Sen. Cory Gardner is no profile in courage

Revised and updated: October 21, 2019
Here is your Colorado Senator Cory Gardner  (R) at work. Gardner is no profile in courage. When a Channel 9 KUSA reporter asked Cory Gardner, ' would  (it) be appropriate for a president to ask a foreign government to investigate an opponent, Gardner did not give a "yes" or "no" answer.  In Colorado, Gardner is going down with his ship, it appears as of October, 2019  https://www.thedenverchannel.com/news/politics/new-poll-shows-majority-of-coloradans-support-impeachment-inquiry-hickenlooper-leads-gardner?fbclid=IwAR0SATo1OiMSPKqUj-HMda316oVE-dvox37vzOOe9KtPbQ3caxEmVphpgCU

'The Senate Intelligence Committee is starting an investigation, a bi-partisan investigation. Unfortunately, though, what we've seen is a very political process take over,' he said." https://www.9news.com/article/news/local/next/sen-cory-gardner-interaction-with-the-press/73-e72b2587-5057-403f-80f1-42f93f562a83?fbclid=IwAR2QUKAl-f2

When asked a  question of a matter of principle with a yes or no answer, Gardner responded with an answer that implied that the answer depended upon whether the Senate Intelligence Committee agreed or not with impeachment charges that asking foreign governments to find dirt on a political opponent.  He added a swipe that it is a partisan matter. So much for standing on principle. So what's wrong with the President soliciting help from a foreign government to help him get elected? The easiest answers: it is illegal and it endangers US political independence from foreign control of our own governance, and it is seeking collusion.

While the reporter's question was simple,  to answer yes would have put Gardner in hot water with a President who threatens to primary any GOP member of Congress disloyal to him. To answer no would put him in the category of a pure Trump loyalist in a state that has turned blue and bluer.  He is up for re-election in 2020 and his opponent will be very moderate former Colorado governor John Hickenlooper.
 The correct answer to the Channel 9 reporter should have been " No".  Why? 
1. It's a crime, Mr. President and Senator Gardner
Federal Election Commission (FEC) Chairwoman Ellen Weintraub said after President Trump publicly stated he would accept foreign intelligence on opponents and saw no problem with that.."Let me make something 100 percent 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." 
FYI: impeachment does not require proof a crime was committed to be an article of impeachment.  The definition of high crimes and misdemeanors is left up to the impeachers to define.

2. If the foreign country agrees and produces something that would help a candidate get elected, that candidate finds himself obligated to them in the future even though the foreign country, like Russia, has their own agenda that is not ours and in fact may harm national security.  The Declaration of Independence was just about that: freedom from a foreign power, the British.  Foreign interference was one of the basic fears of the writers of our Constitution, too. The early and later Federalist papers were consumed with the fear that England would try to retake their former colonies. During the Articles of Confederation period before the Constitutional Convention, they noted many attempts by foreign governments to bribe leaders in the former colonies so they laced the Constitution with provisions like the emoluments clause against bribery  and when they could not crack the Constitution and loyalty to the new republic, it took it a step farther invading in the war of 1812.

3. A foreign power getting dirt on a US candidate's opponent is both a thing of value and an element of collusion.  Trump crowed loudly Special Counsel Robert  Mueller's report exonerated him of collusion. He knew collusion was impeachable. However, now Trump himself actively demanded a foreign government to collude. As attorney Ari Melber on MSNBC commented in soliciting dirt on an election opponent from a foreign government, as Trump has done,  is "going from no collusion to pro collusion".As Special Counsel Mueller noted, “[a] foreign entity that engaged in such research and provided resulting information to a campaign could exert a greater effect on an election, and a greater tendency to ingratiate the donor to the candidate, than a gift of money or tangible things of value.” 

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 This question stands alone in importance even if there was no quid pro quo of conditioning military aid to Ukraine if their president did not do Trump the favor of re-opening an investigation into Joe Biden and his son for business dealings in Ukraine and in shifting the 2016 foreign interference in the 2016 election from Russia to Ukraine.  Both of these "asks" are based on conspiracy theories with plenty of evidence to debunk them, but promoted by Trump media. Just soliciting, accepting or receiving something of value from a foreign government in an election campaign is against the law.
The president has been on media openly welcoming, from "Russia are you listening? Find Hillary's missing emails",  the July 25 telephone call, Oct. 3, urges China to dig up on the Bidens. (The Chinese declined). The Mueller report spent pains to find no collusion with Russia in 2016; now soliciting the collusion is in the open or as Ari Melber on MSNBC  put it succinctly:  "Trump has gone from no collusion to pro collusion". On June 13, 2019, in an interview with George Stephanopoulos, Trump was asked if he considered accepting "oppo research" from a foreign country broke election laws, he replied: "It's not an interference, they have information -- I think I'd take it," Trump said. "If I thought there was something wrong, I'd go maybe to the FBI -- if I thought there was something wrong. ..... congressman, they all do it, they always have, and that's the way it is. It's called oppo research." It was during the time of the Stephanopoulos interview that Trump's "personal lawyer" was in the midst of trying to convince the newly elected President of Ukraine to re-open the Biden investigation and play ball. It was in vain until a month later that Donald Trump froze military aid to Ukraine to help that country to  beat back a Russian territorial hot war grab followed by the infamous July 25 telephone conversation in which Ukraine's president said he was ready to buy the aid Trump had frozen Trump said he had a favor to ask "though"  and stated the asks: investigate  Bidens' corruption  and for Ukraine to  take the blame for election interference in 2016 .

https://www.fec.gov/updates/foreign-nationals/

More: https://campaignlegal.org/update/yes-president-trump-violated-campaign-finance-law-asking-ukraine-favor

Tweetable quote: By directly requesting or suggesting that President Zelensky use Ukraine’s resources to help his reelection efforts, Trump violated campaign finance law.

(More technically, Trump asked Ukraine to make an “expenditure” by spending resources for the purpose of influencing the 2020 election. An “expenditure” that is coordinated with a candidate is a campaign contribution; “coordinated” means made at the “request or suggestion” of a candidate. So Trump requesting that Ukraine make an expenditure means that he solicited a contribution.)