The House Committee investigating former President Donald Trump's assorted efforts to overthrow the 2020 election and remain in power wrapped up its hearings last Thursday, capping a mountain of evidence that the former president, knowing he'd lost, tried everything but the kitchen sink to torpedo American democracy — and then tried the kitchen sink as well. The committee put a bow on things by voting to subpoena Trump to testify under oath about the wannabe Mussolini's coup attempt, daring him to answer questions under oath about the open-and-shut case that he and he alone is the one who tried to steal an election.

It's not that there's a fat chance that Trump will comply with the subpoena. It's more like there's no chance. Before Trump comes in to answer questions under oath, not only will pigs fly; they will circumnavigate the globe. Trump already has pleaded the Fifth more times than Jimmy Hoffa, and he's just getting started.

That Trump will no more appear in the House Committee's hearing room than he will visit Pluto was reinforced by the screed he released hours after the committee voted to subpoena him, complete with the usual whack-job razzmatazz eaten up by the QAnon set. This consisted of the customary fraud-filled oldies-but-goodies, right down to the untethered (and incorrectly used) capital letters. These increasingly make Trump look like he is a prison inmate writing from solitary confinement after corrections officers found he posed a danger to himself or others. "Despite very poor television ratings, the Unselect Committee has perpetrated a Show Trial the likes of which this Country has never seen before," Trump proclaimed in a letter on his website. The committee, according to him, was comprised of "highly partisan political Hacks and Thugs, whose sole function is to destroy the lives of hard-working American Patriots." The sixty-plus judges, including Trump appointees, who determined that Trump's allegations that he won the election were every bit as legitimate as sightings of the Loch Ness monster had conspired against him to commit "the Crime of the Century," and so forth.

These were the ravings of someone for whom walls are closing in, facing very substantial evidence that he has committed multiple violations of the Espionage Act, obstruction of justice, election fraud in Georgia and a conspiracy to impede the counting of electoral votes. If pigs do indeed grow wings and he testifies before the committee, he will generate charges of lying to Congress so numerous as to approach the number of grains of sand on the seashore. If he disregards the subpoena, Congress may refer him to the Justice Department for indictment for contempt of Congress. This would place him in the same boat as his longtime advisers, Steve Bannon and Roger Stone, each the very model of good citizenship if there ever were one.

He has taken the Fifth 440 times in response to questions about whether he committed bank fraud. His former chief financial officer at the Trump Organization has pleaded guilty to 15 crimes, and his company itself goes on trial shortly. He is being sued for $250 million by the New York State attorney general. A judge has ordered him to testify this week in a deposition brought by a woman who alleges he raped her. Mayhem appears to reign among his lawyers, many of whom have been obliged to hire lawyers of their own thanks to their involvement with him. This has led to circulation of the joke that "MAGA" actually means "Making Attorneys Get Attorneys," which is funnier if you're not one of the lawyers who needs one.

But, hey! What a grand choice for the 2024 Republican nominee for president if you're the Grand Old Party, the party of Abraham Lincoln. Trump doesn't have a very great deal in common with Lincoln. He does, however, sound like he's got a great deal in common these days with someone in solitary confinement at Sing Sing.

Jeff Robbins, a former assistant United States attorney and United States delegate to the United Nations Human Rights Council in Geneva, was chief counsel for the minority of the United States Senate Permanent Subcommittee on Investigations. An attorney specializing in the First Amendment, he is a longtime columnist for the Boston Herald, writing on politics, national security, human rights and the Mideast.

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