Impeachment Day 11: It’s Cool to Collude, Or Maybe It’s Fake News
“As I said on the phone, I think it’s crazy to withhold security assistance for help with a political campaign.”-- U. S. Charge d’Affaires William Taylor
We started out the week being told the whole whistleblower claim was hearsay. Back then it was called fake news.
The work week is ending with near-hourly revelations. I’m going to keep it short and sweet today, in the interests of clarity.
The bottom line is:
The President is pursuing US policies that serve to coerce his foreign partners into helping him win the 2020 election.
This week, current & former State Department officials have begun cooperating with the House impeachment inquiry by producing documents, scheduling interviews, and giving depositions.
Texts released on Thursday, along with reporting by the Wall Street Journal, substantiate the claim about the Ukraine being strong armed; foreign aid authorized by Congress was withheld, a presidential visit was cancelled, and the U.S. ambassador was fired for refusing to validate conspiracy theories pushed by Rudy Giuliani.
President Trump publicly called on China to investigate political opponent Biden, privately discussed the candidacy of Sen. Elizabeth Warren with President Xi, and told China the U.S. would say nothing about pro-Democracy protests in Hong Kong as long as trade negotiations continued.
The President declared he has the “absolute right” to sic foreign powers on political rivals.
Elected GOP officials are trying to be supportive of the administration, but are having a difficult time keeping up with the current definitions of truth.
https://twitter.com/joanmccarter/status/1180124485946499072?s=20
Here’s a clarifying bit of analysis from Daily Kos:
Soliciting foreign assistance in a United States election is a crime. There is no requirement that something be offered in exchange; the request itself is criminal. Trump's re-assertion of his once-secret request and expansion upon it appears to reflect confidence that Republican lawmakers will take no action even if he brazenly breaks U.S. laws.
https://twitter.com/realDonaldTrump/status/1179925259417468928?s=20
A host of legal experts have chimed in about just how serious the situation is for the concept of rule of law in the United States.
From Just Security in The “Quid” is a Crime: No Need to Prove “Pro Quo” in Ukrainegate:
Although team Trump’s presumed ignorance of campaign finance laws worked in its favor in the context of the Mueller investigation, President Trump and Rudy Giuliani can’t claim ignorance now. Both have been on notice, at the very least since the conclusion of the Mueller investigation, that it’s illegal for any person to solicit anything of value from a foreign national to influence a U.S. election.
Notwithstanding Trump’s undeniable understanding that it’s illegal to solicit anything of value from a foreign national to influence a U.S. election, Mueller’s decision not to prosecute campaign finance violations stemming from the Trump Tower meeting only seems to have emboldened the President.
From the Lawfare Blog in Self-Impeaching: On the Trump-Zelensky Conversation:
For present purposes, it suffices to note that the text of the memo [on the phone call to Ukraine, released by the White House] offers not a whiff of support for the president’s claims about what he did. That text unambiguously reflects conduct intolerable in a president in a number of different respects. And it does so in five brief, easy-to-understand pages, in which Trump clearly seeks to recruit a foreign head of state to violate the civil liberties of American citizens and uncover dirt on a potential political opponent in the 2020 presidential election.
For everyone who breathed a sigh of relief that the Mueller report did not establish presidential “collusion” with Russia in 2016, the White House itself has announced with this release that the president himself has already engaged in such collusion with Ukraine for the next election cycle—and what’s more, he is putting the powers of the American presidency to that purpose.
One avenue that could be pursued in establishing a determination over whether election law was violated would be the Federal Election Commission.
FEC Chair Ellen Weintraub issued a warning about foreign involvement back in June, on the heels of the Mueller report:
“Let me make something 100% clear to the American public and anyone running for public office: It is illegal for any person to solicit, accept, or receive anything of value from a foreign national in connection with a U.S. election.”
“This is not a novel concept,” she wrote. “Election intervention from foreign governments has been considered unacceptable since the founding of our nation.”
Sadly, thanks to the administration’s ad hoc policy of letting regulatory agencies atrophy whenever possible, the FEC can do nothing.
From the New York Times:
The Federal Election Commission, the beleaguered independent agency that is supposed to serve as the watchdog over how money is raised and spent in American elections, has long been criticized as dysfunctional, if not toothless.
Now the state of affairs at the agency is poised to get even worse: It will no longer even have enough commissioners to legally meet.
The resignation of Vice Chairman Matthew S. Petersen, announced on Monday and scheduled for the end of August, will effectively freeze the F.E.C.’s governance, leaving it one person short of a quorum and thus unable to take on some of its most basic actions, including holding board meetings, starting audits, making new rules and levying fines for campaign finance violations.
***
Here’s something really scary to ponder about Individual #1:
The New York Times White House correspondent, Maggie Haberman, asked in an interview about the significance of Trump’s public advocacy of foreign investigations into his political opponents:
Maggie, why would he just blurt out that he wants China to investigate the Bidens?
He clearly knows something a wise person once said to me, which is that the value of a secret is its ability to be disclosed. So he tries to move the window of acceptability by publicly doing the very thing he is accused of doing in private.
What is it about his circumstances that might encourage him to make a request like this out loud?
He has led a consequence-free life despite enormously self-destructive behaviors over time. The divorces were marriages he wanted out of. The bankruptcies impacted his lenders most, not him. All of his behavior in 2016 ended with him winning the presidency. And the Mueller obstruction inquiry ended with no definitive answer.
Does his request this morning remind you of anything?
The period of time that is the most illuminating happened after the “Access Hollywood” tape came out. The next day, I wrote a story about Mr. Trump holed up at Trump Tower. He came downstairs sometime after 4 p.m. and went and immersed himself in a crowd of supporters who were outside on the street, and pumped his fist. The next day, he went to the debate in St. Louis and paraded Bill Clinton’s accusers in front of Hillary Clinton. It was the most savage thing I had ever seen anyone do in politics. And it underscored what Mr. Trump does when he is wounded.
https://twitter.com/goldengateblond/status/1179980868359581697?s=20
Thank you to the many new folks who are stopping by.
My daily coverage of the impeachment saga will continue
through the weekend if there are new developments to report.
And I assume there will be.
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Lead photo: Trump gives NBC reporter 'the hand'
via Kelly O'Donnell on twitter