Marsha Blackburn: I won't be a 'useful contrarian' for Democrats in Trump impeachment trial Democratic House managers brought a weak case against President Donald Trump to the U.S. Senate, and now they want senators to do the work for them.

Marsha Blackburn | Opinion columnist

Show Caption Hide Caption Presidential impeachment: Clinton, Johnson, Nixon test U.S. democracy Presidents have been impeached, but none have been removed from office due to impeachment. Confusing? Here's how.

Marsha Blackburn, R-Brentwood, is a the junior U.S. senator from the state of Tennessee.

No two impeachments are alike, and in the context of this impeachment, our decision-making must be informed by the dangerously political bent of its proponents.

As we speak, the Democratic House managers are panicking over a sudden need for new information. Make no mistake, their demand for witnesses is a trap, and the bait is pure temptation — a “need to know” meant to lure America into a constitutional crisis.

At first blush, these requests are perplexing. Hasn’t Rep. Adam Schiff, D-Calif., repeatedly insisted that their case is iron clad as is? (Yes, he has.) Isn’t it perfectly normal for a president to strategically pause foreign aid, as Trump did? (Yes! Look at the track records of the Obama, Bush and Clinton administrations.)

So what, if anything, could be gained by summoning so many high-level national security officials to the main stage?

Impeachment case too feeble to stand on its own

If you understand the why behind the summons, things start to come into focus. As 2019 waned, it became harder for Schiff and his cohorts to hide their politically motivated vendetta against President Donald Trump. Their eagerness to course-correct after 2016 led to a collective tumble down a dead-end narrative.

They knew that their electoral prospects hinged on their ability to wrap up impeachment and the ensuing trial before campaign politics seized the public’s attention. The specter of the Clinton impeachment’s five-year timeline haunted their efforts.

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The bigger problem? They also knew that their case was too feeble to stand on its own. So, they set their sights on a few choice bits of testimony that are completely and inarguably protected by executive privilege.

Popular opinion would have you believe that executive privilege is nothing but a constitutional hobgoblin invoked by frightened presidents who have something to hide. Democratic Rep. Jerry Nadler, D-N.Y., even went so far as to refer to it as “nonsense.” This couldn’t be further from the truth.

Think of executive privilege as a “bubble” surrounding the president and his closest advisers. This bubble insulates their discussions from armchair quarterbacking and allows for complete candor.

Although the words “executive privilege” don’t show up in the Constitution, the Supreme Court acknowledges its existence and confirms that the separation of powers depends upon the president’s ability to invoke it. In 1974, the court specifically stated that a president can invoke executive privilege to protect military, diplomatic or sensitive national security secrets.

You can see the problem this presented for Schiff: To get what they wanted, they’d have to pop the executive privilege bubble, which would mean convincing multiple federal judges that the information they’d subpoenaed from a current ambassador, the White House chief of staff and multiple Pentagon officials — alongside an additional request for the former national security adviser’s testimony — had nothing at all to do with national security.

That dog just ain’t gonna hunt, I don’t care who you are.

Once they realized this, Schiff yanked his subpoenas and decided to cover his false start by demanding that the Senate fetch the information for him.

Compromising on witnesses will harm the presidency, not just this president

Everything you have seen from Democrats during this trial, from Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer’s amendment showdown, to tone-deaf demands that the Senate “call the Democrats’ bluff” and open the floodgates to witnesses, has been carefully choreographed.

It’s a last-ditch effort to negate inconvenient constitutional protections that would inevitably rip the trial from the Senate’s hands and place it into a months-long battle in federal court.

History in the making: Romney called 2016 a time for choosing on Trump. What choice will senators make now?

Any compromise that would allow this to happen would be destructive to the office of the president — no matter who occupies the West Wing.

I will not act as a useful contrarian and give quarter to elected officials who impeached their president because the American people said “no” to Hillary Clinton and “yes” to Donald Trump.

In his opening statement at trial, Schiff revealed his real reason for needing an impeachment do-over. He accused the president in advance of cheating in the 2020 election and suggested that Americans would be manipulated and make the wrong decision at the ballot box.

So much for the will of the people.

I trust our local and state election officials to do their jobs and secure the ballot box. I trust the American people to make their own decisions in November, and I will resolutely stand against any action meant to take that freedom away.

Sen. Marsha Blackburn is a Republican senator from Tennessee. Follow her on Twitter @MarshaBlackburn. This column originally appeared in the Nashville Tennessean.