But the search for the truth requires witnesses, and when the command from Senate Republican leaders came down that there shall be no witnesses, the truth-telling mission of Trump's trial was radically transformed into a steamroller of political power.

Trump's solicitation of assistance for his reelection campaign from a foreign government by holding up the release of $391 million in military aid to the same foreign government. These funds were congressionally appropriated and ordered to be paid by legislation that Trump had signed into law.

Federal law prohibits such solicitation as criminal and prohibits government officials from seeking personal favors in return for performing their governmental duties. The latter is bribery.

The evidence that Trump did this is overwhelming and beyond a reasonable doubt, and no one with firsthand knowledge denied it.

The second signal event was shameful. It was the 51 to 49 Senate vote to bar witnesses and documents from the trial.

Isn't it odd that a president who clamors for exoneration, who claimed loud and long that he committed no crime and did no wrong, who insisted that his request to the Ukrainian president to seek dirt on Biden in return for American financial assistance was "perfect," would command the members of his own party to block testimony adverse to him – rather than hear it, cross-examine it, challenge it and thereby obtain the exoneration on the merits that he seeks?

Do innocent people behave this way?