(AP Photo/Alex Brandon)

The whistleblower was not in on the call.

It was hearsay.

“Everything Trump says was in the best interests of the country.”

No due process.

Secret basement meetings (with Republicans in attendance).

“The Ukrainian president didn’t do the investigation… No quid pro quo.”

“Was there a quid pro quo?” E.U. Ambassador Gordon Sondland asked rhetorically, testifying before the House committee. “The answer is yes!”

Even when they hear the facts from Trump’s own appointee, they willfully ignore it. Even in the face of overwhelming evidence from career State Department officials and others, they disregard it. Even when the Intelligence Community’s senior expert on Russia and the former Soviet Republics including Ukraine with decades of experience, testifies, they ignore the facts.

And now, even when White House e-mails support officials, including White House chief of staff Mulvaney, that they were looking for legal justification to hold up nearly $400 million in aid to Ukraine, Republicans look the other way.

“…I have heard, some of you on this committee, appear to believe that Russia,” Ukraine and Russia expert Dr. Fiona Hill testified, “and its security services did not conduct a campaign against our country—and that perhaps, somehow, for some reason, Ukraine did. This is a fictional narrative that has been perpetrated and propagated by the Russian security services themselves.

“The unfortunate truth is that Russia was the foreign power that systematically attacked our democratic institutions in 2016. This is the public conclusion of our intelligence agencies, confirmed in bipartisan Congressional reports. It is beyond dispute, even if some of the underlying details must remain classified.”

Nonetheless, Louisiana Senator John Kennedy told Fox News anchor Chris Wallace, “I don’t know, nor do you, nor do any of us,” Kennedy said. “Ms. Hill is entitled to her opinion.”

Wallace points out that the “entire” intelligence community says Russia meddle in the 2016 election.

“Right, but it could also be Ukraine,” Kennedy said. “I’m not saying that I know one way or the other.”

As John Adams admonished the jury sitting in judgment of British soldiers falsely accused in the Boston Massacre, “Facts are stubborn things.”

And it is precisely the facts that Republicans continue to ignore. However, what Adams says next; what he explicitly warns against, is profoundly prophetic:

“…and whatever may be our wishes, our inclinations, or the dictates of our passions, they cannot alter the state of facts and evidence.”

Republicans are completely ruled by their passions even as they ignore their duty to the Constitution.

Instead, they’ve taken an “oath” to protect and defend a president who has abused his powers and corrupted our democracy for his own self-interests.

If facts no longer matter, then there is no accountability. If facts no longer matter then empirical truth is governed by anyone who has the biggest megaphone. If facts no longer matter, democracy fails.

One fact seems to be clear: absent responsibility, honesty and respect for the people they took an oath to represent, Republicans are morally bankrupt.