Apparently, the establishment has decided to have a brief Senate trial without witnesses. 

Nancy Pelosi has been withholding the impeachment articles from the Senate since December 18.  The frantic rush to impeach President Trump has hit a roadblock erected by the very people who were in a hurry to impeach the president.  Perhaps she was waiting for word from Mitch McConnell with the assurance that there would be no witnesses called.  Now it appears that the president agrees.  While McConnell and the Senate GOP have determined there will be no witnesses called, Chuck Schumer and Jerry Nadler are supposedly pushing for a trial with witnesses.

The House Judiciary Committee called four law professors to testify.  None of them had voted for Donald Trump.  Noah Feldman, Michael Gerhardt, Jonathan Turley, and Pamela Karlan are all Ivy League graduates.  Karlan is a known activist who miscalculated during her testimony with an attack on Trump's choice of "Barron" for his son's name.  Jonathan Turley appeared the most objective but stressed that he did not vote for the president.  He apparently paid a high price for his objectivity.

Sen. Lindsey Graham said his goal is "to have as short a trial as possible."  Sen. Josh Hawley (R-Mo.) said, "I think the articles are a joke."  He stated, "It's time for him [the president] to have his day in court.  The president deserves to have due process."  How does one get his day in court when you can't call witnesses?  A thorough investigation would result in the exposure of both Republicans and Democrats.  Members of both parties have enriched themselves with kickbacks to their relatives.  If a member is exposed, he will immediately implicate others.  Congress members know this, therefore there is little incentive to fight corruption.

Chuck Schumer wants to call former national security adviser John Bolton and acting White House chief of staff Mick Mulvaney.  There are undoubtedly thousands of Deep State bureaucrats willing to testify against the president.  Some will even be willing to perjure themselves.  They will be able to depend on the Deep State media to support them.  They have only one major problem: they are attacking President Trump.  Their record is not very good, while his is "perfect."

Republican witnesses would include Hunter Biden, Adam Schiff, Nancy Pelosi, her son, the "whistleblower," and others.  Before the president had a change of heart, he tweeted, "We will have Schiff, the Bidens, Pelosi and many more testify, and will reveal, for the first time, how corrupt our system really is.  I was elected to 'Clean the Swamp,' and that's what I am doing!"  These people have a lot to conceal.  They may be powerful enough to prevent the president's cleaning.

People are arguing that a Senate trial is not the place to expose the corruption.  They claim it takes time to gather the evidence for a conviction.  The DOJ is working on this.  Its people have been working on it for three years.  Be patient.  People need to be going to jail.  Oh, that's right — people have: Roger Stone and Paul Manafort.  How much time did it take to convict them?  When progressives are the target it's "Softly, softly, catchy monkey."  When it's conservatives, the cry is "Release the Kraken."

Mitch McConnell claimed, "If we go down in the witness path, we're going to want the whistleblower.  We're going to want Hunter Biden.  You can see here that this is the kind of mutual assured destruction episode that will go on for a long time."  Swamp creatures need to be destroyed.  Representative Nadler claimed, "The American people deserve transparency."  The American people deserve it, and a large number of people demand it.  Where are their representatives? 

John Dietrich is a freelance writer and the author of The Morgenthau Plan: Soviet Influence on American Postwar Policy (Algora Publishing).  He has a Master of Arts degree in international relations from St. Mary's University.  He is retired from the Defense Intelligence Agency and the Department of Homeland Security.