We somehow allowed the Russia investigation to be framed in such a way that about 50% of Americans, even when confronted by evidence of Donald Trump’s multiple instances of obstruction of justice, still seemed to think that he should not be impeached. The Republicans, to their credit, had successfully set the ground rules at the beginning, telling the American people that, unless Mueller could prove collusion between the Trump campaign and the Russians, it would be a victory for the President. This, of course, wasn’t true, as the obstruction of justice itself would have been an impeachable offense, but after Trump’s Attorney General issued his letter stating “no collusion“, and Donald Trump followed up with his “totally exonerated” tweet, it became incredibly difficult for Democrats to make the case. By the time the Mueller report was finally made public by the Attorney General, the damage had already been done. And it didn’t matter that Mueller went to Capitol Hill to say that his report had not exonerated Trump, or that any number of legal scholars had weighed in to say that Trump’s actions, as outlined in the Mueller Report, we’re, in fact, impeachable… The Democrats had allowed the investigation to be framed in the public consciousness around collusion, and, when Mueller didn’t turn up actual audio of Putin and Trump agreeing to a quid pro quo involving a tower in Moscow and a military-grade disinformation campaign directed at Hillary Clinton in exchange for a rollback of sanctions and the dismantling of NATO, the whole thing was pretty much over.
And the Republicans in Congress have been hiding these past several months behind this “no collusion” fig leaf, which has allowed them to keep supporting Donald Trump. It would have been different, they told us, if Trump, instead of standing on stage during the 2016 campaign, and publicly requesting that the Russians hack Hillary Clinton’s emails, had asked Vladimir Putin directly, but, as there was no evidence that he had, they felt comfortable in continuing their support. But, rest assured, if there had been hard evidence that Trump had colluded… if there there was evidence that he’d actually asked a foreign leader to help take down a political rival… well, then it would have been a completely different matter altogether.
Well, here we are.
It would appear as though this is exactly what’s now happened. According to multiple sources, it looks as though Donald Trump recently reached out to Ukraine President Volodymyr Oleksandrovych Zelensky, demanding that he open an investigation into Joe Biden, the man he’s expecting to face in the 2020 general election, or forego millions of dollars in foreign aid that had been appropriated by Congress. Here, with the background, is a clip from The Atlantic.
…The president of the United States reportedly sought the help of a foreign government against an American citizen who might challenge him for his office. This is the single most important revelation in a scoop by The Wall Street Journal, and if it is true, then President Donald Trump should be impeached and removed from office immediately.
Until now, there was room for reasonable disagreement over impeachment as both a matter of politics and a matter of tactics. The Mueller report revealed despicably unpatriotic behavior by Trump and his minions, but it did not trigger a political judgment with a majority of Americans that it warranted impeachment. The Democrats, for their part, remained unwilling to risk their new majority in Congress on a move destined to fail in a Republican-controlled Senate.
Now, however, we face an entirely new situation. In a call to the new president of Ukraine, Trump reportedly attempted to pressure the leader of a sovereign state into conducting an investigation—a witch hunt, one might call it—of a U.S. citizen, former Vice President Joe Biden, and his son Hunter Biden.
As the Ukrainian Interior Ministry official Anton Gerashchenko told the Daily Beast when asked about the president’s apparent requests, “Clearly, Trump is now looking for kompromat to discredit his opponent Biden, to take revenge for his friend Paul Manafort, who is serving seven years in prison.”
If this in itself is not impeachable, then the concept has no meaning. Trump’s grubby commandeering of the presidency’s fearsome and nearly uncheckable powers in foreign policy for his own ends is a gross abuse of power and an affront both to our constitutional order and to the integrity of our elections.
The story may even be worse than we know. If Trump tried to use military aid to Ukraine as leverage, as reporters are now investigating, then he held Ukrainian and American security hostage to his political vendettas. It means nothing to say that no such deal was reached; the important point is that Trump abused his position in the Oval Office…
I don’t know how such things are archived — whether we just have a transcript, or an actual recording of the call between Trump and Zelensky — but it would appear that we now have the “smoking gun” that everyone said we needed in the earlier case with Russia. We have, it would seem, rock solid evidence of collusion. Sadly, though, the only Republican in Congress to speak out thus far is Mitt Romney, who just shared the following.
And, for what it’s worth, even the President is pretty much admitting it now. He started out last week adamantly denying the story, essentially saying that he wouldn’t be so stupid as to say something like this on a call when he knew that U.S intelligence officers were listening, and reiterating that it was “a perfectly fine and routine conversation” and that “nothing was said that was in any way wrong”. Then, yesterday, when someone likely confirmed for him that a transcript or recording existed, his tone changed, and he began sharing quotes about how “an American spy in one of our intelligence agencies (that) may have been spying on our own president”. [I love it when he plays the “I’m the real victim here” card.] And, today, he pretty much just came right out and admitted that he’d talked with Zelensky about Biden.
[Trump also said yesterday that “Everybody’s read (the whistleblower’s complaint, and they all) laugh at it”. The truth, however, is that virtually no one has read the whistleblower’s complaint, as Trump’s DNI and Attorney General are blocking it from Congress, as we discussed on Friday.]
Two quick things about the underlying allegations against Biden. First, Biden said today that he’s “never spoken to (his) son about his overseas business dealings”. And, second, most reliable fact-checks seem to indicate that Biden didn’t do anything wrong. This doesn’t mean, of course, that his son may not have traded on his father’s name to advance his own career, etc. It just doesn’t appear as though, at least in this instance, that Biden took any action to help advance his son’s business interests in Ukraine, as Trump has suggesting. [This has already been looked into a lot.]
I could go on, but I’ll leave you with this from Elizabeth Warren.
She’s absolutely right… I respect Pelosi, and I understand the position that she’s in, not wanting to go forward with impeachment proceedings when she knows that half the country doesn’t agree, and knowing that, even if the House votes to Impeach, Senate Republicans, who are in control of that chamber, likely wouldn’t even call a vote. She doesn’t want a ‘show’ vote, especially if it means harming the members of her delegation who hale from red states. But I think the time for considering such political calculus is well past us now. And Elizabeth Warren is exactly right when she says, “By failing to act (on impeachment earlier) Congress is complicit in Trump’s latest attempt to solicit foreign interference to aid him in US elections“. This is 100% true. And I think I speak for a lot of Democrats who invested heavily during the 2018 campaign when I say that this isn’t what we fought so hard for. This isn’t the kind of action that we had in mind when we fought for a Democratic majority in the House, and it’s not the kind of thing that’ll motivate us to fight again in 2020. We voted for Democrats with the understanding that the’d do their constitutionaly-mandated duty, and remove the criminally-unfit Donald Trump from office, not sit back and wait for a chance to take back the presidency in 2020. Every day we allow him to stay in office, he tests the system more (like a velociraptor testing the fences at Jurassic Park). Every day that we wait, he becomes more emboldened and brazen in his criminality. The longer we put it off, the more sane members of his administration, and of the Republican Congress, are forced out. And every moment we let pass, we become more desensitized to it all. Now is the time for action. We cannot allow this to continue. We need to articulate the case for impeachment for the American people.
