Trump team lawyer Robert Ray put on a dazzling display of obscure and tenuous historical namedropping during his remarks in the Senate impeachment trial Monday.
Arguing that the impeachment charges against Trump weren’t warranted or in keeping with the historical precedent, Ray cited everyone from the baseball umpire Bill Klem to the political philosopher Alexis de Tocqueville.
Here’s who Ray referenced, in order of appearance:
- Former Rep. Bill Cohen (R-ME)
- Former Rep. Caldwell Butler (R-VA)
- Alexander Hamilton
- Charles Ruff (the White House counsel who defended then-President Bill Clinton from impeachment)
- Alexis de Tocqueville
- Former Rep. Hamilton Fish Jr. (R-NY)
- Hamilton Fish (the congressman’s great grandfather and President Grant’s secretary of state)
- Jeffrey A. Engel (founding director, Center for Presidential History at Southern Methodist University)
- Former President Gerald Ford
- Akhil Reed Amar (professor, Yale Law School)
- Former President John F. Kennedy
- “Two of my Princeton Civil War and Reconstruction history professors”
- Former Sen. Senator Edmund G. Ross (R-KS)
- “One citizen” whose tweet he saw
- Jonathan Turley (Republican impeachment probe witness and professor, George Washington University Law School)
- Bill Klem (Major League Baseball umpire)
- Rep. Jerry Nadler (D-NY) in 1998
- Sen. Dale Bumpers (D-AR)
- Former President Abraham Lincoln
Dersh’s dream client would be John Wilkes Booth.
Desperate people do (and assert) desperate things. God Almighty!
When ya can’t dazzle them with brilliance, baffle them with bullshit.
Lots of capital letters and the word ‘perfect’? I think I know who he’s talking about.
I’m pretty sure historical precedent has indeed been broken by having a president who is a Russian tool.