Donald Trump Impeachment Should Be ‘Mistrial’ Due To Pat Cipollone’s ‘Unimaginable Fraud,’ Ex-Prosecutor Says
A former federal prosecutor, who spent 24 years in the Washington D.C. United States Attorney’s office, called on Sunday for Democratic House managers in the impeachment of Donald Trump to call for mistrial — a move that, though a clear longshot, would end the senate trial without an acquittal or conviction. Writing on his Twitter account, ex-prosecutor Glenn Kirschner said that Chief Justice John Roberts could rule for a mistrial due, in part, to “unimaginable fraud” committed by one member of Trump’s legal team, White House Counsel Pat Cipollone.
Cipollone made numerous arguments in Trump’s defense during the impeachment trial. But as The Washington Post reported, Cipollone himself did not disclose that he may be a martial “fact witness” to Trump’s illegal withholding of military aid to Ukraine in exchange for domestic political favors.
An upcoming book by former Trump administration National Security Advisor John Bolton reportedly says that Cipollone was present in the Oval Office when Trump directed Bolton to “to help with his pressure campaign to extract damaging information on Democrats from Ukrainian officials,” as quoted by The Post.
But Cipollone kept his first-hand knowledge of Trump’s intentions a secret and proceeded to defend Trump against the very charges of which he knew Trump was guilty, according to the reported claims in the book.
Though Senate rules may not have anticipated the possibility of a mistrial in an impeachment proceeding, the rules also did to anticipate that lawyers for an impeached president “would have hidden from the Senate, the Chief Justice and the American people such egregious, disqualifying information,” Kirschner wrote in his Twitter thread on Sunday.
The ex-prosecutor, who retired in 2018 and is now an MSNBC legal analyst, called on Democratic House impeachment managers not to “go quietly into that dark acquittal.” He said that the managers should file a motion for a mistrial and put it in front of Supreme Court Chief Justice John Roberts, who presides over the senate trial.
“Move for a mistrial and see what the Chief Justice says,” Kirschner wrote.
On Friday, all but two Senate Republicans voted against allowing witness testimony from Bolton, or any other witnesses, effectively ending the trial. A vote on whether or not to convict Trump is scheduled for Wednesday, the day after he delivers his third State of the Union address. That vote is also expected to fall largely along party lines, with Trump easily gaining acquittal.
The unlikely call for a mistrial in the impeachment proceeding now appears to remain as the Democrats’ only option to prevent Trump’s acquittal.
