While the right thing to do right now may be to impeach Trump to minimize the horrors of his reign, we must optimize the long-term strategy to achieve the desired result. Instant impeachment, despite the mountains of evidence, may still at the moment come up short on removal through the Senate.
Instead, the full force of House investigative committees should focus on foreign money and its power to influence throughout the Trump sphere. Why start there? Because numbers can’t be spun. If the quid pro quo leads directly to policy decisions, then the greatest number of Americans will see the harm that Trump has done in the new light of self-enrichment. That revelation will be undeniable and force the #CORPservative Senators to realize that still backing Trump will make each of them an #FTR: #FinalTermRepublican.
First up, lower the boom on Jared. He courted money from Arab nations to get out from under debt on 666 5th Avenue. It ended up being Qatar that took the bait, as noted in Vanity Fair in an article by Bess Levin:
Also, there was the matter of the Qatar Investment Authority being a major investor in the company, Brookfield Asset Management, and Kushner’s support of a Saudi- and U.A.E.-led blockade of Qatar. To some, it sure sounded like a foreign government was trying to influence policy by greasing the president’s son-in-law’s wheels!
Along the way, Kushner befriended Saudi Arabia’s de-facto leader Mohammed bid Salman. That relationship may have led to Kushner passing along classified information on potential political threats to MBS who then neutralized them through kidnapping them collectively in a luxury hotel and extorting tens of billions from them. One has to wonder if there was a kickback to Kushner or perhaps Trump in all this. And it is likely that the information that MBS received led to the torture and dismemberment of Jamal Khashoggi.
Second, there’s the Trump Foundation itself. Odds are that one or more of the referred cases in the Mueller report is likely to result in federal and/or state cases against the organization for not operating within the legal bounds of a non-profit. Without that non-profit status, there can be no cloak on the dark money that went into it. Of course the foundation has shut down, but its legal woes are only growing.
Third, there are a plethora of irregularities surrounding the Trump Inaugural Fund. While the money obtained far exceeds the actual costs, the key here is where the money came from and what was expected to be returned for it. There can be no foreign money in the mix. One irregularity has already resulted in a guilty plea by Sam Patten as reported through ABC News by Soo Rin Kim:
Sam Patten, a veteran Republican lobbyist accused of illegally funneling foreign money into the Trump inaugural fund, is seeking no jail time after pleading guilty last year to foreign lobbying violations in a case referred to federal prosecutors by special counsel Robert Mueller, according to a new court filing.
Patten, 47, pleaded guilty in August for acting as an "agent of a foreign principal … without registering under the Department of Justice's Foreign Agent Registration Act,” related to his work on behalf of a Ukrainian political party.
As part of his plea deal, Patten acknowledged accepting $50,000 to secure tickets to President Donald Trump’s inauguration in January 2017 for a Ukrainian client through a "straw" purchaser, circumventing rules about the inauguration committee accepting money from foreigners. Patten also admitted to lying to the Senate Intelligence Committee during its investigation into Russian election interference. Patten has since been cooperating with investigators.
What all these examples of graft and corruption will lead to is a pattern of behavior surrounding Trump and his family. This will set the table for when House Judiciary Chairman Jerry Nadler finally gets Donald Trump’s - and his business’s - tax returns. And then the other cards will fall too. Emoluments violations will be everywhere. So too will be profiting in other ways from the presidency such as hundreds of days spent at Mar-a-Lago and other Trump properties.
The money Trump has made from Russians over the years will also be eye opening, even to his biggest fans. And if their minds too have been opened previously, then lockstep support will finally be questioned.
So will it be for GOP senators as well. With Trump popularity finally dipping below the 30% mark, the sooner they fashion a #Trexit the better for their 2020 chances in Congress.
By not focusing on the Mueller report in the near term, House Democrats can sidestep the whole “witch hunt” and “no collusion” debate, instead taking headlines into a territory where there can be no rebuttal. Unlike our President, numbers don’t lie.
This is the way Democrats can bring the most rank-and-file Republicans past their tipping point. And these newly disgruntled Republicans not only will erode poll numbers for those seeking reelection, they will add to the number of #GOPvotingBlue. These folks, edging into the #SilentCenter, can be tomorrow’s #TrueCons. They will choose to #VoteBlueNoMatterWho for a couple of election cycles to purge today’s #CORPservatives from GOP leadership. Then, after Democrats have passed campaign finance and election reforms, centrist Republicans can finally defeat billionaire-backed incumbents in the primaries.
See more on this dynamic at https://www.dailykos.com/stories/2019/4/20/1851886/-Part-3-of-4-How-Dems-and-Woke-Conservatives-TrueCons-Can-Save-America-Together/
As spelled out there, progressives have to see the conservatives that rebel against today’s Trump enablers as the future of the Republican Party. And odd as it may sound, we need to maximize their number this year. When they start to see us as allies against those that have betrayed them, then it’s a far shorter leap to convince them that we can also be allies in our current 99% vs. 1% battle.
That, after all, is the true dynamic of American economics and politics today. And our best future will come from recognizing that as a nation, finding ways to restrain runaway monopoly capitalism, and giving the little guy a fighting chance to thrive under a blanket of equality and justice.