview with David Frost
FARCE: “I have an Article 2 where I have the right to do whatever I want as president.” –Jabba “I Could Stand in the Middle of Fifth Avenue and Shoot Somebody” the Trump (in his usual mangled English and with his typical utter lack of understanding of the Constitution or of anything else), in a speech to Turning Point USA
Well, Nixon was right. Was he punished for what he did?
He was forced from office.
Nixon got similar “punishment” to CEOs who screw up: they are allowed to resign, and take their $100+ million severance pay. Nixon lived happily after, gave expensive speeches all over the country, was invited to all gatherings of living US presidents, and didn’t have to work for the rest of life.
A public memorial service was held on April 27, attended by world dignitaries from 85 countries and all five living Presidents of the United States, the first time that five U.S. presidents attended the funeral of another president.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Death_and_state_funeral_of_Richard_Nixon
Let’s face it, presidents are treated like royalties even after they fall from grace, and apparently no laws exist to mandate a different treatment.
YUP. I’ve read that Nixon secretly flew to Iran and negotiated the illegal arms for hostages deal. The delay in the release of those hostages was, ofc, a key factor in the election of Ronald Reagan. A nasty little political afterlife, that.
And now Lamar Alexander ends his DC days by throwing in with the Fascists.
The Nixon Defense, all over again.
Regarding those death threats:
Carol Perez, Director General of the Foreign Service, called our Ambassador to Ukraine, Marie Yavonovitch, and told her that she was in immediate physical danger and should get on the next plane home. This was discussed during Ambassador Yavonovitch’s testimony at the House impeachment hearings.
And then there is this, from The Guardian:
A woman who had accused Donald Trump of raping her when she was a 13-year-old dropped her lawsuit against the Republican nominee on Friday.
One of the accuser’s attorneys, Thomas Meagher, filed a one-page voluntary dismissal in district court in New York late on Friday. . . .
The woman, who had filed suit earlier this year under the pseudonym Jane Doe, had alleged that Trump and billionaire Jeffrey Epstein had raped her in 1994, when she was a 13-year-old aspiring model.
This week she abruptly canceled a plan to speak publicly about the allegations, and another attorney, Lisa Bloom, cited “numerous threats” against her client.
“She has been here all day, ready to do it, but unfortunately she is in terrible fear,” Bloom said.
The Don, Cheeto “”Littlefingers” Trumpbalone, once a thug, always a thug, the Teflon Don 2.0, with his boys from the current version of the Ravenite Social Club, the Republican Senate
“If the 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.”
Is this supposed to make sense? What does the “in the public interest” part is doing in this statement? Is it implied by what preceeds it or is it supposed to clarify why there cannot be an impeachable quid pro quo?
Máté Wierdl : It means that all presidents, from Trump onward, can do absolutely anything that is required to get elected. See, the ‘honesty’ in this thinking?
………………………………………
“It cannot be a corrupt motive if you have a mixed-motive that partially involves the national interest,” Dershowitz added. “And does not involve personal pecuniary interest.”
To make his case, Dershowitz pointed to Abraham Lincoln telling General William Sherman “to let the troops go to Indiana so that they can vote for the Republican Party” in the 1864 election.
“Let’s assume the president was running at that point and it was in his electoral interest to have these soldiers put at risk the lives of many, many other soldiers who would be left without their company, would that be an unlawful quid pro quo?” Dershowitz pondered. “No, because the president, A: believed it was in the national interest, but B: he believed that his own election was essential to victory in the Civil War.”
We need to change the disclosure rules for anyone seeking the presidency. We can no longer assume these politicians are honorable people.
Nah, the fundamental mistake for our laws to assume that presidential candidates are decent people. There should be no assumption of the sort.