President Trump has famously boasted that he could shoot someone on New York’s Fifth Avenue and not lose support. While he hasn’t yet pulled off that stunt, he has pulled off countless others that no other politician could have survived.
His early dustup with the Pope; mocking a physically disabled journalist; explicitly disrespecting Senator McCain because he was captured, with the implicit disrespect for any other combat vet who was captured; mocking gold star parents whose son died heroically — these would have sealed the fate of any other politician. And that was only the beginning.
President Clinton was impeached for lying about sex. Trump also lied about sex, arguably the least of his transgressions, and paid off the women involved for their silence. While his former attorney, Michael Cohn, is serving time, Trump is left unscathed.
Cutting a Moscow real estate deal with Putin, while campaigning and insisting he had nothing to do with Russia, left many people untroubled.
Prior to the election Trump explicitly asked Russia to assist him in the campaign. The lengthy Mueller investigation affirmed earlier intelligence agency conclusions that Russia did indeed meddle in the election. Thanks in significant part to Attorney General William Barr’s preliminary convoluted roll out of the Mueller Report, Trump was again left unscathed, even as it’s crystal clear that Trump welcomed Russian meddling.
The Report did not exonerate Trump of obstruction of justice. But it left the door open for his defenders to exonerate him, and accuse the FBI of wrongdoing instead. The numerous meetings of Trump’s family and campaign staff with Russians were deemed inconsequential by enough voters that Trump again, for all practical purposes, remained unscathed.
Trump is using the presidency for personal financial gain — as Trump has done with his hotels — the Washington, D.C. hotel and frequent Air Force occupancy at his Scotland Hotel. His family’s questionable meetings with foreign nationals, and son-in-law Kushner’s multiple revisions of security applications, were good reason for failure to obtain security clearance via normal procedures.
The constitutional emoluments clause that forbids presidents from using public office for personal financial gain has not been exercised for the curious reason that “it has never been tested.” Clearly, Trump’s insistence that the 2020 G-7 meetings be held on his property is another case of using his office for financial gain.
Some Democrats have long asserted that obstruction of justice was grounds for impeachment. House Speaker Nancy Pelosi, along with a majority of congressional Democrats, opposed impeachment. Even if the House imposed articles of impeachment, the Republican Senate surely would not convict. Besides, Pelosi foresaw a political backlash believed to put election of House Democrats in marginal districts in jeopardy. Conventional thinking was that since polls showed that a majority of Americans did not favor impeachment, better to wait to oust him during the election of 2020.
Even as Speaker Pelosi, along with a majority of House Democrats, resisted impeachment, Trump taunted that he would welcome it.
Enter the recent whistleblower’s complaint that Trump engaged in troubling actions involving America’s security. The complaint was deemed legitimate by the Inspector General (IG). It was subsequently revealed that it involved a phone call to the Ukrainian president tying military aid to digging up dirt on presidential candidate Joe Biden.
The Whitehouse quickly reacted, releasing a version of the phone call that would “prove” that his call was legitimate, nothing about which to be alarmed — “a perfect phone call,” in Trump’s words.
Just days before the phone call, Trump had suspended $391 million in foreign aid to Ukraine. During the call, Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky asked for U.S. Javelin missiles — anti-tank missiles to use against Russian-backed insurgents in Ukraine. Trump responded by requesting “a favor, though,” to investigate Biden and son, Hunter, who once sat on the board of a Ukrainian company.
Instead of forwarding the whistleblower’s complaint directly to Congress, as stipulated by law, Acting Director of National Intelligence Joseph Maguire forwarded it to Attorney General Barr and White House Council. The House Intelligence Committee demanded to see the formal complaint and called Maguire to testify. Maguire insisted that since such a complaint directly involving the president was unprecedented, was why he had sought White House Council.
One can appreciate that the newly installed Maguire felt that he was in a bind. But the law is clear: upon approval by the IG, the complaint shall be forwarded to Congress.
During the hearing, it was established that the whistleblower followed proper procedures. It was also revealed that the White House took extraordinary measures to bury Trump’s conversation in places where only highly classified information is stored. It was also revealed that other presidential conversations, including those with Putin, are locked away in places such transcripts are not usually stored.
The alignment of the whistleblower’s complaint and Trump’s conversation linking military aid to foreign assistance for Trump’s personal political goals, essentially a shakedown, was enough to motivate a majority of House members to favor a formal impeachment inquiry.
Both Democrats and Republicans are in a dilemma of sorts. Democrats finally called Trump’s bluff. Does Trump really want be one of three presidents in history to have articles of impeachment brought against him, regardless of whether he’s acquitted by the Republican Senate? And do Senate Republicans welcome a vote to protect a president who has openly requested foreign assistance to trash a political opponent?
Democrats risk that voters, with assistance of the media, will accuse them of “overreach,” and “undoing an election.” But isn’t there a greater risk in letting Trump’s transgressions slide, being seen as weak and ineffective while letting Trump’s unlawful behavior go unchallenged?
Republicans insist that there is nothing impeachable in the phone call. If they don’t see it it’s because they don’t want to: asking a foreign entity to intervene for personal political gain is impeachable.
It is probably politically better for Democrats to be chastised as “too aggressive” and lose, than to do nothing and reinforce their reputation as weak and helpless.
— John Waelti of Monroe, a retired professor of economics, can be reached at jjwaelti1@tds.net. His column appears Saturdays in the Monroe Times.
