Your handy guide to modern defenses in Senate trials

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The Affluenza defense.
Key element: the defendant’s affluent parents never taught him about boundaries

The Calvinball defense.
Key element: since the defendant never conceded, he is still America’s President!

The Dershowitz defense.
Key element: a President can do anything he wants to secure re-election

The Deserves Another Chance defense.
Key element: Yeah, he attempted a coup but it failed so let’s give him another chance

The End Violence defense.
Key element: punishing violent thugs just makes them worse

The Faux News defense.
Key element: there was no riot on 6 January

The Friendly Conversation defense.
Key element: the defendant knows you live in a nice house and would be very sad if anything happened to it

The Giuliani defense.
Key element: the defendant demands trial-by-combat
Possible outcome: As the Senate debates choosing Conan the Barbarian as its champion, the defendant's lawyers quit, and the President must defend pro se

The Horned Shaman defense.
Key elements: why isn’t Biden protecting us from Jewish space lasers? Also COVID is a hoax, but fortunately the defendant invented a vaccine, that you probably can’t actually get, and that’s lucky for you because it’s all a communist plot. Do be sure to try some of our free pork sliders in the lobby!

The Insanity defense.
Key element: the ex-President is criminally insane so cannot be barred from future office

The Learned His Lesson defense.
Key element: of course, we’re all very concerned by such juvenile behavior and hope the defendant has learned from this

The Not Technically Illegal defense.
Key element: no statute explicitly outlaws overthrow of the US government by the President

The Right to Counsel defense.
Key element: the defendant can’t get a fair trial because he keeps firing his lawyers

The Suffered Enough Already defense.
Key elements: after the defendant has been badly embarrassed by losing the election and then by his failure to have a mob hang the Vice President, these heartless bastards would humiliate him even further with a Senate trial

The Turley defense.
Key elements: a President cannot be impeached near the end of his term because there’s just not enough time; and the Senate cannot try an ex-President

The Yammering Kindergardener defense.
(pioneered in the first Presidential debate of 2020!)

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1. A list that is accurate and probably will expand beyond anything we can expect.

Welcome to the Twilight Zone.