All day, the House Democratic impeachment managers, led by the indefatigable Representative Adam Schiff of California, painstakingly laid out a mountain of evidence implicating Trump in abusing presidential power in his dealings with Ukraine and obstructing Congress’s efforts to investigate his wrong-doing.

After watching the Senate impeachment trial of President Trump on Tuesday (and into Wednesday morning), one thing is crystal clear: the president is guilty and Senate Republicans are his active coconspirators.

It was as close as one can come to witnessing the presentation of a true open-and-shut case.

In contrast, Trump’s defense team offered the Senate not a single piece of evidence that suggested their client should be acquitted of the charges that have been levied against him.


Instead, White House counsel Pat Cipollone and his colleagues resorted to bombast, character attacks, and outright lies. The president’s personal lawyer, Jay Sekulow, complained that Trump has been treated unfairly because he was not allowed to have legal representation or cross-examine witnesses at the House’s public hearings. In fact, the White House was invited to send counsel to those proceedings and, in a letter sent by Cipollone, they refused.

Cipollone also claimed that no House Republicans were allowed in the room when witnesses gave depositions to House investigators. It’s an assertion that is provably untrue.

It went on like this all day Tuesday: House Democrats would lay out an exhaustive narrative detailing the president’s crimes, and Republicans responded with invective and gaslighting.

The day’s most surreal moment came when Trump’s defense team accused Democrats of trying to subvert the 2020 presidential election, which is precisely what Trump did when he sought to pressure Ukraine into digging up dirt on Joe Biden. The only thing more gobsmacking was when Cipollone said, with a straight face, “President Trump is a man of his word.”


A transcript of a call between President Trump and Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky is shown as top U.S. diplomat to Ukraine, William B. Taylor Jr. and Deputy Assistant Secretary for European and Eurasian Affairs George P. Kent testify before the House Intelligence Committee in November 2019 in Washington, DC. Drew Angerer/Getty

Orwell would have found the entire experience dizzying.

But guess who was nonplussed by the unending stream of lies and bad-faith arguments? The 53 Senate Republicans who, on vote after vote, denied Democratic requests to subpoena witnesses and documents from the Trump administration.

After midnight, Rep. Jerold Nadler, the House Judiciary Committee chairman, rhetorically asked the assembled senators whether they wanted “to be complicit in the president’s crimes by covering them up?”

The answer is unambiguously yes.

What more evidence does one need of Trump’s guilt than the obvious and absurd lengths to which Republicans are going to prevent the Senate — and in turn the American people — from conducting a fair and open trial?

If Trump did nothing wrong, if his phone call with President Zelensky of Ukraine was “perfect,” wouldn’t Republicans want to hear from witnesses or request documents that would prove his innocence? It’s precisely, however, because they know Trump is guilty that Senate Republicans have no interest in such material — and want to end the trial as quickly as possible.

But while it’s bad enough to acquit Trump of wrongdoing, even when the evidence of his guilt is so overwhelming, it’s quite another — and arguably worse — to do so with a trial that is so clearly and obviously a kangaroo court, intended to do nothing more than offer the president a rubber-stamp exoneration.

Actually, I take that back — there is something even more potentially troubling. That Senate Republicans will, acting in a purely partisan and self-interested manner, acquit the president and, 9½ months from now, Trump will be reelected in an election that he actively sought to subvert.


Republicans aren’t just shamefully cowering in fear of being on the wrong end of a presidential tweet — they are active participants in Trump’s efforts to cover up obvious abuses of presidential power. The White House has refused to turn over documents to a coequal branch of government. They have blocked witnesses from testifying. They have thumbed their noses at Congress’s ability to conduct oversight and investigate the executive branch — and Senate Republicans, who are members of that co-equal branch, are aiding and abetting them.

It’s possible that a few Republican senators will grow a backbone and allow witnesses to testify and subpoena documents from the administration. It’s also “possible” that I will be playing centerfield for the Red Sox this year.

What took place on Tuesday was more than just a sham impeachment trial, it was a dark day in this nation’s history and a fundamental assault on our constitutional form of government.

But this is the new normal in America. The president of the United States believes that he is above the law and that he can do whatever he wants with complete impunity — and Senate Republicans are his accomplices.

Michael A. Cohen’s column appears regularly in the Globe. Follow him on Twitter @speechboy71.