We begin today’s roundup with analysis by David Remnick on the Speaker Pelosi’s declaration of a formal House impeachment inquiry:
“Just impeaching Trump for his bad behavior isn’t worth it,” Pelosi told me. “But, if he challenges our system of checks and balances as he is doing, if he undermines our democracy, our electoral system, as he is doing, if he undermines his own oath of office as he is doing, it is a challenge to our Constitution.” [...] “You have to be very clear and very focussed on what would be an impeachable offense,” Pelosi said. “People say you changed your mind. I didn’t change my mind. The facts changed the situation. Last week, on Constitution Day, of all days, the news broke of the President’s total betrayal of the Constitution—and this takes us into a whole new realm. Use any analogy, anything you want: ‘A new day has dawned’; ‘We’ve crossed the Rubicon.’ Everything is different now, because of that phone call.” She went on, “That the Administration thought it was exculpatory is so ridiculous, because it was, in fact, incriminating.”
At The Week, Ryan Cooper explains that the facts confirm Donald Trump is not a “stable genius,” as he claims:
The last week has seen the Trump administration more rattled than at any previous time in its existence. [...]
It's an object lesson in how Trump can be put on the defensive. He is not some omnipotent political mastermind. Attacks on his integrity, competence, appearance, or anything else that he's sensitive about will drive him nuts and sow chaos in his administration.
David Rohde at The New Yorker sums up the facts:
In retrospect, it seems perfectly clear what that rationale was: Trump was using taxpayer money, which Congress had appropriated, to put the squeeze on Zelensky and gain an advantage in the 2020 election. The whistle-blower’s complaint doesn’t prove that this happened, but what other explanation can there be? Both in its contents and in what it has unleashed, the complaint is devastating for Donald Trump. Or, at least, it should be.
Asawin Suebsaeng and Sam Stein at The Daily Beast detail the president’s reaction:
Through it all, the president’s demeanor and approach to the rapidly unfolding scandal has vacillated between spoiling for a fight and hoping for a détente. Often, it depended on who he was talking to or what setting he found himself in. According to those in attendance at his Thursday breakfast fundraiser, the president was upbeat and fired up, telling donors that he and his political team were ready to punch back hard. In private, however, there was genuine consternation regarding how a brutal impeachment process would affect his legacy and his White House, with much of his staff sharing those same anxieties. Those close to Trump say the president never expected House Speaker Nancy Pelosi (D-CA) to back any major impeachment moves—at least not until this week.
Although one senior White House aide said the mood there “is fine,” others said Trump has taken the past week personally, as if Democrats and what his allies call the “deep state” had just crashed his party.
At The Atlantic, Todd Purdum focuses on Rep. Adam Schiff, who has been the target of frequent personal attacks from Trump:
For months on end, Representative Adam Schiff waged an often-lonely quest, subject to the mockery of his Republican colleagues and second-guessing from skeptics, as he doggedly pursued allegations that President Donald Trump had welcomed the interference of a foreign power in an American election.
The stunning revelation that Trump asked the president of Ukraine this summer to investigate the dealings of former Vice President Joe Biden’s son Hunter in the country—and an intelligence whistle-blower’s accompanying complaint that White House officials allegedly tried to cover up that request—amounted to quiet vindication for Schiff, the chairman of the House Intelligence Committee.
Catherine Rampell on the president’s motives:
There’s a common thread that stretches forward from Donald Trump’s financial scandals of the 1980s to his damning phone call with the president of Ukraine.
It’s the self-dealing.
Wherever he was, whatever his title, the president has used the powers at his disposal to enrich or otherwise benefit himself, regardless of what law, fiduciary duty or oath of office bound him to do.
At USA Today, constitutional law professor Laurence Tribe provides a deep dive into why the conduct outlined in the whistleblower complaint violates the rule of law:
Even if this action weren’t payback to Russian President Vladimir Putin and yet another indication of how beholden Trump is to that brutal dictator — which it may well have been — it was a blatant usurpation of Congress’ Appropriation Clause authority for Trump to withhold the aid the Ukranians needed. When asked by Ukraine’s president in this July 25 phone call to purchase more Javelin missiles from the United States for defense purposes, Trump responded that he would gladly do so, although — he actually used the word “though” — he would greatly appreciate that foreign president’s aid in, among other things, gathering evidence to effectively help prosecute Trump’s main rival for the presidency in the forthcoming election.
Also at USA Today, Barbara McQuade explains why Trump’s defenses only make him look worse:
Trump also claimed that Zelensky was never “pushed.” Bribery can be, and often is, committed without pushing anyone to do something they don’t want to do. A bribe payer is often quite happy with the official action that he can secure with his bribe. Anyone who has ever slipped some cash to a restaurant maitre d' in hopes of being seated at a good table knows that sometimes paying for a favor brings satisfaction. You don’t have to be pushed to be solicited for a bribe.
On a final note, don’t miss this editorial from The New York Times laying out the clear case for an impeachment inquiry:
This board has made clear its own view of Mr. Trump’s unfitness for his office. We have opposed Mr. Trump not only because of his personal transgressions, divisiveness and dishonesty, but also because of the substance of many of his policies — on the environment, immigration, taxes, trade and other matters. But provided Mr. Trump was acting within the law, he had the absolute right to pursue his chosen course and be judged upon it by the electorate, one way or another, in 2020.
The disclosures about the president’s pressure on Ukraine have changed that picture. They have revealed Mr. Trump to be working to subvert the 2020 election, undermining the proper electoral check on presidential misbehavior. The Constitution provides only one fail-safe in such a situation, and that’s why the House was right this week to announce a formal impeachment inquiry, under the purview of the Judiciary Committee.