Now I’ll start this impeachment story with the proviso that it’s a “scoop” from CNN’s Manu Raju from “sources.”

So you know that there about three reasons right there to be doubtful about it.

But other media are now confirming it, so it’s likely true.

Guess who they’re going to have preside over the impeachment farce in the Senate that’s slated to start Feb. 9?

Democratic Sen. Patrick Leahy (D-VT), the president pro tempore of the Senate, the senior Democratic member.

New – Sen. Patrick Leahy, the Senate pro tempore, is expected to preside in impeachment trial, two sources tell me and @JoanBiskupic – not Chief Justice John Roberts

Senators preside when the person facing trial isn’t the current president of the United States, per one source

— Manu Raju (@mkraju) January 25, 2021

They’re going to have him instead of Chief Justice Roberts because Roberts only presides in the case of the sitting president. Roberts declined because he, correctly, sees the president is no longer in office to impeach. So they’re going to twist that to an advantage, and have the president pro tem who would preside in cases not pertaining to the president.

Are they kidding?

First they’re trying to do an impeachment trial for President Donald Trump who is no longer in office.

That’s never been done before, but hey, Democrats don’t care about the Constitution. The purpose of the impeachment provision was removal. While there is the provision about conviction preventing one from running for office again, the Constitution did not view impeachment as a way of trying to prevent your political opponent from running again which is why Democrats are trying to do this now.

They’re going to use your taxpayer dollars to take out their future opposition and tell you they’re doing it for your own good. That’s the kind of nerve they have.

But just to show you how much they really don’t care about the appearance of fairness, they’re going to have Leahy, a hyper-partisan, preside? But he’s not just going to preside.

Sen. Patrick Leahy To Preside Over Trump's Senate Impeachment Trial https://t.co/cJWcomiWa4

— NPR Politics (@nprpolitics) January 25, 2021

Just in case you didn’t think that wasn’t weighted enough for the Democrats, there’s this nugget.

Leahy is still expected to be able to vote in the trial

— Manu Raju (@mkraju) January 25, 2021

He’ll preside and he’ll vote! Judge and jury!

So Trump doesn’t get a ‘fair’ judge because he’s no longer president, but they can still go after him anyway?

So what’s next? Rep. Maxine Waters (D-CA) incites the crowd to stone Trump?

I mean, come on, man! How does this even begin to look like anything but a partisan witch trial? They had a snap impeachment to start with, based on no presentation of evidence and claims that have just been flat out debunked. Now they’re going to pull this stuff?

If the Republicans don’t raise an immediate uproar not only over this but indeed the constitutionality of the whole proceeding, they all deserve to be primaried. Sen. Rand Paul (R-KY) has already called it a “charade” and has threatened to boycott the proceedings.

But since we’re going to bend the law into a pretzel for political reasons, I have a suggestion for their next impeachment. Every single Democrat who claimed that the GOP was trying to throw Grandma over a cliff on healthcare who ‘incited’ the Bernie Bro to shoot up the GOP baseball practice as he yelled “This is for healthcare”, shooting four people and grievously wounding Rep. Steve Scalise (R-LA) should face impeachment. And it doesn’t matter if some have left Congress. Obviously that doesn’t matter any more. Get them all back and let’s get started on those impeachment trials. Start with Rep. Maxine Waters (R-CA) who has been inciting violence against Republicans for years. That’s where they want to go with all this.

As Rand Paul observed:

If we are to blame politicians for the most violent acts of their craziest supporters, then many of my colleagues would face some pretty harsh charges themselves. I’ve been shot at, assaulted and harassed by supporters of the left, including some who directly said the words of politicians moved them to this violence.

I was there at the ballfield when a deranged Bernie Sanders supporter almost killed Steve Scalise and seriously wounded several others. At the time, Democrats were arguing that the GOP plan for health care was “you get sick, then they let you die.” Is it any wonder an insane left-wing gunman took that rhetoric to heart and concluded, “If the GOP is going to let me die, then maybe I’ll just kill them first”?

Yet he didn’t call and Republicans didn’t call for Bernie or the Democrats involved to be impeached, despite their vitriolic rhetoric.

Paul said if it doesn’t have Roberts maybe it isn’t really an impeachment or constitutional at all.

If Chief Justice Roberts can’t be bothered to come over for the so-called impeachment, makes you wonder if this exercise is constitutional at all.

Leahy, not Roberts, to preside over impeachment trial | TheHill https://t.co/zAJASSKHf9

— Senator Rand Paul (@RandPaul) January 25, 2021

Democrats have literally been trying to impeach Trump since before he got into office and now they’re trying it even after he’s no longer in office. Talk about coup. But they’re unlikely to get that, as my colleague Jeff Charles noted earlier, since they need a 2/3 vote and they need to flip far more Republicans than they are likely to get.