This is only an opinion.
There is not enough hard evidence available for me to say without equivocation that Lindsey Graham is a craven, much less a shameless one.
But there is enough circumstantial evidence to cause one to pause and reflect that this might be the case, and then step back to assess what the impeachment path might look like with Lindsey Graham having any power in a Senate trial other than his single solitary vote.
My Plea for History versus a swift, pain-free acquittal.
There has been several hours of testimony both on national television and in secret, presented entirely by select Democrat toadies, accusing President Trump of at least a dozen impeachable offenses (by their reckonings), only none with any evidence to back them up. Just speculations and opinions. Real yawners.
After all those hours the House Democrats have settled on only two very flimsy charges, one for “abuse of power” and the other for “obstruction of Congress”, which will serve as the basis for the House Managers (prosecutors) to build a case, along with their evidence, e.g, live testimony, to present to the Senate at trial. All this after a head-count vote has been passed to impeach.
Call me cynical but neither of these charges relate to the alleged strong-arming of Ukraine’s new president for a quid pro quo, or bribery, negating most of those riveting hours of testimony by career State Department officials such as the poised and semi-graceful Marie Yovanovich, who was Obama’s Ambassador to Ukraine.
Ms Yovanovitch might be a key witness in the Democrats’ case against President Trump under Charge One. But her testimony would also be a key part of Trump’s defense in that he’s had Rudy Giuliani in Ukraine interrogating and video-taping testimony from several Ukrainian officials, including the former State Prosecutor she demanded be fired on behalf of President Obama and Vice-President Biden. They convincingly contradict her testimony as lies. (She was under oath.), and at this trial will be provided visas by our State Department to enter the country.
Considering the number of American, even worldwide audiences, who will watch these proceedings to the paltry rating the impeachment inquiry hearings received, the visual impact of those testimonies will be great.
Moreover, Donald Trump wants to make his own statement at the trial. Call it an opening statement. He knows that the hour or so that he will use to give his address will be better watched, by more millions of Americans than watched all the House hearings combined. It will be the television event of the year.
This alone will put the Democrats’ election plea to the voters in the coming months at a disadvantage.
Trump has a personal interest in this outcome, but do the interest of justice, and of fairness and honor.
History would agree.
Although many Republicans, more than a few conservative journalists, and certainly all the Democrats would prefer an as-brief-as-possible Senate trial, notwithstanding the likely acquittal for President Trump.
Republicans by nature are a lazy-minded race, and will object to spending hours, even weeks, listening to arguments about which they already know the outcome. (This can be risky. since this also what the Democrats want, only for to other purposes. They always seem to be on two different planes.)
But the Democrats are in much more pickle juice, for by impeaching Donald Trump even on a party-line vote, this is all they will have to take into the 2020 election campaign; that even a dog’s hind leg would be more preferable to voters than an “impeached president”, especially considering their entire list of candidates are exactly that, dogs’ hind legs.
But even pulling this off requires that Dems be able to avoid the enormous amounts of negative evidence arising out of an evidence-based Senate trial. Like any trial the Senate trial is “official at Law”. It is dispositive. It’s final. Bone fide…unlike the crap tossed out to the media in the inquiry phase.
If Dems can encourage the lazy Republicans to dismiss the case before an evidentiary trial, it leaves the issue of the contending packages of evidence where they began, on an equal footing, much like “He said, She said.” And we’ve all seen what the Left has done with that phrase over the past few years, along with the death of the notion, “innocent until proven guilty”.
An evidentiary trial would be harmful for the Democrats. They know they are very short on evidence while Donald Trump will be very long on it.
The Contest for History
The trial that will follow will launch the waiting-in-the-wings historians, already hired by NYT and WAPO to write their spin on these events, with guaranteed best sellers and a Pulitzer Prize. Theirs will be the “official histories” of this period, although it may take a decade or more for them to take their rightful place in the annals of American History. There will also be ancillary popular histories and memoirs, turning some witnesses in the impeachment into folk heroes, at least in that corner of the world where people actually know their names; “Stanford and Me” by Professor Pamela Karlan, or “To be Amerikanski” by Lieutenant Colonel, (Ret), Alexander Vindman.
Alas, the fair Marie Voyanovich may be denied her best seller, for she stumbled into being a central figure in this impeachment because she was, wittingly or unwittingly, a part of a nexus with Obama, Biden, and a corruption scheme with Ukraine interests also involving John Kerry, his son, and of course Biden’s now-infamous son, Hunter, snorter and impregnator extraordinaire.
It seems to have been a kick-back scheme, where portions of American aid to Ukraine would be kicked back in various discreet and circuitous ways to various politicians and their families. Maybe even some prime Massachusetts real estate.
You may not remember the House Post Office Scandal in 1994 which ended several House members’ careers, including the criminal conviction for mail fraud of Dan Rostenkowski, Chairman of the House Ways and Means Committee (who Clinton pardoned in 2000).
The greatest historical mark left by that scandal was that the House was flipped, and for the first time since 1954. It had been 40 years since Democrats were not in charge of the House.
So, considering the ranking hierarchy of the last Democrat regime might be caught up in such as a scandal, the last thing Democrats want is for an investigation to bring such corruption to light in the middle of a life-and-death election campaign.
It may be too late for just such a kick-back scheme ahs been uncovered, and is potentially larger, RICO larger, than the Post Office scandal.
The question is: can any dull, craven Republican save them?
Then the names of John McCain, (the sainted John McCain, and his pup) Lindsey Graham cropped as also having been pals with the corrupt Poroshenko regime in Ukraine who tried to help Hillary in 2016 and caused the semi-pretty Marie Voyanovich to be impressed into duty after the 2016 election, to be sent to Ukraine with marching orders with marching orders about who should be fired, and later, who should not be investigated (Burisma).
Wayne Dupree noted that in January 2017 McCain and Lindsey Graham, as members of the Senate Armed Services Committee, traveled to Ukraine to meet (the corrupt) President Poroshenko and were given some sort of awards that involved a ribbon around the neck. I’m not sure how the press covered this at the time, but the short video makes Lindsey look like he’s about to meet Emperor Frederick Barbarossa. Obama genuflected more obsequiously, but that was only before royal Protectors of the One True Faith.
All this was before Trump was inaugurated in 2017, and McCain was pushing hard for a more vigorous US response to Russia for their invasion of Crimea. This is not to say that either McCain or Graham were involved in the kick-back scheme in Ukraine. But if I were Obama plotting a RICO scheme in Ukraine, with the quasi-magnificent Ms Yovanovich my embassy gofer, and I needed some poor slavish stooge Republican to cover my flanks, an insurance policy as it were, the craven-in-training Lindsey Graham would be my logical choice.
Only Lindsey Graham knows what he knows about payola schemes in Ukraine. But he knows his self-interests, and his idealized image of himself as he thinks others see him.
He should know that if he has taken dirty money in this instance he will be caught, and he will not even be listed among the “star” defendants, except by CNN.
If Lindsey Graham, or any other Republican sap who has benefitted from Democrat Mob schemes in Ukraine, and because of it, deny President Trump his right to set the historical record straight, then the wrath of all America will come down on his head, whether indicted or not.
Fair warning.
The shameless cravens of the deep state; the FBI, DOJ, the intel agencies, their dies are cast.
The same goes for all the people who took dirty money in Ukraine. Not all will go to jail or, if as audacious as Bob Menendez, be convicted. But most states aren’t New Jersey in their standards about corruption. They will be ruined.
Because of what this impeachment means to American History, right now History only cares about the cravens that might give the “case” against Donald Trump a free pass for purely craven, ass-covering reasons.
History must be given its rightful due.
That History can only be written by the United States Senate, as the final determination of a piece-by-piece evidentiary battle that will expose for all time the corruption and the kangaroo court that brought these people to this place. A summary judgment and acquittal won’t do..
True, that won’t stop the New York Times from baptizing its own Pulitzer Prize winner, declaring it to be THE best seller. But way down the list there will be other chronicles, perhaps written by John Solomon, Byron York, Mollie Hemingway, Sara Carter, and others whose sales will dwarf the Times star list.
And the American people will know.
But alas, poor Yovanovich, we hardly knew ye.
