Opinion: Kevin de León’s defenders emerge, but they’re still a minority
As Kevin de Leon prepares to testify in the corruption trial of President Trump, the liberal and progressive movements he has long supported and defended during 18 months on the witness stand, there are two very important points about his testimony that are so important they deserve much greater attention from liberals and progressives than they’ve been getting.
One is that, in this case, Kevin de Leon is not a neutral witness. He is, in effect, making an alliance with the defendant or the president.
The other is that, at the end of the day, it really does matter what he says. It will not matter what he says in the eyes of Trump and his cronies, but what he says to the rest of the world, especially the American people, matters a great deal.
That’s because what is going to be under oath in the impeachment case in the Senate this week is what Kevin de Leon has told the people of America over the past year and a half. In other words, the case against the president is in all likelihood going to be one of the most comprehensive and complete, and therefore damaging, accounts of what happened between the president and Ukraine in the entire history of American politics, including Watergate.
Given that, the most important part of what Kevin de Leon has to say should be carefully weighed in relation to what he has said before.
After all, what he is presenting is a case for the impeachment of the president. That is, on one hand, his own testimony before the House committees, and on the other, the testimony of the whistleblower.
The fact that he was, to say the least, somewhat reluctant to appear before the committees is a very important point that should never be forgotten.
It is also worth recalling that, when de León first agreed to speak with the State Department and the Treasury inspector general about his