It is a pleasing thought that Trump might be convicted for bribery for proposing Russia’s readmission to the Group of 7 in exchange for the GRU’s help in the 2016 Presidential election. However, that bribery prosecution would require the Special Prosecutor to find hard evidence of an explicit quid pro agreement between Trump and President Putin. To God’s Ears.
More realistically, I think Trump has forfeited his Presidential power to fire the Special Prosecutor by lobbying for Russia at the G7. Beyond the narrow context of criminal prosecutions — e.g., in cases of recusal or constitutional challenges to anti-corruption legislation — the appearance of quid pro quo is sufficient grounds, even when the hard evidence of bribery remains undiscovered. SCOTUS has so ruled:
"Of almost equal concern as the danger of actual quid pro quo arrangements is the impact of the appearance of corruption" — Buckley vs. Valeo, 424 U. S. 1 (upholding individual limits on contributions to political candidates).
Anti-corruption policy, rather than criminal prosecution, provides the legal context for deciding the constitutionality of Trump firing Mueller. In that context, the appearance of quid pro quo is enough for SCOTUS to rule against Trump.
Something obviously smells fishy when Trump lobbies for Russia at the Group of 7. The appearance of quid pro quo is obvious. But I want to make the case that the appearance is more than obvious. That it is so compelling that no reasonable person — none but the most pathologically partisan judge — can dispute it.
America First
Trump’s proposal explicitly serves Russia’s national interest. If it does not serve American national interest, then by logic, it must be a quid pro quo. Smoking gun or no.
But Trump cannot credibly claim that readmitting Russia to the G7 serves the U.S. national interest — because Trump thinks the G7 is useless to the U.S. in the first place. He is contemptuous of international multilateral institutions and prefers bilateral deals, country-by-country. Trump’s state of mind is material. If Trump thinks G7 is useless, how can he claim that readmitting Russia to a useless institution serves America’s interest? That would be a self-contradictory argument for Trump to make.
What does Trump think Russia would do in the G8 — put ‘America First’ over Russia’s national interest? He can spout this and all his other nonsense about Crimea on Twitter, but not before SCOTUS.
Appeasement
Trump could less laughably claim his proposal is a legitimate ‘quid pro quo’ between the U.S. and Russia. That the U.S. (not Trump personally) gets something from Russia in exchange for readmission. I say ‘less laughably’ not because this claim would be any more cogent, but because there is nothing funny about it, even as black comedy. Russia would not just be getting readmission, but also recognition of its claim to Novorossiya (New Russia, or as I prefer to call it, Soviet Union 2.0). By letting Russia ‘back into the club’, Trump means the Superpower Club.
The U.S. could lawfully trade a Group seat to a non-offending nation like India or Brazil, even China, in exchange for some benefit. But in this case, Trump is basically proposing that Russia be paroled for annexing Crimea and invading Ukraine. Imagine a parole hearing in which the offense is ongoing and the parole applicant tells the parole board to eat his shorts — but gets parole anyway?
So Russia gets parole + Ukraine + Superpower Status, in exchange for what? What does Putin even have comparably to trade, other than an agreement not to start nuclear war if the U.S. lets him re-Sovietize Eastern Europe? And so, Trump is proposing appeasement. And not appeasement in the stupid Neocon sense that anytime the U.S. opts not to use total war to resolve any conflict, we’re appeasing the new Hitler. No, by forgiving and ratifying Putin’s annexation of Crimea, Trump is virtually plagiarizing the 1938 Munich Agreement.
I submit that SCOTUS cannot recognize appeasement as a lawful interest of the United States. I base this legal argument on President Kennedy’s Oval Office Speech in the Cuban Missile Crisis. The relevant text:
“The 1930's taught us a clear lesson: aggressive conduct, if allowed to go unchecked and unchallenged, ultimately leads to war.”
But in the context of the Missile Crisis, this becomes more than a ‘clear lesson’ or historical consensus. Acted upon by President Kennedy in a virtual state of nuclear war, it is as profound and binding a law of this nation as the Constitution itself.
Based on this ‘clear lesson’, Kennedy took the U.S. and the world to the brink of extinction. Am I being hyperbolic? Most importantly, the ‘clear lesson’ outweighed the mortal risks of blocking the Soviet convoy:
“My fellow citizens, let no one doubt that this is a difficult and dangerous effort on which we have set out. No one can foresee precisely what course it will take … The path we have chosen for the present is full of hazards …”
In the face of the gravest uncertainties, an American President staked the survival of humanity and risked nuclear obliteration of all life on this principle: that appeasing the Soviets in Cuba virtually guaranteed the future destruction of humanity by nuclear weapons. In doing so, I submit that President Kennedy codified this principle with the full weight of American law.
Therefore, SCOTUS cannot lawfully recognize appeasement as a legitimate American interest when proposed by a President under a fact-based cloud of suspicion.
Without any American interest served by readmitting Russia, the appearance of a quid pro quo between President Trump and the Kremlin becomes all but undeniable. Thus, SCOTUS cannot allow Trump to fire the Special Prosecutor investigating this quid pro quo.
The Roberts Court?
By creating such an appearance of quid pro quo, Trump has redefined the issue before the Roberts Court should he attempt to fire Mueller. It is no longer just a technical or Constitutional question of Presidential power, on which we might expect an Alito to rule expansively. The partisan pathology of Paul Ryan does not apply to conservatives on SCOTUS for life. Nor does conservative ideology favor Trump anymore. Why does a man like Samuel Alito become a conservative in the first place? It is not to allow Putin to re-Sovietize Eastern Europe, like “splattered drops of mercury” coming back together, as Otto Von Bismarck described the eternal ‘Russia problem.’ (Or like the liquid metal T-1000 from Terminator 2, as Bismarck might describe Novorossiya if he were alive today).
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Footnote:
If anyone says, or even thinks remotely, for even one second, that President Obama appeased Putin by not going to war over Crimea, I’d point to the events leading up to annexation:
Prior to 2014, Putin had de facto control via puppet government over all of Ukraine, including Crimea, and including Russia’s Black Sea Naval Base at Sevastopol. Putin planned to absorb Ukraine into his grand vision of a Eurasian Economic Union. However, this plan fell apart when the Ukrainian people overthrew Putin’s puppet, President Viktor Yanukovych for attempting to sell their country to Russia. I recommend the documentary ‘Winter On Fire-Ukraine’s Fight For Freedom.’
Putin accused Obama of instigating the coup. Obviously, President Obama could not admit to overthrowing the Ukrainian president. However, Obama did back the EU counteroffer to Putin’s EEU, and it was that counteroffer that triggered the revolt against Yanukovych. Here Putin describes his vision for the EEU, and (at the end of the video) his exasperation when Obama and the EU sabotaged his plan for Ukraine.
It was the policy of President Obama and Secretary Clinton that Putin’s EEU was just a scheme to reiterate the Russian Empire (of which the Soviet Union was just the last of many iterations, with a transient ideological overlay). Obama’s goal was to cripple the EEU in order to contain Russia. Obama achieved this goal; Yanukovych’s ouster was a crushing blow to Putin.
But the ouster also left the Russian naval base in Crimea under the control of the new pro-Western government in Kiev. It was not Obama’s goal to threaten Russian national security by seizing control of their naval base. Having maneuvered Putin into a no-win situation in Crimea, Obama properly decided to punish Putin with crippling sanctions and expulsion from the G8, rather than with military force. President Obama’s Russia policy paralleled the counsel of the German geopolitical architect Otto Von Bismarck for dealing with the perpetual ‘Russian problem.’
“The result of a war (against Russia) would never result in the destruction of the main power of Russia … in my opinion we would do well to treat them as a basic danger against which we maintain protective dikes, but which we cannot eliminate from the world.”
Far from inviting further aggression, Obama’s response made further expansion prohibitively costly to Putin, without creating a casus belli for Russia. ‘Protective dikes’, as Bismarck counseled.