It seems like everyone knows what a “kangaroo court” means but few can agree on where we got the term. In short, it’s a legal proceeding that does not follow the normal procedures, that disadvantages the defendant, and in which the outcome is foreordained. Donald Trump has referred to the impeachment hearings in the House Intelligence Committee as a kangaroo court, in part, because he was not allowed to have a lawyer present during the questioning of witnesses.
It would be a reasonable complaint if the impeachment hearings in the House were an actual trial, but they functioned more like a grand jury which gathers information to see whether a crime has occurred.
The Intelligence Committee is supposed to deliver a report on their findings to the House Judiciary Committee sometime next week, and the Judiciary Committee will then hold their own hearings and determine whether or not they should send articles of impeachment to the floor of the House for a vote. During this second half of the process, the president actually will be allowed to have lawyers present and can question witnesses and even call his own witnesses to testify in his defense. I don’t think there is an exact parallel to this setup in the normal judicial process, but I guess it is somewhat like a preliminary hearing.
In any case, the president is being afforded a right to which he is not logically entitled. Defendants don’t get to question or call witnesses prior to being indicted. So, the process in the Judiciary Committee will grant the president more rights than an ordinary citizen, not fewer rights as the president has claimed to date.
However, it looks like he may not intend to take advantage of this gift. Anna Palmer and Jake Sherman report in Politico’s Playbook that Trump doesn’t want to give the proceedings any legitimacy.
…as of right now, people close to President Trump on the White House staff and on Capitol Hill do not believe he will send a lawyer to participate in next week’s Judiciary impeachment hearings, as is his right.”
“This comes after weeks of complaining that the process was rigged against him because he didn’t have representation.”
But Trump’s allies think that the president is winning the process argument — that impeachment is rigged, crooked, etc. — and he should continue to sit it out.
Now, they thing about a Kangaroo Court is that it’s rigged. A verdict of guilty is the only possible outcome. In that kind of situation, it makes sense for the defendant to boycott the proceedings or refuse to offer a defense.
But Trump’s motive here is basically the opposite. While it’s true that Trump will be impeached and nothing he can offer as a defense can change that, the reason he doesn’t want to participate in the process is because he knows everything is rigged in his favor. He expects he will be acquitted at trial no matter how damning the evidence against him and no matter how much pain it causes Republican senators to absolve him. So, he has no need to defend himself in the House and doing so would have little upside and the downside of making it appear to be a fair process.
What Trump wants is a bizarre version of a show trial. In an ordinary show trial, an acquittal is out of the question.
A show trial is a public trial in which the judicial authorities have already determined the guilt of the defendant. The actual trial has as its only goal the presentation of both the accusation and the verdict to the public so they will serve as both an impressive example and a warning to other would-be dissidents or transgressors.
In Trump’s trial, a guilty verdict is out of the question. Or, at least, that’s what he is banking on as he sets his strategy.
So, I don’t know if the Senate trial will more resemble a kangaroo court or a show trial. That will depend on whether the Republicans and Chief Justice John Roberts, who will preside, decide to disadvantage the prosecution or they simply ignore the evidence and deliver a foreordained verdict.
I just think it’s ironic that Trump complained that he didn’t have representation and now he’s willingly foregoing having representation. He said the proceedings are biased against him, but the truth is that he believes that there’s basically no crime he could commit short of murder that would cause the Republicans to find him guilty.
So, he’ll go without lawyers for now because nothing matters in today’s America.
As always, Der Trumper’s use of concepts like “kangaroo court” is incoherent. As you say, the reality is that Trumper is RELYING on the fact that the senate trial will be a “reverse-kangaroo”, or “anti-show” trial, with Moscow Mitch having already publicly assured an acquital.
As for “representation”, Trump had every noble patriotic Repub on the Intelligence Committee there to happily coordinate their questioning with a Trump lawyer (had he wished them to do so), or to coordinate with the Repub’s staff lawyer. Of course, Trump’s Repubs had no real interest in asking any meaningful questions of the Intelligence Committee witnesses, so why Trumper and his Repubs would now have any interest in doing so before the Judiciary Committee is a mystery. Trumper didn’t opt to do anything meaningful, since he is certain that the senate trial will be a “reverse-kangaroo” court.
I don’t understand the idea behind the next step of the House proceedings; surely they aren’t intending to now drag every previous Intelligence witness before the Judiciary Committee, are they? Basically, Judiciary should adopt Intelligence’s report on the Ukraine Shakedown, ask Trumper (and his lawyer) if he has any witnesses he’d like Judiciary to hear in rebuttal, call for additional witnesses on any other articles they might be considering (such as refusal to provide oversight and conversion of appropriated funds) and then fashion the articles of impeachment if they think the evidence warrants it. But they hopefully aren’t going to simply “reenact” what Intelligence did last week–only with different set of bad faith Repub clowns enlisted to (again) make a mockery of the proceedings!
“..surely they aren’t intending to now drag every previous Intelligence witness before the Judiciary Committee…”
“If you tell a lie big enough and keep repeating it, people will eventually come to believe it.”
Shouldn’t the same technique work for the truth?