Trump faces fight-or-flight moment in Senate impeachment trial
Analysis: With his legacy, his re-election and his movement on the line, it would be quite a retreat for the president to sidestep a full Senate trial.
SHARE THIS -
Dec. 13, 2019, 5:57 PM EST / Updated Dec. 14, 2019, 7:30 AM EST
By Jonathan Allen
WASHINGTON — The closer Republicans get to a Senate impeachment trial of President Donald Trump, the more it looks like an improvised political explosive.
The White House and the Senate Republican Conference are united in their desire to dispose of it, but divided over how to do that in the way that inflicts the most damage to Democrats and the least harm to them. The choice is between a show that gives Trump the chance to turn the tables on his accusers, or a quick dismissal that amounts to an exercise in self-preservation for him and GOP senators.
In other words, it’s fight-or-flight time for Trump.
With his legacy, his re-election and his movement on the line — at a time when congressional Republicans are in lockstep defense of his actions — it would be quite a silent retreat for the chest-thumping, trash-talking Trump to slip away from the chance to have a made-for-TV trial befitting his reality-era presidency.
He sounds like he doesn’t want to.
This browser does not support the video element.
“I wouldn’t mind the long process, because I’d like to see the whistleblower, who’s a fraud, having the whistleblower called to testify in the Senate trial,” he said Friday, referring to the anonymous intelligence community official who first accused him of wrongdoing in a complaint filed with the intelligence community inspector general.
He also noted that he believes that the House’s impeachment process — the Judiciary Committee there approved two articles against him on Friday morning and the full House is expected to approve them next week — has benefited him.
“It’s a very sad thing for our country, but it seems to be very good for me politically,” he told reporters.
And yet he also signaled some willingness to listen to Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell, R-Ky., and some White House advisers who prefer a trial with more “no” and less show.
Download the NBC News app for full coverage of the impeachment inquiry
“I’ll do long or short,” he said.
But while McConnell has kept power in the Republican conference for more than a decade by averting risk, Trump didn’t get to the Oval Office by playing it safe. His instincts likely lean toward brawling.
The hope inside the GOP right now is that if he does want to brawl, it’s with Democrats, not fellow Republicans. And so they’re seeking a sweet spot of consensus that suits him.
“The president should have every right to put on the defense he wants,” said Sen. Mike Lee, R-Utah, who is among a group of lawmakers that resisted McConnell’s initial plan for a quick trial that would preclude witnesses. “And I have every confidence that [White House Counsel] Pat Cipollone and the rest of the president’s defense team will give him the best advice to make the right decision.”
The calculus is complicated by a set of instincts and interests shared by the president and some of his most aggressive allies in the Senate that are broadly at odds with those of McConnell, Republican senators in tough re-election bids, and White House officials who fear that a circus-like trial could result in unnecessary pain for everyone.
This browser does not support the video element.
Like any leader of a party caucus in Congress, McConnell will place his first loyalty with his peers and keeping them in power. But what’s perceived as good for Republicans in hard re-election fights — a quick trial that puts less of a spotlight on Trump’s alleged misdeeds and the senators’ handling of them — doesn’t fit with Trump’s apparent desire to present his case before the presidential election season heats up.
This Senate, a far more hospitable arena for Trump than the House, is the only remaining venue for him to litigate it.
“What’s interesting is they’re totally split on it right now,” said Rachel Bovard, a former Senate Republican aide who keeps in close touch with GOP officials. Some “want to sail directly into the wind … that’s what the president wants.”
The truth is that either option could backfire.
A speedy trial might make Trump look more guilty, because Democrats will argue he ran and hid behind Republican votes without defending himself. At the same time, a longer version might expose Trump and GOP senators to further revelations about the Ukraine scandal, or simply the humiliation of a public spectacle.
“Get it over fast is the best way,” Bovard said, concluding that more time tends to lead to unforced errors for Senate Republicans. “Everything they touch goes sideways.”
McConnell is clearly eager to avoid a bigger public split with Trump that could hurt Republican senators with Trump’s base. On Friday, he spoke with Fox News’ Sean Hannity about his efforts to coordinate with Cipollone, who may lead the president’s defense on the Senate floor and who could, conceivably, be a witness in the trial.
But even in tying himself to Cipollone, he revealed that he remains favorable to a quiet trial that would be positively un-Trumpian.
“I’m going to take my cues from the president’s lawyers,” McConnell said. “But, yes, If you know you have the vote, you’ve listened to the arguments on both sides, and believe the case is so slim, so weak that you have the votes to end it, that might be what the president’s lawyers would prefer, and you could certainly make a case for making it shorter rather than longer since it’s such a weak case.”
Of course, the president doesn’t always do what his lawyers want — especially if they’re telling him to shut up and take the win.
Is a trap being set for Trump in the Senate trial?
BY DOUGLAS MACKINNON, OPINION CONTRIBUTORThe views expressed by contributors are their own and not the view of The HillTWEET SHARE EMAIL
Can 20 U.S. senators withstand the potentially irresistible temptation to reverse the results of the 2016 election and remove a president a number of them openly or privately dislike?
Since Donald Trump announced his intention to run for the White House on June 16, 2015, many of the entrenched elites across the various power centers of Washington and beyond have spent many of their waking hours trying to stop or unseat him.
The political charade of an impeachment “investigation” is but the latest example. But that impeachment charade could harbor the greatest threat to Trump’s presidency.
Over the past week, I have heard from three seasoned Republicans who fear that President Trump and the West Wing are seriously underestimating the potential danger of a Senate trial. Human nature and common sense dictate that, despite the well-meaning resolution circulated by Sen. Lindsey Graham (R-S.C.) condemning the House impeachment process, it’s important for the White House to understand that the weight of history is settling upon the shoulders of these senators - some of them quite weak - and because of that pressure, private conversations are taking place and a trap may be sprung for the president in that trial.
A potential trap set by seemingly loyal Republican senators.
Those I spoke with, like others, worry that the impeachment process, especially a potential conviction in the Senate, will forever poison the integrity of our constitutional and congressional processes and put every future president at risk of having his or her election reversed for partisan and ideological reasons.
But such is the lingering animosity about Trump by many in the GOP establishment, and there very well may be enough Republican senators willing to topple the first domino and set in motion a chain reaction - no matter the consequences.
In a speech to the American Enterprise Institute in October, former governor and U.S. Ambassador Nikki Haley put her finger on the greater issue, saying in part, “President Trump is a disruptor. That makes some people very happy, and it makes some people very mad. … When I was in the administration, I served alongside colleagues who believed the best thing to do for America was to undermine and obstruct the president. Some wrote about it anonymously in The New York Times. Others just did it. They sincerely believed they were doing the right thing. I sincerely believed they weren’t. … No policy disagreement with him … justifies undermining the lawful authority that is vested in his office by the Constitution.”
What’s at stake, Haley said, “is not President Trump’s policies. What’s at stake is the Constitution.”
She is correct, but does all of this go beyond Trump being a disruptor? As we have witnessed, Trump is being opposed, called out and undermined through leaks by multiple anonymous and named sources from the “deep state,” his own National Security Council, former White House staff, former and current Pentagon, State Department and diplomatic officials, members of Congress and their staffs, and basically every other agency within the federal government.
There appears to be a common thread that runs through all of this opposition and stated hatred: “He is not part of the club. He is not one of us. He can’t be controlled.”
The unrelenting opposition to Trump is not based on the fictional quid pro quo with Ukraine’s president but rather a desperate need by the entrenched establishment from both political parties to maintain the status quo of their all-powerful club - aka part of the “swamp” Trump sought to drain.
For Trump to be convicted in a Senate trial, 20 Republican senators would have to join forces with the 47 Democrats. We should not worry about those who openly dislike Trump, such as Sens. Mitt Romney (R-Utah), Susan Collins (R-Maine) or Lisa Murkowski (R-Alaska); we should worry about those in the purple states, who face tough reelection fights in 2020, and those who have continually criticized and demeaned the president in private.
What is driving all of this, of course, is the fear that Trump will win reelection. Well, 63 million Americans voted for him in 2016, and 20 GOP senators soon may have the power to invalidate those votes. Can they resist doing so and vote not to convict? Conventional wisdom says that will be the outcome. But as we all know when it comes to Donald Trump, you can throw conventional wisdom right out the window.
For that reason, when it comes to a trial in the Senate, Trump and the West Wing need to remember the sage advice of President Ronald Reagan: “Trust, but verify.”
Douglas MacKinnon, a political and communications consultant and author, was a writer in the White House for Presidents Ronald Reagan and George H.W. Bush and former special assistant for policy and communications at the Pentagon during the last three years of the Bush administratio
The Hill 1625 K Street, NW Suite 900 Washington DC 20006 | 202-628-8500 tel | 202-628-8503 fax
What a farce, implying the Republicans will not back Trump, after the corruption, sedition, and outright Treason the Democrats have already committed against America.
Wether the Constitution is based on a present model, or an approximated objective, the partiality and the partisanship of it’s interpretation can be understood, in light of past or future variable elements of the sense of that understanding.
However , such dialectic makes little sense without that variability, since the Republicans see it as transcending that interpretation in an absolute sense, and that basically is shown by the evidentiary charges of foreign interference and collusion.
That reduces the applicability if said constitution’s understand ing in terms of contradictory rhetoric.
Today the difference is further fine -tuned by relativistic inferencial terms, and hence the contradiction appeals to a wider scope of interpretation.
The party line further fragments this divided partisanship, whereas a single layered divided one dimensional rhetoric rules the bilateral model.
Functionally independent, by checks and balances , excluded elements mirror preceding interpretations, irrespective of actual mutual involvement ; In stead of a smooth and continuous procedure - the disjunctives eliminate the need for a
functional middle.
In stead , the view of a center as a shifting fulcrum on a single trajectory ,is a description based on elements that inherently make sense. The continuity is comprised of elements which may not cohere with each other.
The time we spent here arguing about the idea of the gaps within that continuum , giving rise to original framing and content , may give pause
to giving a more accurate sense of how the shift toward either side of the aisle may effect equilibrium in establishing constitutional intent. Rather , instead by split mandate on the idea of check and balances, a progressive, rather then a regressive (make America great again) inductive could be far more effective to us and future generations.
That one of the earliest charges against Trump was an absence of a declared mandate, a charge that lead to the actual position we as society find ourselves in, often goes unrecognized nowadays.
The missing element is precisely the theatrical dialectic, that has.been used to create the anomaly as collusive. Hegel & Marx , instead of developing the required continuous structural succession to create an ever widening conjunction in form and practice,( as shown by the the existentially reduced phenomena of the the spirit of the constitutive aspects of the nothingness of the spirit) , had no relation to the manner in which it effected the materiality of it’s sensibility. They are mere expressed opinions in fragmented terms. The gap created a demand for resolution, and the filler, Kant’s imperative in categorical terms comes to mind.
No mention from either side of a.compromise, basically because putting party line of either into a compromising situation, widens the gap , rather then narrowing plausibility, into contradictive points of view. The constitution is reduced to competing , rather then unified modes of interpretation.
Nowhere do the colluded economic and political considerations seen as related, that is why the major defense Trump uses to his lack of mandate in the impeachment procedure is the materially precedented defense: the roaring economy, as he sees tax cuts play into it. He disclaims any qualitative and unified priority as a necessary distinction, and the fact that the tax cut improves mostly the upper social strata , does not enter the equation in his mind.
Great Compromises in United States history lay historically alongside the necessity to change the consisting negative effects prior assumptions of larger collusive and unrecognized relationships to the fragmented logically continuous sequences, that mirrored the actual spatial-temporal spaced out facts and fictions.
That Ayn Rand was able to justify this with a shrug, developed the view which made the transcendental irrelevant , and created the idea that Marxism dealt a fatal blow to the dialectic.
When the USSR was replaced by a diminished Russia, the loss of the material invalidated and totally expunged the idea of spiritual progressive development. It’s consequence was split by partisan rhetoric, in literal terms of what constitutes political development, within the confines of narcissistic brackets, returning it’s self as subsisting as in for it’s self, rather then in it’s self.
There the distinction became axiomatic and contradictory. The 'for-it’s self became the contrary of what it should have developed into, it mirrured the conjectures of mimicking the sudden morphed values, that negated the conservative values of institutionalized policy and long held cultural predicates. The process was shorted, at a much faster rate then cultural associations could absorb.
The resulting confusion has become an international, macabre dance, of power played determinants, with blind determinism of the will to succeed became the battle cry.
This old dance, has nothing but a foreboding structural precedence behind it, and should resonate with it’s loosely associated forbidding aspect, an aspect that can be associated with dialogue going underground, each party becoming almost a secret organization, each with it’s own particular agenda.
This is the time to recognize imminent danger, and not long after from hence, when the waste in human value is belatedly and with feigned regret is finally expressed.
There is more to this diatribe, then seemingly simple obfuscation can gain the power, to enable a national/ international will to set the agenda by which to govern, not only through materially induced Machiavellian stratagem, but by reliving the spirit of the Law, which does transcend the historically significant milestones which required action through time.
Compromise was at several times in history a requisite by which to go on living , by measure of rationality.
Evidence already gathered has revealed John Bolton’s deep misgivings about the way Trump was pressurising Ukraine for personal political gain.
Trump impeachment inquiry
Trump impeachment: Democrats push for Bolton to testify in Senate trial
Schumer writes to McConnell seeking terms of trial
The lies have it: how Republicans abandoned the truth
Ed Pilkington in New York
Mon 16 Dec 2019 08.38 EST
Democrats are pressing for John Bolton, the former national security adviser fired by Donald Trump in September, and the president’s acting chief of staff Mick Mulvaney, to be called to testify in the impeachment trial expected to be held in the Senate next month.
Trump impeachment: Democrats fume as Republicans rally behind president
The demand that two key eye witnesses to many of the most contentious elements of the Ukraine scandal should testify was contained in a letter from Chuck Schumer, the top Democrat in the Senate, to his Republican counterpart Mitch McConnell.
The request sets up a bruising clash over the terms of only the third impeachment trial in US history.
The trial, which Schumer proposes should start on 7 January, is now all but certain. The House of Representatives, controlled by the Democrats, is set to vote in favor of two articles of impeachment on Wednesday.
In his letter, Schumer lays out a possible structure based on how Bill Clinton’s impeachment was organised in 1999. He pointedly notes that the ground rules on that occasion were approved by a vote of 100-0.
He writes: “Senate Democrats believe strongly, and I trust Senate Republicans agree, that this trial must be one that is fair, that considers all of the relevant facts … The trial must pass the fairness test with the American people. That is the great challenge for the Senate in the coming weeks.”
But hopes of a similar bipartisan agreement over the likely trial were all but dead in the water before Schumer sent his letter. Republicans have made clear they have no intention of abiding by constitutionally proscribed parameters for the trial, which effectively place senators in the role of jurors.
McConnell, who as the majority leader will have ultimate say over how the trial is conducted, has stated brazenly that Trump will not be convicted and that he will design the trial in consultation with the president – the lead juror in league with the defendant.
“Everything I do during this, I’m coordinating with the White House counsel,” McConnell said last week.
Other senators have indicated they have made reached a verdict of acquittal even before the first witness is called.
“I have made up my mind, I’m not trying to pretend to be a fair juror here,” Lindsey Graham, the Trump apologist from South Carolina, has said.
This weekend, footage of Graham speaking in 1999, when he was a House manager in the impeachment of Bill Clinton, made the rounds on social media.
“I have a duty far greater than just getting to the next election,” Graham said in the footage. “Members of the Senate have said, ‘I understand everything there is about this case, and I won’t vote to impeach the president.’ Please allow the facts to do the talking … Don’t decide the case before the case’s end.”
Though the Republicans are in the driving seat, their control is not beyond challenge. Were the Democrats to persuade just four Republicans to vote against party lines they could reach the 51 votes needed to determine some features of the trial.
In an interview with CNN on Monday, Schumer implied that getting those four votes was not out of the question, though he would give no names of potential targets.
“There are a good number of Republicans who are troubled by what the president did,” he said, “who want to see all the facts.”
Speculation has focused on senators including Mitt Romney of Utah, who has criticised Trump relatively strongly, and moderates Susan Collins, of Maine, and Lisa Murkowski of Alaska.
Trump faces two articles of impeachment. The first accuses him of misusing his office to bully Ukraine into investigating Joe Biden in a way that would benefit Trump’s re-election campaign; the second charges the president with obstructing Congress by blocking witnesses to impeachment hearings.
Despite the hyperpartisan battle ahead, Schumer’s demand for Bolton and Mulvaney to be called as witnesses could be significant as it goes to the heart of the evidence of “high crimes and misdemeanors” that impeachment is devised to penalise.
Two other key officials have also been requested by the Democrats: Mulvaney’s senior adviser, Robert Blair, and Michael Duffey, associate director for national security, Office of Management and Budget.
Trump impeachment: Lindsey Graham will ‘not pretend to be a fair juror’
Evidence already gathered has revealed Bolton’s deep misgivings about the way Trump was pressurising Ukraine for personal political gain, reportedly complaining: “I am not part of whatever drug deal [Trump aides] are cooking up”.
Mulvaney’s testimony would also be potentially critical given his statement in October that there had indeed been quid pro quo with Ukraine. The Trump administration withheld almost $400m in military aid to the country at the same time as demanding an investigation into Biden.
Alongside Schumer’s letter, the Democrat-controlled judiciary committee also released early on Monday its complete 658-page report into impeachment.
It charges Trump with placing “his personal, political interests above our national security, our free and fair elections, and our system of checks and balances. He has engaged in a pattern of misconduct that will continue if left unchecked.
Trying to be objective here is like looking for a skull of a mind who has been severed by a two edged sword prior to Descartes’ “I am because I think”.
Throughout, I have emphasized the middle ground, advocated by the greatest centrist the world has ever known, Immanuel Kant. He admonished the evil genius , who really put himself in the centerfold of a helpless narcissist, a narcissist who owed his genius not to himself, (although reading him one would think so( but as our very own Peacegirl would have it- he could not help it.)
Now the will not to go go insane from the effects of social constraining derivatives, offering little choice in matters that bifurcirate ideal forms from ego constructs-but wait-I will promise to lighten up, by first de-differentiating the should with the factual is:
And if You think I’m kidding, Wendy, be assured this plays into it per program
The objectives of the well esteemed doctors, and these were esteemed generational men, who planned their livelihood, hoodwinking all the people who were written off …
The point is what followed was rationalizations which disallowed rationality, and the charge that it is the democrats who are trying to diminish Democracy , does give rise to talking points.
But this whole thing is seen as just another day in the life, and needs to inform through media and whatever it takes, including the impeachment.
The people will disallow the Constitution itself , as do nihilists the bible.
To be perfectly real and honest, we are grappling with the ideally real, which is being sold down the toilet with an inherent humanist platform, a non existent idea, that Trump tried to run on, on absentia-( not the platform, but it’s ghost)- and it ran on contradiction, the same as the one pushed by Ecmanu, who sees it as a necessary tableau, for sanitiy’s sake, so the Ameican bible thumpers can understand as they are understood.(Messianic, yea?)
The thing is people don’t know who they really are any more, or what, especially the Southern Anti Be beloomers, who actually do themselves in with vapid, watery issues of the toilets, into which all the garbage should be dumped.
But it ain’t so easy. The baby may be dumped in with the bathwater, and we all know who the baby is.
But the fact, each generarion lives for that blessed child -naivety, innocence, social good will, liberte and justice, and fraternity for all.
But aue contraire, the French supported amexit, now the are verboten Brexit. The party has not changed, it has proceeded non stop, with major players gone through a hundred years’ long myopic amnesia, and to all of them all the reduxes, the deconstruction , don’t mean anything, they still invoke meant masturbatory amnesia, and ww1 & 2, really did not happen
They can retreat back, via the time machine invented by Mr. Wells, who was involved in this way back, before even the decline of the West put western imperialism on notice.
Wendy, the object to it all gives sufficient ground to objectivity, and the philosophers of the mind, realized this -the kundalini of the mind, I think-therefore?- the had to come up with something that meant something.
playing the devil’s advocate, an
, that the precious middle could only be presently effected by some magical system, for even bubbles, nor great schizms could envoke the promise of some Great Compromise.
Was it Henry Clay? Yes I think it was but I will look it up.
.Freud’s analysis worked ok, until the reduction ignored eidectic logic, and opened the gates of societal madness.
This is why clay did and up comic trump can not succeed, because he is by now an emperor disrobed…
Merely comic effecting some temporary relief, kind of like the THE BAPTIST was in the orgasmic days of the Ceasar.
Someone has to become real, and the only reality nowedays stands on relief,
relief of those homeless world wide, who have to bite the bullshit.
The Babtist , of course will be followed by a greater genius, a greater evil genius, who at least has to admit to the farce, and teach the children with a minimum of hypocracy, otherwise? Well, they will start philosophy even before learning to read or rite…
The models of objectivity will mistakenly simulate dolls who even now prefer real men, and not machines.
The ideal will crumble as the grains of sand they were built to live in.
The sea will wash them away, with the coming tide.
Trump savages impeachment proceedings in letter to Pelosi
“More due process was afforded to those accused in the Salem Witch Trials,” the president wrote.
President Donald Trump wrote: “You are declaring open war on American democracy.” | Drew Angerer/Getty Images
By QUINT FORGEY and CAITLIN OPRYSKO
12/17/2019 02:39 PM EST
President Donald Trump on Tuesday savaged House Democrats’ impeachment proceedings in a six-page letter to Speaker Nancy Pelosi that read like a collection of his most vitriolic tweets.
The fiery missive, frequently punctuated with exclamation points, came loaded with hyperbolic assertions — including the president’s claim that “more due process was afforded to those accused in the Salem Witch Trials” and his accusation that Pelosi and House Democrats “view democracy as your enemy!”
Trump charged that the current impeachment drive “represents an unprecedented and unconstitutional abuse of power” by Democratic lawmakers that he argued has been “unequaled in nearly two and a half centuries of American legislative history.”
“By proceeding with your invalid impeachment, you are violating your oaths of office, you are breaking your allegiance to the Constitution, and you are declaring open war on American democracy,” he wrote.
The heated correspondence comes a day before the House is expected to vote on articles of impeachment charging the president with abuse of power and obstruction of Congress, likely making Trump the third president in U.S. history to be impeached.
But the broader intent of the letter to the speaker — which appeared to represent little more than a messaging document, rehashing the same grievances Trump has frequently aired mixed with legal defense — was not immediately clear.
White House counsel Pat Cipollone issued a similarly confrontational letter in October to Pelosi and the three committee chairs leading the impeachment probe, writing that their inquiry lacked “any legitimate constitutional foundation” and stating that the administration would not comply with Democratic lawmakers’ requests.
Trump’s letter Tuesday, however, represented his first formal, written rebuke to House Democrats since they launched the process to remove him from office.
In one portion of the letter, Trump falsely accused Democrats of denying him due process throughout the inquiry. The White House has twice been offered the chance to have lawyers present in different phases of public hearings for the inquiry and declined both opportunities. Instead, Trump’s legal team has begun to coordinate with members of the Republican-led Senate for an upcoming trial.
The president also tried multiple times to turn Democrats’ accusations back on them, even as he mocked the two articles of impeachment he’d been charged with: abuse of office and obstruction of Congress. He argued that former Vice President Joe Biden, a potential 2020 rival whom Trump sought a Ukrainian investigation into, was the one who was truly guilty of abusing his office. And he asserted that Democrats were “turning a policy disagreement between two branches of government into an impeachable offense” while establishing a deeply damaging precedent for presidents to come.
He blasted the charges against him as “completely disingenuous, meritless and a baseless invention of your imagination” and “preposterous and dangerous,” dismissing Democrats’ allegations as “fantasy” despite having hours of testimony to back them up.
Trump also dinged the speaker for what he labeled “your false display of solemnity,” calling Pelosi’s consistent somber demeanor when discussing the inquiry “perhaps most insulting of all.”
He accused lawmakers of harboring “Impeachment Fever,” calling out several key players in the investigation by name, and said that members who vote to impeach are showing “how deeply they revile the voters and how truly they detest America’s Constitutional order.”
Trump railed about the process in person to reporters at the White House moments after the letter was transmitted, but wouldn’t take any responsibility for his behavior, which has been criticized even by some of his backers in Congress.
“No, I don’t take any,” Trump responded instantly when asked whether he accepted any of the blame for the current political storm. “Zero, to put it mildly.” His interaction with reporters functioned as an abridged version of the letter he’d sent to Pelosi, making several of the same arguments as he sat beside the Guatemalan president.
Although Trump wrote that he had “no expectation” Pelosi would bring the impeachment proceedings to a halt, he added: “I write this letter to you for the purpose of history and to put my thoughts on a permanent and indelible record.”
Trump’s impeachment shouldn’t be the sole worry for aides involved in the Ukraine scheme
A president’s immunity from prosecution while in office has not historically spared his aides from indictment when they’ve acted on illegal directives.
Image: Gordon Sondland and Oliver North
Getty Images
Dec. 3, 2019, 8:56 AM PST
By Michael Conway, Former counsel, U.S. House Judiciary Committee
History teaches that doing the bidding of a president does not shield subordinates from the consequences of breaking the law. Whether in Watergate in the 1970s or the Iran-Contra affair in the 1980s, a president’s immunity from prosecution for acts while in office has not spared senior administration officials from being indicted for acting illegally in carrying out presidential directives.
That specter complicates the decision faced by current administration officials whose testimony has been sought by Congress in its impeachment inquiry. President Donald Trump’s order that they refuse to testify has had the side benefit of allowing them to hide their own actions from Congress and the public. On the other hand, it exposes them to the Republicans’ talking point that the officials were rogue agents in dealings with Ukraine.
The U.S. ambassador to the E.U., Gordon Sondland, decided to testify. On his third attempt to explain his role in Ukraine to the House Intelligence Committee, he sought to protect himself by swearing that he was acting “at the express direction of the president.” But if Sondland made this assertion in the belief that invoking the president’s role would protect him from potential criminal liability, he is woefully mistaken.
Related
OPINION
Robert Redford: America is in crisis. It’s time to rid ourselves of Trump.
The president’s scheme, Democrats argue, was intended to trade military aid to Ukraine or an invitation to Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskiy for a White House meeting with Trump, for Ukraine’s announcement of an investigation into Joe Biden and his son Hunter — which could be seen by prosecutors as bribery, extortion or illegal campaign finance violations. If so, Sondland could be prosecuted even if, under existing Department of Justice policies, Trump cannot.
And Sondland is not the only one to face potential legal exposure. According to Sondland, Secretary of State Mike Pompeo, Office of Management and Budget head Mick Mulvaney and Rudy Guiliani were all “in the loop” on Trump’s plan to have Ukraine investigate a Trump political opponent.
The law, however, has a more formal term for being in a “loop” to obtain an illegal act: conspiracy. And even though Ukraine never announced the investigation, a conspiracy to commit attempted bribery or attempted extortion runs afoul of federal criminal statutes even if the effort ultimately failed.
Related
OPINION
Impeachment shows Kim Kardashian is a better adviser to Trump than Rudy Giuliani
Prosecuting Trump aides for illegal acts the president requested they perform would not be without precedent. Multiple White House and administration officials serving both Presidents Nixon and Reagan were indicted and convicted for federal crimes committed by them in furtherance of presidential objectives.
In the Watergate cover-up, three key Nixon aides — Chief of Staff H.R. Haldeman, White House adviser John Ehrlichman and former Attorney General John Mitchell — were indicted and convicted for conspiracy to obstruct justice, including hush money payments to Watergate defendants, obstruction of justice and lying under oath.
In its final report, the House Judiciary Committee found that Nixon had directed those subordinates in the cover-up including his “directive to Haldeman on June 23, 1972, to have the CIA request the FBI to curtail its Watergate investigation.” That directive ultimately led to Nixon’s downfall: Following the Supreme Court decision ordering the release of White House tapes, the recording of the June 23 meeting was called a “smoking gun” that led Republican congressional leaders to persuade Nixon to resign.
Trump faces fight-or-flight moment in Senate impeachment trial
At Haldeman’s sentencing hearing, his lawyer, John J. Wilson, told Judge John J. Sirica that “whatever Bob Haldeman did, so did Richard Nixon.” He added, “I hope that your honor considers whatever Bob Haldeman did, he did not for himself but for the president of the United States.” The court, though, was unmoved: Haldeman was sentenced to 30 months to 8 years in prison; so were Ehrlichman and Mitchell. Haldeman served 18 months before he was paroled.
In the next decade, another set of senior government officials learned the same hard lesson. Acting at the behest of then-President Ronald Reagan, officials became involved in the sale of arms to Iran despite an embargo and used of some of the proceeds — in direct contravention of a congressional ban — to aid guerrillas fighting in Nicaragua. The episode, called the Iran-Contra affair, was investigated by an independent counsel, Lawrence Walsh.
After carrying out Reagan’s orders, and thereby committing acts for which they eventually faced legal liability, 14 officials ended up being indicted in connection with the scandal on charges including perjury, withholding evidence, obstruction of justice, false statements and more. The defendants included national security advisers John Poindexter and Robert McFarlane, Defense Secretary Caspar Weinberger, Assistant Secretary of State Elliott Abrams and White House aide Oliver North.
An internal analysis by a lawyer on Walsh’s staff, which was publicly released in 2011, recounted what Weinberger said to Reagan — who approved the operation — in a White House meeting on Dec. 5, 1985. Weinberger raised the prospect that they might all end up in jail, adding “visiting hours are on Thursdays,” according to the report.
Of the 14, nine defendants were convicted, one case was dismissed and, while North and Poindexter were also convicted, their convictions were reversed on appeal. The final two defendants (Weinberger and a CIA supervisor) were awaiting trial in December 1992 when President George H.W. Bush, having just lost his re-election bid, pardoned the two and four others who had been convicted. In granting these pardons, Bush was acting on the recommendation of his attorney general, William Barr, who is now serving in that role for Trump.
Sondland and others may harbor the hope that the president, perhaps at the urging of Barr, will exercise his pardon power for anyone criminally charged in the Ukraine episode. But before putting their faith in such a prospect, they may want to see how that worked out for former Trump helpers Michael Cohen, Paul Manafort and Michael Flynn — all of whom were prosecuted and convicted, and two of whom are already serving time.
Michael Conway
Michael Conway served as counsel for the U.S. House Judiciary Committee in the impeachment inquiry of President Richard M. Nixon in 1974. In that role, he assisted in drafting the committee’s final report to the House of Representatives in support of the three Articles of Impeachment adopted by the committee.
Republican impeachment lies are protecting Trump, but they could destroy America
Republicans appear intent on extinguishing the most fundamental ingredient of a self-governing republic, the concept of truth. That’s deeply sinister.
Republicans in Congress are avidly denying the obvious truths about President Donald Trump’s serial criminality. Though they lack the votes to stop impeachment in the House of Representatives, they are poised to acquit Trump in the Senate, where they easily can block the necessary supermajority of 67 votes required to evict a president from the White House.
The facts of the case are damning. Not only is Trump on record, in a document released by the White House itself, of engaging in extortion and bribery, but his conversation with Ukrainian President Volodomyr Zelensky was the culmination of a plot months in the making. Yet no matter the facts of the imbroglio, the Republican legislators either baldly deny them or interpret them in phantasmagorical ways.
“Ukraine blatantly interfered in our election,” says Sen. Ted Cruz of Texas, repeating a baseless Russian propaganda line. Rep. Louie Gohmert of Texas, meanwhile, says flatly that the Democrats “are willing to block witnesses from coming in here and testifying before Congress.”
Never mind that it is Trump himself who has taken the extra-constitutional step of ordering all executive branch officials not to comply with congressional subpoenas, and Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell who now wants to exclude witnesses from the Senate trial.
Extinguishing the concept of truth
Acquittal in the Senate, when it comes, will be an example not of democratic deliberation, of the careful sifting and weighing of facts to arrive at some approximation of truth, but the exercise of raw political power.
This is not how a developed democracy should function. Rather, it has something important in common with tin-pot tyrannies in which the leader manipulates the factions and interest groups beneath him to build unbridled power.
To be sure, the political actors backing Trump in Congress are not acting lawlessly; quite the contrary. They are playing the role allotted to them by the Constitution: representing their constituents, i.e., Trump’s base, which opinion polls show would want to stick with him even if he were to shoot someone on Fifth Avenue.
Yet there is nonetheless something deeply sinister about the Republicans’ behavior. They appear intent on extinguishing perhaps the most fundamental ingredient of a self-governing republic, namely, the concept of truth.
It would be one thing — semi-respectable — if Republicans were to maintain that Trump’s misdeeds in Ukraine, however deplorable, did not rise to the level of an impeachable offense. But it is something else entirely to recycle Russian-inspired propaganda, to maintain the wholly incredible narrative that Trump was doing nothing but attempting to fight corruption in Ukraine, or to deny the obvious fact that there was a quid, a pro and a quo when Trump held up military assistance to Ukraine and conditioned its release on the performance of a “favor, though.”
Bedrock threat: Trump impeachment charge on obstruction of Congress will define our future as a nation
These Republicans are propagating blatant lies, just like their incessantly lying leader —who blew past 15,000 “false or misleading claims” on Monday and followed up Tuesday by sending House Speaker Nancy Pelosi a six-page letter crammed with falsehoods. They are insouciantly telling us that white is black and black is white, and never mind the obvious falsity of these propositions because, in the end, no matter the truth, they have the votes to acquit.
Senate on path to reward criminality
This exercise of political power in raw fashion could prove to have profound consequences for the future of human freedom. As the possibility of reason and compromise are destroyed, a venerable constitutional democracy, once the beacon of hope around the world, is coming undone.
William Webster, the only man to head both the CIA and the FBI, someone known to be extraordinarily careful with his words, is warning of a “dire threat to the rule of law in the country I love.”
Fake news tsunami: Denying, ignoring and making up facts are the real Trump-era obstacles to common ground
If the Senate fails to convict and remove Trump, the outcome of our struggles will hinge on an election in which one side will have been effectively granted a license to cheat, a license that can be used again and again. Criminality will be rewarded and law-abiding behavior punished. Grievous injury will have been inflicted on our democracy and with it the cause of democracy around the world.
Political power grows out of the barrel of a gun, was Mao Tse-tung’s famous aphorism. In our gentler American context, we are witnessing the tragic fact that political power can grow out of a fusillade of lies.
The proper term is European, referring to the tribes that went westward and south, during the Ice Age, and Indo, refers to those that went eastward and south, into present day India.
Caucasian refers to their common origins, around the Caucasus, prior to the Ice Age forcing them to go southward.
The linguistic family is Indo-European. Many words are shared by all of these tribes. From east to west.
White is not a race…nor a biological designation. It is only one part of how a species and a sub-species is identified.
It is used because of the currents situation of mixing and not knowing one’s own precise origins.
Like how Negroes from different tribes of Africa are simply called Black.
This simplification includes into the Racial the tribes that do not belong to it - see linguistic family trees on the internet.
When we fall for the more divisive terms of ethnicities and race, we play into others’ hands… time to play a better game… it’s not about race, but a mindset.
…never said I weren’t naïve, but I do like to laugh, and smile, once in a while… allow me that whim, or I’ll allow it myself, because it’s part of me and my genetic makeup. Can’t help who I am… can you?
Abrahamic? Marxist? I think you’re singing from a different hymn sheet than I… I’m right outta the Vatican (not Compton) baby!
Wanna tell me more about myself? I’m all ears and eyes, but no tongues and lips, bae-bay.
I was actually agreeing with you here, but I guess it got lost in translation… never to be found.
Memes, what you would call values and culture, is transmittable, but when it mixed with a foreign component, it mutates.
See what happened to Marxism and Christianity when it was applied in different cultures by different races - see what happened to Democracy. It is not like the original, and from country to country it differs in some nuances produced by the demeanour of the population.
Laughing and smiling are not race specific, but species specific. The range of what one laughs at and smiles at, is more race specific.
Catholic?
I think you want to tell me.
All people want to be seen…by someone, not anyone.
Seen as what they are…but most want to be seen as what they think they are, to validate their own judgment of themselves.
Like minded people cross tribes and races…but the percentages differ.
memes are gene specific, because a culture is born out of a specific population within a specific environment during a specific time period.
This triad of specificity cannot be completely transmitted to another form another bloodline. It can, but it is warped…or, as you said, something is always lost in translation.
Like you cannot relate to the Greek joy in defeat, represented by the equivalent of Blues called Rembetiko, and the dance(Zeimbekiko) that accompanies it.
You can enjoy, participate, glean, but not completely relate.
Some visit a place like Greece and think they become so through some kind of osmosis. But this is impossible.
Like I can’t completely relate with Negro Blues, born out of slavery and the American experience, or Bluegrass music…
I can enjoy it, and get a feeling, but not completely relate with it.
Nurture refers to the immediate circumstances, imposing behaviours and adjusting potentials.
an example of nurturing ni nature:
A cub is born to an alpha male lion and a female of the pride, inheriting their median potentials in all traits: strength, speed, intelligence etc.
That’s nature.
But it is born after a drought so there aren’t many herbivores to supply the pride with their nutritional requirements. The cub suffers a reduction of its inherited potentials, and so does not grow to the full potential of tis genes.
That’s nurture.
Nurture among humans can be a product of indoctrination, education, moral enforment of behavioural rules on activity on choices - thinking being an activity.
A meme can enhance or retard genetic inheritance.
In Trumps’s case is the process (psychological-memetic) related to the question of the greater legal process of procedure? Does it enhance or detract ?
Does the meme reflect some continuity between the nexus between political and psychological characteristics/modalities that even a controlled genius can recognise ?
In the case of Trump I believe he can.
The impeachment done, are wider ramifications feaseable? Will the metaphors hold up analogously between the political process as generic forms of the generically built up architecture of structurally adhesive forms?
Question come up about the proper procedural approach to the Senate follow up, occuring in that regard, as to the proper way to conduct it:
Is the polarity unforseen by the founding fathers barely legitamite concerns as even a metaphor in its inception ; in it’s natural unfolding? No, or probably not. Here is an indication of this line of follow up argument-------
The New York Times - the morning after the impeachment:
Opinion
Trump Has Been Impeached. Republicans Are Following Him Down.
Ignoring facts and trashing the impeachment process is no way to protect democracy.
The editorial board is a group of opinion journalists whose views are informed by expertise, research, debate and certain longstanding values. It is separate from the newsroom.
On Wednesday evening, the House of Representatives impeached the president of the United States. A magnificent and terrible machine engineered by the founders, still and silent through almost all of American history, has for only the third time in 231 years shifted into motion, to consider whether Congress must call a president to account for abuse of power.
So why does it all seem so banal? The outcome so foreordained?
Most people say they know what’s going to happen, and who are we to say they’re wrong? The House voted to impeach Donald Trump by a party-line vote, with the exception of three Democrats representing Trump-friendly districts who voted against at least one article of impeachment. In the next month or two, the Senate will almost surely acquit him, also on a party-line vote.
It isn’t supposed to be this way. There’s plenty of blame to go around for the intense — really, infantilizing — degree of polarization that has overwhelmed American politics across the past 40 years. But the nihilism of this moment — the trashing of constitutional safeguards, the scorn for facts, the embrace of corruption, the indifference to historical precedent and to foreign interference in American politics — is due principally to cowardice and opportunism on the part of Republican leaders who have chosen to reject their party’s past standards and positions and instead follow Donald Trump, all the way down.
It’s a lot to ask of Republicans to insist on holding their own leader accountable, just as that was a lot to expect of Democrats during the Clinton impeachment inquiry. But while many Democrats then criticized President Bill Clinton and some voted to impeach him, Republican lawmakers would not breathe a word against Mr. Trump on Wednesday.
Instead, they competed with one another to invoke the most outlandish metaphor of evil — from the attack on Pearl Harbor to the crucifixion of Jesus Christ — and suggest that Mr. Trump is enduring even worse.
Senate Republicans are preparing to follow the example of their House colleagues, though many know better. Not so very long ago, several of them — including Ted Cruz and Marco Rubio, even the majority leader, Mitch McConnell — warned that Donald Trump was wrong for the country. Lindsey Graham memorably called Mr. Trump “a race-baiting, xenophobic, religious bigot” who was “unfit for office.” Now these senators seem eager to endorse the very sort of behavior they feared.
It is not too much to wonder how much of this cynicism and betrayal of principle any democracy can handle.
Every president from George Washington onward has been accused of misconduct of one kind or another, and many have faced calls for their impeachment. But Congress has resorted to the ultimate remedy so rarely because of the unspoken agreement that it should be reserved for only the most egregious and inexcusable offenses against the national interest.
Mr. Trump himself drew this distinction in 2008, arguing that President George W. Bush should have been impeached for lying about the reasons for the Iraq war, while at the same time rejecting the Republicans’ impeachment of Mr. Clinton for lying about sex as “nonsense,” done for something “totally unimportant.”
By any reasonable measure, Mr. Trump’s own conduct in office clears the bar for impeachment set by the founders. The case against him is that he solicited foreign interference to help in his 2020 re-election campaign, that he used hundreds of millions of taxpayer dollars to do it, that his administration tried to hide the evidence and that he then blocked Congress from performing its constitutionally mandated role of checking the executive branch. Multiple government officials, some appointed by the president himself, have confirmed all of these facts.
There may be no better illustration of what the Constitution’s framers considered to be impeachable conduct. And that’s leaving to the side strong evidence that Mr. Trump has committed other impeachable offenses, including taking foreign money at his personal businesses, obstructing justice and violating campaign-finance laws — the latter two of which are also federal crimes.
Through it all, Mr. Trump has had the opportunity to rebut the charges. By his account, he could have extinguished both articles of impeachment by allowing top administration officials to testify under oath. If he really did nothing wrong, the testimony of these officials would exonerate him of the charge of abusing his power, and simply their appearance under oath would dissolve the charge of obstructing Congress.
And yet when given the opportunity to defend himself, the president has refused to participate, defying all of the House’s subpoenas for witnesses and documents, effectively declaring himself unaccountable.
His defense has consisted of sending all-caps tweets accusing the Democrats of perpetrating a “hoax” and trying to overturn an election. On Tuesday, Mr. Trump delivered an unhinged, error-ridden six-page letter to House Speaker Nancy Pelosi in which he called the impeachment inquiry “an illegal, partisan attempted coup” and claimed that the Salem witch trials provided more due process. Tell that to the women and men who were hanged in Massachusetts.
The president’s letter demonstrated again his complete failure to offer a substantive defense. His refusal to admit he did the slightest thing wrong, or to offer witnesses who could affirm his innocence, left the House with no choice but to impeach him. By the sworn testimony about his actions, and by his own public statements calling on China and Ukraine to investigate the Bidens, he has shown not only that he tried to cheat to win the 2020 election, but that he is continuing to do so.
The case now moves to the Senate for a trial, which will be presided over by Chief Justice John Roberts. The chief justice will have the power to rule on any disputes that arise, but his rulings can be overturned by a majority of senators. Though he may be reluctant to be dragged into what might seem political disputes, Chief Justice Roberts has the authority and the duty to make this process more than a partisan farce.
Ideally, many of those disputes would be hammered out by Senate leaders before the trial begins, and would include rules that allow for compelling the production of documents that the White House has withheld, as well as requiring the testimony of witnesses whom Mr. Trump blocked from appearing before the House, including John Bolton, the former national security adviser; Mick Mulvaney, the acting chief of staff; and Secretary of State Mike Pompeo.
Unfortunately, the Senate is led by Mr. McConnell.
Mr. McConnell, who like all senators will swear an oath to “do impartial justice” at the start of the trial, has already vowed to violate that oath. “I’m not an impartial juror. This is a political process,” Mr. McConnell said on Tuesday. “The House made a partisan political decision to impeach. I would anticipate we will have a largely partisan outcome in the Senate.” He has also vowed to coordinate directly with the White House on all aspects of the trial.
No one is suggesting that House Democrats are above playing politics, but at least they held hearings, considered evidence and did their best to get at the truth. Mr. McConnell won’t even promise that much.
The bottom line is that impeachment in the House is unlikely to protect the country from Mr. Trump’s abuse of power, because his fellow party leaders prize their power more than the principles they say they stand for. The only way to protect American democracy is for those who value it to put it to work, and vote these people out.
Follow The New York Times
{*But is that it,?. No by a long shot. Arminius and St.James indicated before they left , and an editorial I came across - indicating the danger of the amount of nuclear weapons power Russia possesses, makes one wonder the possible effects of dissolving the Russian-U.S. collusion may have.
Is a post KGB operative vs. the U.S.'s dishonored CIA engender the hidden security trails?
Going back to MAFIA utilization against the Wermacht intelligences is a pretty reasonable assessment of prioritizing of powers , to be, among shifting alliances, - of moral sentiments overcoming ethical largess consoderations.
I would think factoring this on may moderate the diminution of constitutional process considerations.}*
