Republican Senators Choose Donald Trump Over the U.S. Constitution

There’s a rule at trials: when one side’s lawyers have improperly lost evidence, hidden evidence, or refused to show the jury evidence in their control, the judge may order jurors to assume that evidence is bad for the side controlling and withholding it. It’s a life rule, too: if the warm chocolate-chip cookies are disappearing, and your kid is hiding his hands behind his back, don’t you infer something?

So why shouldn’t Donald Trump’s unprecedented, across-the-board stonewalling of legitimate Congressional inquiry raise questions in everyone’s minds?

Simple: Republicans don’t want us to know the facts about Donald Trump’s allegedly impeachable conduct. 

 

Not only are Republicans refusing to call material witnesses (even John Bolton, who, as an ambitious Republican with dreams of political office, can’t be all that dangerous), but they’ve imposed strict new rules on reporters to hinder the free flow of information from senators to us. Normally, credentialed press have free run of most areas in the Senate; they’re now restricted to a specific area, and reporters are forbidden to walk along with a senator, continuing a conversation, even if the senator is willingly participating. 

 

The House heard some devastating witnesses to Trump’s misconduct. Most were patriotic career foreign service folks, not politicians. Plus Trump’s own Gordon Sondland, scared into telling the truth.

Some important things have happened since the House investigation. Notably, the nonpartisan General Accounting Office concluded, after careful investigation, that Trump’s political hold-up of funds approved by Congress broke a 1974 law enacted by Congress over Richard Nixon’s veto. And Bolton is now available – a Trump appointee who mocked the Ukraine extortion plot as “that drug deal,” refusing to participate.

Republicans mumble that the House did its investigation and reached its conclusions, so there’s no need for further witnesses. They toss out the red herring of subpoenaing Joe and Hunter Biden, who have no firsthand knowledge about Trump’s actions or motives. The truth is simple: the facts are inconvenient. 

 

There’s a reasonable argument that Democrats are wasting Senate time. Not because these aren’t “high crimes and misdemeanors,” but because Republicans have strong political motives not to consider the evidence and convict. 

 

Federalist Paper 65 says, “The most conspicuous characters [deciding impeachment trials] will be too often the leaders or the tools of the most cunning or the most numerous faction, and . . . can hardly be expected to possess the requisite neutrality.” They foresaw Mitch McConnell, but hoped that when our country needed them, politicians might put conscience above politics – as McConnell fears some might.

What would a fair trial look like? Republicans would acknowledge the actual evidence, and consider its weight. They’d hear more witnesses, because Trump’s lawyers deny the facts. Most importantly, both parties would forego political speeches to discuss the real issue: when a president violates the law by holding up, for political reasons, Congressionally-mandated aid to a beleaguered ally, is that misconduct sufficiently important that we should impeach, or at least censure him?

The allegations against Trump are more serious than those made against Clinton, and perhaps even those against Nixon. You could argue about the relative seriousness of burglary vs. extortion; both Nixon’s burglary and Trump’s effort to use Ukraine to tip domestic political scales were antidemocratic; and the Ukraine aid concerned national security. 

 

Whitewashing Trump whites out our Constitution. It tells future presidents they need not follow the law or provide Congress information. Is that what we want?

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[The above column appeared this morning, Sunday, 26 January 2020, in the Las Cruces Sun-News and on the newspaper's website on KRWG's website.  A spoken version, also available on KRWG's website, will air during the week on KRWG and KTAL, 101.5 FM (www.lccommunityradio.org).] 

[Val Demings for President!?]

[A stray question, sparked by looking back at the extremely political Clinton impeachment: Is anyone thinking censure? Nixon's impeachment was pretty bipartisan, once the courts forced Nixon to divulge evidence, and many from all parties were genuinely shocked; but here, the Senate simply may not bother to try to obtain the evidence; Clinton's was much more political, and his offense -- perjuring himself about his sex life, in a legal case manufactured to embarrass him -- was a minor crime.  Ultimately the Senate censured him for perjury.  
On Trump, while if I had a vote I would almost certainly vote for impeachment, I think censure ought to be in the discussion.  His conduct is far more serious than Clinton's, and far more the kind of abuse of power the Constitution mean to cover.  I think it's fair for his political allies to question whether or not it warrants removal from office.  Why hasn't Romney or someone suggested censure? 
I suspect I know why: Democrats are committed to impeachment, but some feel that way because they can't divorce this issue from all his other dangerous bad conduct.  Republicans insist on whitewashing him, because he wants that and they're scared of him.  On both sides, few are examining simply the "high crimes and misdemeanors" alleged by the House, keeping political concerns and other alleged crimes to the side.  
My point is that while I think Trump's conduct warrants impeachment, I KNOW that it can't be good for our democracy to let this misconduct stand without even a reproach from the U.S. Senate.  It's a terrible precedent.  I also suspect that for some Senators facing close elections, floating that possibility might sound good to some of the all-important Independents.
However, maybe they will indeed reach this idea further down the road, after determining key evidentiary issues such as whether or not to call more witnesses and whether or not to demand more documents  -- then sifting whatever further evidence appears.]

[By the way, new information, including a videotape of Trump at a "big donors only" dinner, not only confirm that he knows Lev Parnas ( a central figure in Trump's lawyer's Ukraine dealings, now under criminal indictment) but confirms the accuracy of Parnas's statement about the occasion.]

Don't think this would sell so many cigars today!