There’s This Thing Called Due Process That We Ought to Try

 Article by Kurt Schlichter in "Townhall":

I get a little picky about this whole due process thing, not just because I’m a lawyer and not just because I helped defend our Constitution overseas in uniform a couple times, but because I’m an American citizen. Let’s understand clearly the nature of the due process argument over impeachment. This is not about Donald Trump getting due process. This is about the American people getting due process.

It’s our choice for president that is being challenged. You get due process under our glorious Constitution when you are about to have your individual rights infringed – like having your freedom or money taken. President Trump has no individual right to be president. It’s a position that we citizens gave him in order to work for us. The presidency is not his, any more than being a colonel meant the eagle belonged to me. The real due process rights at issue here belong to us, America’s citizens, who are faced with the prospect of having our right to choose our president infringed upon.

In other words, when no one is allowed to put on a defense to the impeachment inquisition, it’s not Trump who is being deprived of his due process rights. It’s the American people who are being deprived of their due process rights.

Due process means a chance to have your say, to tell your side of the story. We all used to accept that everyone has a right to make their case. Now, sometimes that may be hard – if the Five-O catches an axe murderer with a dripping hatchet and a tatt on his forehead that says “I (heart emoji) Mayhem” and he just starred in a YouTube video titled, “I Just Went On An Axe Murder Frenzy” he’s probably going to have an uphill battle to acquittal. But it would never occur to us not to tell him the charges, and to let his lawyer ask questions and call witnesses in front of an impartial judge and jury. Due process is not about a result but about giving everyone a chance to tell his side of the story.

Until now, it seemed we all agreed on that. But, as in so many other ways, it appears that our ruling caste thinks that Trump is such a special case that we have to make an exception to the rules for him. Perhaps it’s because of how Trump destroys norms and stuff.

Is it too much to ask Adam Schiff to do the same basic things for the American people in this process that a dude accused of tearing mattress tags would get?

Tag Tearer would get told exactly what charges he is going to be defending himself against. So, what charges are we defending ourselves against here?

Tag Tearer would get a judge and jury that were impartial and unbiased, with no preconceived notions about the facts. But Schiffquemada has spent three years telling us Trump must be removed. So, we are facing a prosecutor/judge. That’s a due process abomination.

Tag Tearer would get to question witnesses against him. Really question them. We don’t get to here. Oh, Judge Schiff is willing to allow “relevant” questions. Surprise – what’s “relevant” is only stuff that supports his pre-existing narrative; anything that disputes it is “irrelevant.” That’s like a prosecutor who gets to stand up and say, "Objection, hurts my case!”

Tag Tearer could call his own witnesses, including witnesses the other side doesn’t want heard, which is, of course, the point of calling them. But we can’t do that when it comes to removing the president we elected. How is that reasonable?

Oh, and let’s not forget the origin of all this. Supposedly, the chief law enforcement officer of the United States, the president, was wrong for threatening to hold back free money from foreigners if they failed to help investigate why a former VP and current presidential contender’s drug-snorting, paternity suit-having, Navy reject son was pulling in north of $50K a month from a Ukrainian gas oligarch. If Trump didn’t do that, he should have. The dual track justice system – where the corruption of the elite and connected is actively protected while those on the outside are prosecuted for calling attention to it is, itself, a ruinous disgrace.

It’s not really due process if the accused is not allowed to prove himself innocent. Now, the objection to granting the American people their due process will be that Trump will use due process to assert “technicalities” to foil the impeachment plot. Hell to the yeah. The other word for “technicalities” is “the law.” You see, the technicalities are what accusers call the protections, procedures, and requirements that they don’t want to have to meet in order to get what they want from someone else. Most of the time the technicality is that the person didn’t do the crime or the tort.

For example, in the Ben Shapiro Clockboy case – I’m only going to talk about what’s out there in public – we won that case because we demonstrated that Ben Shapiro did not commit defamation. Critics of our victory called that a “technicality.” But it’s not a technicality when you didn’t do the thing you were accused of. And it’s not somehow underhanded to prove that using the tools provided by due process.

That’s the thing here – you have a sham process where prosecutors with a clear bias and a prejudgment of the facts are not trying to make a factual determination but to orchestrate a show trial designed to validate the decision they reached before this whole Ukrainian thing even started – before the fake Russia thing began. Heck, before Stumbles McMyturn even lost.

This is an unAmerican disgrace. It deprives the American people of their rights.

Of course, our garbage elite waves that off. Why, this is Trump, and this is a “special case.” But there are no “special cases.” When you change the standards in your “special case,” every case inevitably becomes a “special case.” Then it becomes normal.

These clowns will do more damage to our country with their attempt to rid it of the alleged norm-breaker Trump than Trump ever could. And when they cry out, “Help us!” as the new rules they made devour them, we will smile and whisper, “No.”

https://townhall.com/columnists/kurtschlichter/2019/11/14/theres-this-thing-called-due-process-that-we-ought-to-try-n2556405