Since I ran against Mr. Cassidy in 2014, trying to remove Mary Landrieu and keep him out of the U.S. Senate, I feel compelled to respond to Cassidy’s attempt to explain away his actions.

He starts his missive with this:

“The Articles of Impeachment charged President Donald Trump with inciting an insurrection. He chose not to testify, and so guilt or innocence must be inferred by the timeline of events, tweets, and his actions during the invasion of the U.S. Capitol.”

Let’s set aside the fact that former President Trump was acquitted before Mr. Cassidy’s letter was published. What does acquit mean? Acquitted: free (someone) from a criminal charge by a verdict of not guilty.

Mr. Cassidy’s choice of words is interesting. He reveals his lack of appropriate legal analysis on the charge against Mr. Trump and essentially confesses he didn’t listen to actual evidence presented in the proceeding (a trial would have the Chief Justice of the Supreme Court presiding). He used social media posts (some even falsified by the House Impeachment Managers), news reports, doctored video footage using misleading timeline information, and unconfirmed assumptions about Trump’s actions to make his decision. Finally, Cassidy implies that responsibility for the riot should be laid completely on a group called the Proud Boys when we know there were violent leftists in the mob that entered the capitol and encouraged others to do so. I don’t absolve any person of any group of their responsibility but Cassidy is accepting the corporate media’s narrative here and doesn’t know the facts.

Had Mr. Cassidy actually listened during the trial he would have known these things.

In America, jurors are supposed decide guilt or innocence based on the evidence presented that is factual and shows the accused is guilty of the charge. Mr. Trump’s defense team completely destroyed the timeline-linked video presentation and showed the prosecution utterly failed to present facts that proved Mr. Trump guilty of the charge by explaining the appropriate legal analysis based on the charge. That is what the Constitution of the United States demands.

Cassidy buys into the impeachment managers Big Lie theory of the case which presented zero evidence that reaches the standard of guilt for their incitement charge. Not to mention that if Mr. Trump believes the election was being stolen through fraud, like 75% of Republicans and 30% of Democrats believe, how is that a lie? The latest evidence to show Mr. Cassidy’s Big Lie belief wrong is that 35 cases of voter fraud were referred for prosecution in the state of Georgia in the last few days. There is a lot of factual evidence supporting the election fraud accusations, whether Cassidy and his cohorts think so or not.

Cassidy even purports to know the President’s specific thoughts, intentions, and actions in response to the riot (he calls it an invasion). He even accuses the President of refusing to send the National Guard to assist when he knows that is not supported by the facts. The President delegates decision authority in Washington D.C. to Army Secretary McCarthy and that is who made the decision to deploy, upon request. Cassidy also blatantly ignores the facts that the Washington D.C. Mayor refused Federal Law Enforcement and additional National Guard deployment in writing the day before the riots, and that it is Speaker Nancy Pelosi who is responsible for Capitol security, who also didn’t request additional support beforehand when the intelligence was briefed that violence might occur on January 6^th.

Senator Cassidy says he is protecting the Constitution, but he really trampled on it by joining forces with Mr. Trump’s political enemies. Here are the American Constitutional values he ignores in order to reach his guilty vote:

– All Americans have 1st Amendment Rights

– All Americans are entitled to due process

– The law must be applied equally to all Americans

None of these values were honored in the so-called trial of Mr. Trump. In fact, the unconstitutional nature of the trial makes the entire proceeding pointless and against the law, not mention a violation of the defendant’s civil rights.

Cassidy appears to tell us in his follow-on interviews that we are as guilty as he incorrectly thinks Mr. Trump is and we should never forget that. He sides with other Republicans smearing us with dogmatic terms like insurrectionist and domestic terrorist, declaring us enemies of the Republic. On this Presidents Day we should take note, and remember that President Washington faced opposition but never would have accepted citizens seeking redress of grievances as enemies of the Republic. After the Whiskey Rebellion, where the President personally led 13,000 troops to put down the insurrection, Washington even pardoned the two people convicted of treason.

I am saddened and heartbroken the citizens of Louisiana chose this man in 2014 and re-elected him with over a million votes in 2020, because his actions further divide our country by using the lies and misleading information of vindictive politicians instead of following the Constitution he is sworn to defend.