Anyone who has spent a few hours seriously immersed in the redacted Mueller Report knows the unavoidable is coming. Impeachment.
Even without a single piece of testimony from the individuals whose congressional subpoenas Donald Trump has said should be ignored, there are all those pages of evidence clearly showing multiple instances of obstruction of justice. Actions made with “corrupt intent.” While he will not be held accountable for all the scheming he was engaged in, Trump has no immunity from obstruction charges arising from his several attempts to derail the Mueller investigation and deflect anything that might point to his culpability.
Without switching on a single microphone to capture the testimony of a single witness, the grounds for impeachment are thick in the written evidence we already have. What’s been blacked out is no more likely to be exculpatory than the William Barr-fabricated fantasies produced to twist the national narrative well before anybody got a chance to read Mueller’s findings and conclusions.
House Speaker Nancy Pelosi and other prominent Democrats want to go slow, holding what constitutional scholar Philip Bobbit calls “pre-impeachment hearings” and then judge whether charges against Trump are needed. Others, mostly on the left of the party spectrum, think we’re already past that point and want to start a formal impeachment inquiry right now. Still others think impeachment is certainly deserved but could be a tactical mistake electorally damaging to Democrats at the polls come 2020, particularly if the Senate doesn’t convict, as seems extremely likely. And finally are those who view any move on impeachment as a distraction that will submerge attention for other crucial matters.
But wherever you stand amid these alignments, they don’t really matter anymore. Trump himself is seeing to that. He’s giving Congress no other choice in the matter.
I’ve lived through enough political surprises to know better than to make predictions even about what would seem to be the most obvious outcomes. But not only having obstructed justice, as Mueller repeatedly makes clear, Trump is also continuing to obstruct since the report’s release by telling his subordinates to defy congressional subpoenas. In so doing, he is making it impossible for the House not to impeach him. Without witnesses, no hearings; no hearings, no resolution; no resolution, a constitutional crisis that undermines the rule of law not merely for the time Trump squats in the White House but well into the future. Any congressperson partial to separation of powers in particular and democracy in general can’t allow that to stand.
Unless Trump relents on the subpoenas, or the individuals he’s told to defy Congress defy him instead, the only way to ensure subpoenas are complied with in a timely manner is to initiate a formal impeachment inquiry—nothing “pre” about it—in which the role of the Supreme Court will be solely to lend the Senate Chief Justice John Roberts to preside over the trial. Without a Trump surrender on subpoenas, we can expect the Speaker will move in the direction of a formal inquiry soon, as much as she would prefer not to.
If the inquiry results in impeachment charges being sent to the Senate, will they topple Trump? Once upon a time, back in the days when Tricky Dick Nixon was president, there were a few principled, moderate Republican senators who were outspoken about constitutional violations, Republicans who made it clear to Nixon that he would not survive a Senate vote on impeachment charges stemming from the Watergate break-in. So he fled and got a pardon. It would have taken 11 Republicans joining all the Democrats to convict Nixon had he decided to tough it out. For Trump, it would take 20. It’s hard to imagine how explosive revelations from an impeachment inquiry would have to be to get even half that many on board for a conviction.
Therefore, ridding the White House of Donald Trump and replacing him with a progressive leader will still likely be a matter for Democrats and their independent allies to accomplish in November 2020, along with unprecedentally aggressive work getting out the vote for down-ballot races, including in state legislatures where progressive values and progressive policies are getting pounded.
Over the coming weeks and months as this constitutional crisis around the rule of law unfolds, while a focus on the elections is essential, it’s also important we keep in mind that kicking Trump out of office won’t mean the resistance is over. It just means we can unpause another of the hiatuses in building a more socially, racially, economically, environmentally progressive America that every Republican administration establishes once in office. It means the resistance can move forward instead of spending so much energy and time trying to keep the dark forces from dismantling the progressive gains already made.
The resistance wasn’t something invented November 9, 2016, and it won’t end on January 20, 2021. America’s history bristles with resistance. Every great reform was begun by resisters to the established order, usually just a persecuted few at the start. Resistance has been more prevalent recently than during some other periods. Occupy, Black Lives Matter, climate hawks, the campaign for LGBTQ equality and dignity, the reproductive rights struggle, grassroots labor’s push for a higher minimum wage, the rising up of indigenous people in Canada, the U.S., and Mexico against the relentless plunder of their land— all these campaigns have resisters at work who most definitely didn’t begin their efforts yesterday. Some have been at it for decades. Their resistance, our resistance, will continue way beyond whenever Donald Trump takes his last trip on Marine One. Because so much remains to be accomplished that has nothing to do with the man.
For although his connivery, venality, vulgarity, incessant deceit, racism and sexism—combined with an authoritarian nature, bizarre personality, and sick affections for killer dictators—make Trump a special case, the agenda he has sought to impose isn’t special, and isn’t his. It’s the extremist, Koch-fueled Republican agenda honed over five decades to favor corporadoes, white supremacists, and rightist Christians to the detriment of the vast majority of people in the United States. It’s an agenda that exacerbates some of the worst aspects of our nation from police and gender violence to economic inequality, from an overly incarcerated population to a health care program that failed to cover tens of millions of people even before the right-wingers started trying to smash it.
As difficult as defeating Trump may turn out to be, it will be a cakewalk compared with many of the other battles the resistance faces in the years ahead. But as shown ever since the Quakers first went to Congress in 1790 to get slavery ended, resisters are tough, focused, and resourceful. And no matter how great the obstacles, we don’t give up.