A Sham Trial

This is the text of a letter I sent to the Everett Herald, our local daily newspaper: The Herald published it on February 14, 2020.

The impeachment trial of President Donald Trump was a sham from the beginning. It wasn’t a sham because Trump didn’t deserve to be impeached, convicted, and removed from office. He did., and he does. It was a sham because the Republican Senators were never going to do the right thing no matter what information about Trump’s misdeeds came to light. In the end only one Republican senator, Mitt Romney, voted to convict on one of the two articles of impeachment. This verdict means that tribalism has triumphed over justice. Party has triumphed over the nation. The Senate’s acquittal of President Trump proves beyond any reasonable doubt that our political system is broken. It no longer works the way it should. I mourn for my country. We have descended to a political depth I never thought I’d live to see. Shame on the Senate. Shame in particular on the Republican senators who refused to convict the obviously guilty president. They have violated their oath of office and the oath they took at the beginning of the impeachment trial. They have ignored both the facts and the law. How very, very sad for our poor country.