Donald Trump’s occupancy of the White House may soon end because he abused his office to pressure a foreign government to damage a potential domestic political rival. If Senate Republicans care at all about the Constitution, national security, and the rule of law, Trump’s occupancy of the Oval Office will soon end. Whether or not Trump offered Ukraine’s government an explicit quid pro quo is not relevant to whether he committed an impeachable offense. The mere act of soliciting foreign help to conspire against a potential domestic political rival is in itself an egregious abuse of power. But the way Trump’s occupancy of the White House may end is not the entire story. Because the way Trump’s occupancy of the White House may end demands further review and investigation of the way it started.
Donald Trump is a deeply stupid man. He admitted to committing what is clearly an impeachable offense:
“The conversation I had was largely congratulatory. It was largely corruption—all of the corruption taking place. It was largely the fact that we don’t want our people, like Vice President Biden and his son, creating to [sic] the corruption already in the Ukraine,” Trump said. (Neither Ukraine nor Trump has produced any evidence to support that claim about the Bidens.)
Donald Trump is a deeply stupid man. He himself made clear that his conversation about Biden was about aid to Ukraine:
Later, he told reporters he “had every right to” bring up Biden because “we don’t want a country that we’re giving massive aid to to be corrupting our system.”
To reiterate: Even if he hadn't made such an explicit connection, even if he didn't offer any sort of quid pro quo, the admission that he asked a foreign government to dig up dirt on a potential domestic political opponent is itself illegal and impeachable. And he admitted to having done it. Because he is a deeply stupid man.
Trump's ostensible lawyer had already made the same admission:
“So you did ask Ukraine to look into Joe Biden,” Cuomo said.
“Of course I did,” Giuliani said.
Trump's ostensible lawyer also said the State Department sent him to Ukraine to ask its government to dig up dirt on a potential Trump political rival:
Appearing on Fox News’ “Hannity,” Giuliani painted a picture of a high level of State Department involvement in his actions in Ukraine, where Giuliani has been working to drum up corruption allegations against Joe Biden’s son, Hunter Biden.
“The State Department called me and said would I take a call from Mr. [Andriy] Yermak, who’s number two or three to the president-elect, now the president,” he said. “I was put together with Mr. Yermak. I talked to him. He gave me enormously important facts. I conveyed them all to the State Department.”
“I wasn’t operating on my own,” Giuliani added.
Once again: Pushing a foreign country to dig up dirt on a potential domestic political rival is, itself, impeachable. Which means Trump’s State Department is now implicated in an impeachable offense. But even as Trump’s ostensible lawyer was trying to throw Trump’s bootlicking Secretary of State Mike Pompeo under the bus, Pompeo spun around and threw Rudy right back. For his part, perhaps for self-protection, Trump also seems to want to implicate Mike Pence. And they all may have company down there. One thing we can count on, when it comes to Trump and his circle, is that self-interest always will come first. They will cannibalize each other.
Trump's next desperate move was to attempt to change his story, which should be taken in the context of his unprecedented and almost incomprehensible record of mendacity. From the start we already know that nothing he says about this scandal should be accepted as true, because nothing he says about anything should be accepted as true. And then he released a “transcript” of the phone call, which is but the tip of the iceberg with this scandal, which is itself but the tip of the iceberg of Trump’s scandals.
And hard as Trump tries to deny that he was attempting strong-arm extortion, Ukraine’s government certainly understood the obvious:
It appears the Ukrainian leader came away from the discussion with a different impression. Murphy, who spoke with Zelensky during an early September visit to Ukraine, said Monday that the Ukrainian president “directly” expressed concerns at their meeting that “the aid that was being cut off to Ukraine by the president was a consequence” of his unwillingness to launch an investigation into the Bidens.
But again, to reiterate: Just pressuring a foreign government to dig up dirt on a domestic political rival is itself impeachable:
“He told him that he should work with [Mr. Giuliani] on Biden, and that people in Washington wanted to know” if his lawyer’s assertions that Mr. Biden acted improperly as vice president were true, one of the people said. Mr. Giuliani has suggested Mr. Biden’s pressure on Ukraine to fight corruption had to do with an investigation of a gas company for which his son was a director. A Ukrainian official this year said he had no evidence of wrongdoing by Mr. Biden or his son Hunter Biden.
But we know it was worse than that, because Trump made clear to Ukrainian officials that if they wouldn’t discuss his desire for them to damage his potential domestic political rival, he wouldn’t even bother to call. The entire purpose of his calling Ukraine’s government was to solicit their help in winning an election! And he was obsessed with it.
And now that we know that Trump illegally used his office to try to pressure a foreign government into damaging a domestic political rival, is there any remaining doubt that he would have accepted such help to win the 2016 election? Trump tried to extort Ukraine into illegally colluding with him to win the 2020 election. So, is there any doubt he would have gratefully accepted Russian offers of such collusion in 2016? Let's talk about timing:
The last time he was accused of collaborating with a foreign power to influence an election, he denied it and traveled the country practically chanting, “No collusion!” This time, he is saying, in effect, so what if I did?
Even for a leader who has audaciously disregarded many of the boundaries that restrained his predecessors, President Trump’s appeal to a foreign power for dirt on former Vice President Joseph R. Biden Jr. is an astonishing breach of the norms governing the American presidency.
That his phone call with Ukraine’s leader took place literally the day after the special counsel Robert S. Mueller III testified to Congress about Russian interference in the 2016 election demonstrated that Mr. Trump took no lessons from that episode about the perils and propriety of mixing his own political interests with international relations.
In fact, Trump did take a lesson from that episode. Because many in the media hyperventilated that the Democrats had over-reached, as if Trump had been exonerated, and Democrats seemed politically hamstrung. And Trump took it to mean that he could get away with anything. And having apparently gotten away with colluding and conspiring with one foreign government to gain the Oval Office in 2016, he didn’t waste any time in trying to collude and conspire with another foreign government to retain it.
The day after.
And the media must be held accountable for their consistently irresponsible misreporting and misanalyzing of what happened. Because Mueller actually made clear that he hadn't exonerated Trump:
Robert Mueller told Congress on Wednesday that his investigation did not exonerate President Donald Trump of wrongdoing and found that Russia worked to boost his election in a "sweeping and systematic fashion" as the former special counsel defended his nearly two-year probe.
"It is not a witch hunt," Mueller said after Intelligence Committee Chairman Adam Schiff, D-Calif., noted that the president had often condemned the probe as just that.
And even more to the point:
Mueller's highly anticipated testimony began in the morning with the Judiciary Committee when Chairman Jerry Nadler, D-N.Y., asked the former special counsel if his investigation had indeed cleared Trump, as the president has often claimed.
"No," Mueller answered flatly.
Of course, Trump's collusion to conspire with Russia in 2016 has been hiding in plain sight every step of the way. Mueller didn’t exonerate Trump, but the obstruction of justice clearly outlined even in the redacted version of his report succeeded. Within Mueller’s limited mandate, he couldn’t prove guilt. But he made clear that he also couldn’t prove innocence. But he did prove obstruction. Which itself should be an article of impeachment and grounds for removal, at which point it also would be an indictable crime.
Trump's corruption is unprecedented. His administration has been saturated with corruption. He uses the office of the presidency for corrupt purposes, and he gained the office of the presidency by corrupt means. The latter has not been fully investigated, and the media did their part to obfuscate that fact and change the subject. And they prove themselves liars or dupes every time they refer at face value to the Mueller report, because neither they nor Congress has actually seen anything other than a version censored by Trump's deeply corrupt personal fixer William Barr.
As Congress pursues its impeachment proceedings of Trump, the Russia investigation and the Barr cover-up of the Mueller report must be part of the investigation. Because Trump's corruption is not happening in a vacuum. And everyone who is complicit must be held accountable to the full extent of the law if the United States is a nation of laws. And a presidency that exists to corrupt, and came to be by corruption, is not a legitimate presidency. And it and its legacy must not be given legitimacy as we move forward.