From the day he took office, Donald Trump has been violating the emoluments clause of the U.S. Constitution, and thus has been vulnerable to potential impeachment proceedings. And then there is the recently revealed evidence that Trump has committed massive tax fraud. And then there is the obstruction of the Russia conspiracy scandal. And then there is the Russia conspiracy scandal itself. It seems certain that when all comes out into the open, this will be known as the most corrupt administration in American history. It seems certain that when all comes out into the open, the Russia conspiracy scandal will be known as by far the most massive and dangerous in history.
There has been a building buzz that if the Democrats win control of at least one house of Congress in next month's elections they will move quickly to impeach Trump. Many Democrats yearn for it. Many Republicans want to fire up Trump's base by warning about it. Of course, almost everyone notes that it would likely be a quixotic effort, given the sixty-seven vote threshold for conviction in the Senate, and that even if Democrats do somehow win control of the upper chamber it won't be by anything close to that margin. But should Democrats be talking about impeachment? Should they undertake it, if they do win back control of at least the House of Representatives? The answer is no. But that no could lead to a yes.
With all the norms that Trump and the Republicans have shattered, perhaps the single-most important step Democrats must take is to reestablish some. If a Democrat wins the 2020 presidential campaign, and the Democrats win both houses of Congress that year, some norms will have to be immediately encoded into law. Other norms will require constitutional amendments. Certainly, the presidential pardon power is too broad. Just as certainly, the ability of an opposition party shut out of power to assert any form of check on a corrupt authoritarian controlling power is too narrow. And everything from the Electoral College to presidential candidates disclosing their financial histories to executive branch nepotism to nuclear launch authority will need to be revisited. But first things first.
Impeachment is a political process, not a judicial one, but it must never be used to exact political retribution. The Clinton impeachment was a farce. But because it was a farce, that doesn't mean that impeachment must never be considered. But it must only be considered as a result of a meticulous process. The Nixon investigations provide a good model. When those investigations started, public opinion strongly opposed impeachment. By the time Nixon resigned, a majority of Americans thought he had to go. The day after day grind of hearings, and the occasional explosive revelations, slowly painted a picture in the public's collective eye that slowly made Nixon's stonewalling untenable. But even so, at the end roughly a quarter of the public continued to support him.
If Democrats win at least one house of Congress next month, they must have two political priorities. One is to pass popular legislation, even knowing that a Republican Senate, or ultimately Trump, if Democrats also win the upper chamber, will prevent it from being enacted. But doing so will show the public what they can expect if the Democrats win big in 2020. That includes Medicare for All, aggressive climate and environmental protections, comprehensive gun regulation, elimination of the Trump and Bush tax cuts, an increased minimum wage, regulation of banking and other industries, and a raft of civil, human and voting rights protections. At the same time, Democrats must commence comprehensive hearings into the many Trump scandals. But they must not put the cart before the horse.
Investigations of Trump era corruption must be thorough and transparent. They should start with emolument and financial violations, as well as the many simmering scandals perpetrated by people in Trump's orbit. Investigations must be careful not to interfere with the Mueller probes, and here the Iran-Contra hearings should serve as a model. Witnesses were given forms of immunity which later enabled them to avoid long prison sentences. Those hearings also started with predetermined outcomes, as there were media reports from the outset that there wasn't a mood for impeachment. The failure of those hearings allowed criminals to escape justice, an administration to avoid being held accountable, and people whose public careers should have ended were able to return to corrupt subsequent Republican administrations.
Investigations into Trump administration corruption must be deliberate, even if that means they must be slower than many of us would like. The evidence must be unraveled carefully and comprehensively, in public as much as is possible without compromising security tradecraft, and the evidence alone must determine the investigation’s direction. We already know a lot and yet we know almost nothing. So much about the financial and conspiracy scandals is hiding in plain sight, but it must all be gathered together and presented to form a clearly proven outline. Many people won't be able to follow every detail, but they will understand clearly elucidated and factually confirmed outlines. And then let the consequences be determined by those outlines and those facts.
We think we know where this ends, but we don't. What has unfolded the past two years seems to make clear that the Trump-Russia scandal, in particular, is not less than it seems but more. Much more. Reports from witnesses who have testified before Mueller's team repeat similar experience, and the one aspect that stands out the most is that Mueller knows a lot more than has been revealed to the public. He may, in fact, know everything, and is only granting immunity to increasingly higher ranking former Trump officials because he needs evidence he can present in courts of law and public opinion. As long as his investigation is allowed to continue, Democrats must keep out of the way. But that doesn't mean that they won't have plenty to investigate on their own, right from the start. And it must mean that they are prepared to follow any leads Mueller presents them.
This is politics, but it's also about the rule of law. It's about restoring trust in the Constitution and the institutions that make it work, when it does work. And it is about making those institutions work better, so the American experiment can continue on a path of improving itself, in quest of living up to its greatest mythological ideals. The republic may be facing an unprecedented existential crisis, but how the crisis is resolved will determine whether it really is resolved. And if the Democrats take control of at least one house of Congress next month, how they respond will reveal whether that resolution will have begun. They must be fair. They must be comprehensive. They must be transparent. And they must demonstrate that the system can work. Because it's not about impeachment, it's about the rule of law. And it will only happen if you make it possible, by voting.