Thanks for the reply. Dad goes on to say:
“As for House of Representatives demand for further testimony
for the trial, that demand is clearly appropriate, since the
currently established evidence is being clearly challenged
as incomplete and inadequate to support impeachment.
However, since the house has now completed it’s vote to
impeach President Trump and published it loudly and
deliberately and publicly to the world, and has NOT provided
ANY opportunity for Trump to present any of his defense
witnesses, nor has it indicated it will EVER provide such
opportunity in the house Judicial Committee investigations,
it is now clear that ALL additional investigation is
appropriate and overdue, including especially Trump’s
defense witnesses.
To be precise, ALL of those witnesses,
both for the house and for Trump, must be examined in the
actual impeachment trial, conducted by the Supreme Court.”
In response to one of your points, he had this comment:
“I would say that any defense lawyer is entitled to present
pertinent law enforcement evidence in a trial, including
evidence currently being published by the Inspector General
and other Justice Department sources.”
At some point, prosecutors poking around your junk becomes harassment. Witnesses to Trump's conduct have exec privilege, etc., so the evidentiary issues here aren't trivial.
It's also up to the senate to decide when evidence becomes repetitive, irrelevant, etc. The rock bottom question is "are we going to remove for this," and they have a pretty good idea of the underlying "this" without the DEMs bringing in more witnesses and cherry picking and spinning for the public. Senate has an institutional reputation of its own, just as a court does.
As for Trump defense, he at least gets to provide an answer/rebuttal to the charges, and his 1st amendment isn't shut off. He's been ridiculing the DEMs case from the get-go, including with substantive evidence that seeps into the public.
I don't think this is a hard case. Either you find to whatever standard of belief you choose for yourself that Trump is calling on Ukrain to screw with Biden for election purposes, or not.
A weak defense is it is reasonable to suspect Biden s corrupt. A killer one is to prove Biden is corrupt.
And tribunal is the senate, not SCOTUS. The senate makes all impeachment trial rules. CJ SCOTUS is there so all the senators can sit as judge/jury on the "do we remove for this?" question.
Merry Christmas to your dad! I'm out of this conversation. Enjoyed it.