A Sad Day For America

Yesterday the House of Representatives voted to authorize the rules to continue an impeachment inquiry into the actions of the President of the United States with respect to Ukraine.  It is a sober moment for our nation and it should be a reason for each of us to pause and to think about the ramifications of this action.

Contrary to what some have publicly stated, this was not a vote to impeach.  The vote pertained to the conduct of the public fact gathering portion of the proceeding.  Should the House decide that the president did in fact conduct himself in a manner contrary to the Constitution, they will draft Articles of Impeachment.  The entire House then votes to approve or disapprove each of the Articles.  Should one or more Article pass, the Senate then holds a trial, presided over by the Chief Justice of the Supreme Court, and votes to convict or acquit the president on each Article.

So far, the majority of Republicans in the House have made a mockery of the proceedings.  At the direction of the president, they are spreading lies and misinformation about the investigation.  This included storming a classified conference room to “expose” the “secret” proceedings.  Not mentioned is that over 40 Republican Congressmen already had access to those proceedings and indeed participated in them to the fullest extent.  Yesterday, they went to the House floor to decry the inquiry as akin to secret trials held in the Soviet Union.  It is shameful and dishonest behavior on their part.

Now reports indicate that Mr. Trump will monetarily support the election campaigns of Senators that promise to vote against any Articles of Impeachment.  He will withhold supporting funds from those that do not.  We used to call this bribery.

The Impeachment Inquiry rules incorporate everything that the Republicans asked for with public hearings.  Everything.  And the rules approved yesterday afford the president more leeway and ability to participate than either set of hearings involving President Nixon or President Clinton.

The process should be fair and open.  But here’s the deal.  We all already know the basics of what happened.  The president, his Acting Chief of Staff, and his personal attorney have all been on television telling us exactly what happened.  A long parade of career diplomats and military officers followed with contextual information that indicates just how wide-spread and long-planned the effort to extort the Ukrainian government actually was.  It was an old-fashioned shake down.  The president wanted “dirt” on his main political rival and to have the Ukrainian government fuel a conspiracy theory that the Russians did not really interfere in the 2016 election.  Rather, it was a set up by the Democrats to undermine Mr. Trump’s campaign run from, wait for it, Ukraine.  Both conspiracy theories have been long ago debunked by our entire intelligence service and by several of Mr. Trump’s own political appointees.

In exchange for made-up information fabricated by Mr. Trump and his henchmen, the president would release nearly $400 million in aid that Ukraine needed to fight off Russian backed separatists.  While Mr. Trump ran his crazy mob scam, Ukrainians were dying on the battlefield.  Mr. Trump undermined Ukrainian security and our own national security for his personal domestic political goals.  He used taxpayer money to extort another country to interfere in our domestic elections for his benefit.  This was not a government effort to eliminate corruption generally.  There is no such effort or policy in this administration unless the only country in the world that is corrupt is Ukraine and the only people in Ukraine that were corrupt was the Bidens.

It was not just one “perfect” phone call either.  The parade of witnesses deposed by the House committees (there were three committees involved) described a long-term, many pronged, concerted effort to run the scam.  The phone call was the result of months of heavy pressure outside of normal diplomatic channels to get Ukraine to fabricate lies to help the political fortunes of Mr. Trump.

There is also the little matter of the president standing on the White House lawn and encouraging China to interfere in the 2020 election, just as he publicly asked Russia to interfere in the 2016 election.

We already know all this.  (Although, I suspect that it is only the tip of the ice berg.)

The House of Representatives is focused only on his egregious behavior regarding Ukraine.  They are not considering impeachment based on his status as an unindicted co-conspirator for money laundering and campaign violations regarding payments to a porn star and a Playboy model.  They are not trying to impeach him for the 110 known contacts between his campaign and Russians during the 2016 election.  They are not drawing up Articles for the 10 clear cut unlawful efforts to obstruct justice during the Mueller Investigation.  They are not contemplating impeaching him for the over 13,500 documented lies to the American people.

Equally important, we all know that a president cannot be impeached because we disagree with his policies.  We cannot impeach a president because of an obnoxious personality.  We can impeach a president when our national security is put at risk through an abuse of power.

In my opinion the facts surrounding the Ukraine shakedown are not in dispute.  Please note that the Republicans are not defending Mr. Trump by disputing the facts or by providing an explanation of his actions.  They are only attacking the process, and now that process is of their own design.  If they had a factual basis to defend the president, they would use it.  They have no facts on their side.

If the facts are not in dispute then the only remaining question is whether they meet the standard of “high crimes and misdemeanors.”  I think that they do, in the context of presidential abuse of power — the major concern of the Founding Fathers — and obstruction of justice by refusing to turn over documents and witnesses lawfully subpoenaed by Congress.

Some argue that with elections about a year away the president should not be impeached but rather the people should decide Mr. Trump’s fate through the ballot box.  I think that argument is illogical.  Mr. Trump was trying to interfere with the 2020 election after we already know that there was interference in the 2016 election.  He knows better.  More to the point, how can we be sure that the 2020 election is legitimate if we already know that Mr. Trump is trying to stack the deck in his own favor?  He is already trying to steal the 2020 election.  We know this.  Why allow it to happen?

Likewise those that argue that this is just the Democrats trying to undo the 2016 election should take another look.  The inquiry is not about the 2016 election.  It is about what is happening now to influence the 2020 election.  It is not about the past, it’s about the future.

For those that argue that Mr. Trump was out of line to extort the Ukrainians, but that his actions did not rise to the level of an impeachable offense I merely ask, where is that line?  How much can a president put national security at risk before we say that it is too much?  How far can a president abuse the power of the office before we say that it was abused too much?  Whether or not the Senate convicts Mr. Trump on any charges — and I believe that inevitably there will be Articles of Impeachment approved in the House — it is important to put a Constitutional marker down that such behavior is not acceptable and that there are consequences to ignoring the law.

It is a sober day when an impeachment proceeding is necessary.  No one should take joy in the process.  It is also a sad day when an entire political party turns into a cult of personality and publicly attacks a Constitutional process while many of those same politicians privately agree that the leader of the cult abused his power.

There is no telling how events will unfold between now and the end of the year.  I only know that it will be a tough time for our country.