Donald Trump has company. While everyone remains so focused on Trump and impeachment, they should be paying more attention to the Republicans’ complete indifference to the facts in the Russian hack of our elections.
Money, and hacking for political gain, was not exclusively for Trump’s benefit. Others are very clearly involved, and Mueller’s refusals to answer due to ongoing investigations are not exclusively about Trump.
No matter how partisan you are, there is one underlying truth that cannot be ignored: We are a nation foundationally based on laws, not imperial fantasy.
What distinguishes American democracy, in the history of the world?
It was engineered to avoid the centralization of power with kings, caesars, and other strong men. The House was given the power, by the Founding Fathers, to investigate the executive branch, rather than just wait for an election to replace a corrupt, power-hungry leader, exactly because of the current situation that we face. The Senate was charged with acting as judge, and jury for impeachable offenses.
It is also why we have extensive law to cover all politicians taking money from a foreign power, to influence our government. The whole government falls apart if other countries can own our politicians.
Our leaders, all of them, are sworn to uphold and defend the laws of the United States, both in the Constitution, and ones legislated in the centuries thereafter. Why?
These laws not only define us as a nation, but they also draw limits, checks, on the power of those who govern us. They give the rules, the bedrock of our society, validity, meaning, and power.
Without laws, we are no better than the feudal societies of the Middle Age, formed solely around power, and who could kill enough people to frighten people into submission.
So, even if Republicans were terrified that Trump was going to take them down, there should be some members of their party who break ranks, put country ahead of party and power, and do the right thing.
Other than Rep. Justin Amash, who broke ranks with the GOP, no one else in Republican circles seem to think that Russian interference in our election is important, or that the rule of law, pun intended, trumps Trumpism.
The myopic talking heads ascribe this to the cult of Trump, and this president’s invitation of foreign assistance to him, both then, and now, as ego.
It is far far more than that.
In 2017, my sources tipped me to a strange story about a Russian woman who had owned a furniture store in Siberia, who, TIME reported, was lunching with Republican congressmen, donating to Scott Walker’s presidential bid, and throwing six-figure parties for big Republican lobbying groups, including the NRA. This was about a year before the FBI arrested Russian Maria Butina, moving Russian money into right-wing religious organizations, as well as the NRA.
A year prior to that, on June 15, 2016, then Ryan-lieutenant, now Minority Leader Kevin McCarthy, the day before the Russian hack of our election was revealed, was recorded in a conversation as saying:
“There’s two people I think Putin pays: Rohrabacher and Trump,” he said in the recording, which The Washington Post, who broke the story, revealed. “ Rep. Dana Rohrabacher is a California Republican, fervent defender of Putin and Russia, who was defeated in the mid-terms in 2018.
“House Speaker Paul D. Ryan (R-Wis.) immediately interjected, stopping the conversation from further exploring McCarthy’s assertion, and swore the Republicans present to secrecy.”
Ryan had good reason. His Superpac had ties to Russian money and hackers as well, The New York Times reported in December of 2016.
Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell has ties to RuSal Russian oil oligarch Oleg Daripaska. He also is tight with Len Blatatnik, whose Access Industries dropped on McConnell SuperPAC, the Senate Leadership Fund, run by his former Chief of Staff, a whopping $3,500,000, including $2,500,000 in 2016, and $1,000,000 in 2017.
Mike Pence has been getting money out of the Russians, by way of their money laundering operations through Russian religious organizations that run money to American right-wing evangelical religious groups, The Economist noted in 2017.
The Founding Fathers, not having a great love of parties, never developed a remedy for an entire political tribe being bought off, in part or in whole.
Which is why Trump can smugly regurgitate the lies that he drops into the news media almost daily. He knows that if he goes, they go.
Power above country.
This extensive peripheral connection to mother Russia is why the FBI continues to investigate. It may be why Nancy Pelosi is hesitant to push forward on impeachment charges. So many foxes in the legislative hen house.
Instead of calling for Trump’s impeachment, Democrats, and the independents, who care about our Constitution, and our freedoms, based in laws, and not power-personality cults, should be howling at Bill Barr to get a comprehensive list of politicians taking money from Russians, or any other foreign government, or agents,
You can’t have an impeachment of a sitting president when both key figures in the Republican Party, and members of said party are also involved.
The remedy for this level of invasion by the Russians, we have no rule in the rulebook to cover. The ongoing investigations by Justice, if Attorney General Barr hasn’t shut them down, or hobbled them. It would be up to the courts, probably, to decide what to do. The other branches are co-opted.
One thing is certain: Our democracy is dissolving by the day. our ADD media wags are looking at the trees, not the forest, because it takes legwork to track all of the sources of the money, not a bunch of suits on MSNBC spouting off the current beltway gossip, only promoting ideas that are profitable made-for-TV scandal,
We are rapidly devolving into 21st century feudalism, with clans who covet power above all turning their back on the foundational responsibilities that they were sworn to uphold. Some for political convenience; many more, though because of the rubles falling out of their pockets that power, and blind ambition, put there.