Salem Mayor Tells Donald Trump To ‘Learn Some History’ On Witch Trial Claims
The mayor of Salem, Massachusetts, told President Donald Trump to “learn some history” after he claimed that people accused in the Salem witch trials were given more due process than he has received in the Democrats’ impeachment inquiry.
Democratic Mayor Kim Driscoll posted on Twitter a screenshot of a letter from Trump to House Speaker Nancy Pelosi in which the president lambasted the impeachment inquiry and made the claim about the Salem witch trials, according to CNN.
“This situation is much different than the plight of the witch trial victims, who were convicted using spectral evidence + then brutally hanged or pressed to death. A dubious legal process that bears no relation to televised impeachment,” Driscoll wrote in a tweet.
Trump wrote in his letter to Pelosi that “more due process was afforded to those accused in the Salem Witch Trials” just one day before the House is expected to impeach Trump over his dealings with Ukraine, as The Inquisitr has previously reported.
“To see both the president and his supporters using the Witch Trials is offensive to the descendants, those victims that this their legacy is being twisted in this way. People in Salem want this history remembered so that it acknowledges going forward what never, ever should happen again,” Driscoll said in an interview with local ABC affiliate WCVB.
Trump is not technically entitled to due process protections throughout the House impeachment process because it is an investigative process, rather than a trial. The president is expected to have significantly more due process rights in the Senate when it becomes a trial.
Democrats have regularly called for Trump to provide testimony, but the president has declined to do so thus far.
The president has routinely deployed a defense evoking witch trials. Throughout special counsel Robert Mueller’s Russia investigation, Trump referred to the inquiry as a “witch hunt.”
Since the start of the impeachment inquiry, Trump has vigorously denied that he misused his power to reportedly pressure a foreign country to investigate a political opponent, 2020 presidential candidate Joe Biden.
In the late 1600s, after being accused of witchcraft in Salem through a judicial process that did not use the principle of “innocent until proven guilty,” 19 men and women were executed. The courts used three types of evidence: confession, testimony of two eyewitnesses to the so-called witchcraft, and evidence from dreams and the supernatural. Executions were performed by hanging or being crushed by rocks.
