WASHINGTON—I am glad I am leaving this place on Tuesday and heading to Iowa, where some decent people are contending to head a government and a political system so corrupted and debased at this point that the ship of state most closely resembles that homeless wandering garbage barge from 1987. The last thing I saw was Republican Senators John Barrasso and Mike Braun, red-faced and hollering, because some reporters wanted to know precisely how much of the bullshit slung by the White House lawyers on Monday afternoon anyone should believe.

Make no mistake about it. From about 4 o’clock, the time former Florida Attorney General Pam Bondi rose to speak, until about 6, when a longtime lawyer for El Caudillo del Mar-a-Lago named Eric Herschmann wrapped up what amounted to some MAGA rally cosplay, a monstrously obvious fraud was perpetrated on the Senate, sitting as a court of impeachment. If any lawyer in any municipal court in the country had lied and misrepresented the facts of a case involving a speeding ticket as thoroughly as Bondi and Herschmann did here, that lawyer’s license would have been pulled by lunchtime. However, Chief Justice John Roberts, perhaps exhausted by the effort it took to extend the work of Breckinridge Long into the 21st century on Monday morning, sat there like one of the marble vice presidents in the niches of the visitor’s galleries above. A fraud was perpetrated on the court over which Roberts was presiding, and he had to know it.

I thought the defense case had scraped bottom when Ken Starr was brought out of cold storage to lecture the Senate on the dangers of a runaway impeachment process. But that turned out to be merely particularly odious concern-trolling. Irony died a long time ago and all Starr was doing was digging up the casket and setting it ablaze. However, it was the Bondi-Herschmann pas de deux ended up shredding the last possible rags of dignity that still clung to the truth in this farce. Bondi began by explaining how it was the House managers that forced her to get up and talk about the Bidens and Burisma. Of course, Bondi was the Florida attorney general who, in 2013, buried that state’s investigation into the fraudulent Trump University after a $25,000 check from the Trump Foundation landed in her campaign account. At the moment, she’s making $115-large as a lobbyist for the government of Qatar. So, naturally, she was the lawyer chosen to crank up the innuendo machine regarding the Bidens and Burisma, especially since the Republicans Have The Votes, so nothing else matters.

Bondi lied and misrepresented the facts relentlessly on the Senate floor. Handout Getty Images

Reading her prepared argument like a seventh-grader delivering a history report, Bondi found herself inevitably stanning for the deeply corrupt former Ukrainian prosecutor Viktor Shokin. In reality, Shokin was removed because the government of the United States, the World Bank, and virtually every official in the western world except Sir Paul McCartney knew he was for sale and wanted him gone. Biden, then vice president, had been tasked with delivering the warning from the United States to Ukraine. Shokin had opened an investigation into Burisma but he had then stuffed it. That was part of why everybody thought he was a crook. Bondi, however, asked us to sympathize with Viktor Shokin, the victim of Biden shenanigans, a theory that has been debunked from here to glory. I swear to god, if they’d put a menu from Denny’s in Bondi’s folder, she’d have blamed Hunter Biden for the Grand Slam breakfast.

In a briefing call for national security staff in February 2015 I raise my concerns Hunter Biden status could create the perception of a conflict of interest. But House managers did not tell you that all why Hunter Biden sat on the board. Did he stop working for Burisma? No. Did he stop leading the form policy efforts by the administration as the vice president? No, in the meantime Vice President Biden is still the forefront of policy and pledged $1 billion of loan guaranteed to Ukraine consented but other people could've raised the issue of the conflict. As the special administration envoy told The New Yorker and with the participation and then to raise it directly with the vice president himself. And then the media has questions and then to the prosecutor general shows him and here is their quote the credibility of the anti-corruption message may have been but with Hunter Biden.

And it wasn't the lines between Burisma and the Obama administration and as we learned recently through Fox News on January 19, 2016 there was a meeting between Obama administration officials and Ukrainian prosecutors. The journalists for the New York Times asked the State Department about this meeting he wanted more information about the meeting, quote where the support for Burisma holdings in the United Kingdom were discussed. But the story never ran. Around the time it was reported of January 2016, meeting between the Obama administration and Ukrainian officials took place according to a Ukrainian press report as translated says, the US Department of State made it clear to Ukrainian authorities it was linking the $1 million of loan guarantees to the dismissal of the prosecutor general Viktor Shokin.

As gloriously unmoored as Bondi’s presentation was, Herschmann’s was even more bizarre. The defense team could have saved him a lot of work, and saved the chamber a lot of agita, if they’d just piped Alex Jones’s broadcast into the Senate chamber. Herschmann concluded his presentation by attempting to equate Barack Obama’s famous “flexibility” open mic remark in 2009 with what the president* tried to shake out of the Ukrainian president in return for releasing the military aid, an arrangement that John Bolton apparently has written about.

(By the way, did John Bolton figure in the defense presentations on Monday? C’mon. Just stop.)

Herschmann, center, entered the Capitol with Jay Sekulow, left, and Pat Cipollone, right. Drew Angerer Getty Images

But the real heart of Herschmann’s presentation was a series of rhetorical questions that showed he had as much awareness of his clients as a lemming has of a cliff. For example, a lawyer representing this president* actually asked this, in the chamber of the U.S. Senate, with the Chief Justice looking on.

One thing he apparently did not do however was to tell his son not to trade on his family's connections.

Further, Herschmann asked us to put our brains in a pickle jar on the subject of why the president* would’ve shaken down Ukraine in the first place. I mean, who thinks that this president* in particular could be so arrogant and clumsy?

Think about the managers' position. That our president decided with corrupt intent to shake down in their words another foreign leader and he decided to do it in front of everyone in a documented conversation in the presence of people he did not even know just who he could get this personal benefit and was not in our country's interests. The logic is flawed, it is completely illogical because that is not what happened. And that is why manager Schiff ran away from the actual threat. That is why he created his own fake conversation.

Corrupt intent? From the Deadbeat King of the Atlantic City Service Economy? Unpossible!

(Also, you will note that they can’t let go of that Schiff paraphrase, and that they still refuse to acknowledge that nobody outside of the White House has seen the real transcript of that phone call. These are the two ur-lies of the defense’s case.)

More of this.

The reporter wrote that when I asked members of Biden's staff whether they did raise the concern with the vice president, several of them said they had been too intimidated to do so. Everyone who works for him has been screamed that, a former advisor told a reporter. I don't know whether anyone has been intimidated by by Vice President Biden or has been screamed at by him about Burisma or his son's involvement. We want the type of government where questions about suspect conduct are suppressed or dismissed as illegitimate because someone is intimidating or screams at or is just too important? No. That is precisely when an investigation is most important.



And all say amen. Wait, this is a lawyer defending this president*? Take that amen back.



What kind of message did this send to future US government officials ? Your family can accept money from foreign corrupt companies, no problem. You can pay family members from our highest government officials and no one is allowed to ask questions? What was going on? We have to just accept now the House manager's conclusory statement like a sham, discredited, even though no one has ever investigated. Why? Can you imagine what House manager Schiff and his Democratic representatives would say if it were President Trump's children on an oligarchs payroll?

Good god, give us strength.

This was all said in what passes for a court in front of an actual Chief Justice and what passes for a jury in the Senate of the United States. This was double-dog daring the universe to set your tongue on fire. Eventually, you move into a realm beyond journalism while dealing with this, and it is not a place in which any citizen of a democracy should feel comfortable. Which is why I’m glad to be going off to Iowa now, where the unreality still has a kind of innocent charm.

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Charles P. Pierce Charles P Pierce is the author of four books, most recently Idiot America, and has been a working journalist since 1976.

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