The Democrats have been endlessly repeating their notion of a “fair trial” in the Senate over the past month. That euphemism is inserted into every legacy media Q&A and public utterance. As discussed here, a fair trial is intended to protect the accused against legal excesses by an all-powerful state, not to further tilt a trial against the accused by moving the goalposts.

One of the key elements of the commonly-understood concept of a fair trial is a trial jury that is not already biased against the accused. Senate Democrats, in particular, have violated that tenet with relish. Cory Booker (D-NJ) is just the latest to do so in another George Stephanopoulos softball interview on his ABC News show on Sunday. Let’s examine what he said to see if he will be a fair and impartial juror.

Stephanopoulos: And we are joined now by Democratic Senator Cory Booker. He joins us from Iowa this morning. Senator Booker, thank you for joining us this morning. … You’re also going to be serving now as a judge and juror in this Senate trial of President Trump. You just heard Professor Dershowitz and Senator Shelby saying basically that — at least Professor Dershowitz saying that – even if everything in the House case is accepted as fact, it’s not impeachable. Your response?

Booker: Honestly, that’s just stunning to me. And I don’t know what signal we’re sending to future presidents if that’s the new standard in America, where you can openly solicit foreign interference, where you can hold up taxpayer dollars that, in fact, the Government Accountability Office says was illegal to do so in order to extort, to leverage foreign interference in our elections. This is preposterous that this would not be an impeachable offense, that this standard in America is now that presidents could abuse their power to help in elections. It’s just — this is unacceptable.

Me: “Solicit foreign interference.” “Extort.” Leverage foreign interference in our elections.” Obviously, Spartacus has prejudged the matter before the Democrat House managers have even presented their case. Except of course the two telephone call transcripts and the testimony of the only direct witness, Gordon Sondland, put the lie to those endlessly-repeated Democrat claims that form the basis of their two articles of impeachment. And to throw that GAO canard into the mix is further dezinformatsiya. Booker was silent when Obama broke the same law not once but seven times, as reported here.

Booker (continued): And the fact that we can’t even get Republicans to answer your question directly, is that behavior wrong? It is absolutely wrong.

Me: Your bias is showing again, Cory. Those Republicans are doing what you should be doing,  and that is withholding judgment until you’ve seen the evidence and the President’s rebuttal. But hey, withholding judgment wouldn’t allow you to politicize the process beforehand then, would it?

Booker (continued): And this is the thing that really disturbs me, because we as senators have access to classified information, much of which is actually in the public sphere, about the incredibly detailed, earnest efforts by the Russians and others to interfere in our elections. This is real. From Madagascar to the EU, democracy is under attack by at least Russia and more countries to try to undermine democracy as we know it. We have a president that has openly been engaging with the Russians and others — right now, in this case, with Ukraine — to try to undermine our election. This is a real threat to this nation. And so, what are we going to do when a president openly, unabashedly, in a way that’s proven and provable, in the way that his top levels of his administration have said was done, what are we going to do when our democracy is under threat? Tolerate this behavior or do something to stop it and hold that person accountable?

Me: Booker spins the Russian election meddling in 2016 to imply it was far worse than it really was. He would have us forget that no one has provided a scintilla of evidence that a single vote was changed by the $600K social media effort of a Russian-run company plus the efforts of 6 Russian GRU officers. He also glosses over the fact that others were involved in election-meddling in 2016, too, including Ukraine and China. He claims that foreign election meddling is a “real threat to our democracy.” But of course, he ignores the much greater threat of meddling by the social media giants and the Democrats’ rampant use of voter fraud to undermine the integrity of our elections, and indeed is happily willing to tolerate that meddling while crying crocodile tears over the paltry Russian meddling. This answer is just further confirmation that he’s already made up his mind without even hearing the case.

Stephanopoulos: One of the big open questions, of course – probably the biggest open question right now in this trial is whether you’re going to hear from new witnesses. One of the proposals you’re seeing floated now from some Republicans is reciprocity, that if the Democrats get the witnesses they’re calling for, then Republicans get the witnesses they are calling for, like Hunter Biden. Is that something you can accept?

Booker: First of all, these assaults on the Biden family are not relevant to what’s at issue in this case. And this is an invitation to try to muddle waters. This is what we’ve been hearing from many right-wing organizations, just try to muddy — muddle the waters. This is a trial going on in the Senate about the conduct of the president of the United States and what is — what is the facts that should be presented should be germane to the issue at hand. And so, I am going to press for what every objective juror should press for, is relevant fact witnesses coming before the Senate. And this absurdity again that there are first hand witnesses, like Bolton, that would not come before the United States Senate, that means we won’t have a kind of trial that every American should expect, where we get to the facts, that we get to the relevant information, and can discern the truth.

Me: Actually, the Bidens are central to the case, as the evidence of rampant Ukrainian corruption predated President Trump’s administration, and ensuring that the Ukrainians were actually living up to their promises to investigate that corruption was well within the President’s authority to ascertain before the release of any foreign aid. This is how Ken Starr put it in an interview with Mark Levin a couple of weeks ago: “[I]t was entirely appropriate for the President to want an announcement of beginning investigations, totally appropriate. Why? Because the Ukrainians had previously promised to investigate corruption but had not lived up to their word.” And witness reciprocity sure seems pretty fair to me, as it likely does to any fair-minded American watching this farce unfold. Do the Democrats want to open up that Pandora’s box because they have a lot to lose?

Booker (continued): … Our democracy is under attack. It is under ongoing attack. We have a president that is cooperating or leveraging, working with foreign powers to try to undermine the fairness of an election. We need to act. We need to act now.

Me: That sure doesn’t seem like something an unbiased juror would say to me!

Booker (continued): And all of us — and I know my senators. You just had a colleague that I am friends with, Richard Shelby. I know the goodness of this country, the decency of folks. This is a moment for us to get out of our partisan corners and to look at the long arc of history, and this incredible experiment with democracy that’s been going on for a couple centuries plus right now. We are — history has its eyes on us. How are we going to operate? We cannot cave to partisanship and tribalism that’s destroying our nation. In this moment, we’ve got to let our highest selves come through and sit in those seats and uphold the oath we all just swore last week and do right by our nation to ensure that this democracy endures.

Me: Yeah, yeah, it’s Mom, the flag, and apple pie now with Spartacus. He’s already disclosed his highly partisan opinions and foregone conclusions before the rules for the Senate trial have even been voted on. He’s kidding about calls to set aside” partisanship and tribalism,” isn’t he? We’re not that stupid, especially after watching the House Democrats’ highly partisan impeachment star chamber for 48 days. We’re just supposed to fuhgeddaboudit now and go with the Democrats’ corrupt version of a fair Senate trial? Please.

The President – like all accused in a jury trial – has the right to an impartial jury. Cory Booker should recuse himself from the Senate impeachment trial, as he has openly declared his predisposition and bias on the case. If that’s not open partiality and a conflict of interest, then nothing is.

The end.

P.S. Here’s the whole interview if you care to waste 7 minutes of your day: