A version of this was published in the Sky Hi News, June 5, 2019
https://www.skyhinews.com/opinion/democrats-and-gop-switch-roles-in-the-trump-era/
Watching an interview with the new Democratic Congressman Jason Crow from Colorado's 6th, a Denver suburban district that flipped from red to blue in 2018, brought home how strange life has become in the Trump era. The Democrats and the GOP have reversed their traditional roles in many ways.
Crow, an army ranger combat veteran who rose from a private to a captain with multi tours of duty in Iraq and Afghanistan is no oddity in the Democratic House caucus. Now, Congress has many Democrats, ten of the 67 elected in 2018, men and women, who have had combat experience or who were intelligence officers, and who have brought their views to Congress of respect of the military and wisdom about war. Once respect for the military was a GOP patriotic thing, salute the flag, patriotism, and honoring those who sacrificed their lives to keep America free. All of those traits were a guaranteed flag waiver. Democrats after Viet Nam were less supportive of the military and were skeptical of sentiments hyper-patriotism. The generals who had joined the administration's White House staff are long gone after daring to advise the President in ways that were contrary to his misconceptions. However, Democrats have been the ones who now have their ranks including military veterans and who often cite departing, disillusioned military advisors like the ones who represented forces keeping the President's worst impulses in check. How times have changed as Democrats view military brass and veterans as forces for good as Trump sheds or fires his military White House advisers.
Once upon a time not so long ago Conservatives and the GOP were seen as defenders of the original intent of our founders in writing the constitution. The executive powers were checked and balanced by the legislature and the Supreme Court in sheer fear some future politician would rise to be King not subject to the same laws as those he governed, free to undermine and trample and interpret laws to promote his retaining power. Now the Trump administration is the one advocating a "strong" leader and stonewalling and subverting the attempts of Congress to hold him accountable. Through appointments of federal and supreme court judges and an attorney general who has a record of advocating the supremacy of the presidency, the Trump administration is proclaiming its power to be above the law and above the ability of Congress to hold the president accountable. On the other hand, it is the Democrats who have become the champion of the original intent of our founders and the constraints on the executive branch as they interpret the meaning of the provisions of the Constitution. It is the Democrats who are supporting the mantra that no one is above the law and upholding the separation of powers as they rail against Trump's tendency to act like an imperial president.
Once upon a time, the FBI was seen as the ultimate law and order enforcer in the US, admired as macho heroes who went after terrorists and mob bosses with dogged devotion to acting on behalf of the rule of law and order, saving our freedom from the USSR aggression. Now, the integrity of the FBI is under attack by the President, who is engineering a special counsel to investigate the investigators, claiming their Republican-affiliated staff leaders were out to get him. The FBI was the GOP's good guys in the months leading up to the 2016 campaign when they announced on again and off again criminal investigations into Clinton's alleged misuse of emails and possibly disclosing classified information. Their actions may have been the ultimate factors in her defeat though Russian interference that painted Clinton in a bad light via bots and disinformation may have played an equal role. That GOP love affair with the FBI went south in 2017 when it became common knowledge the FBI was looking into the Russian connections of Trump and his campaign associated and Donald Trump fired James Comey, the former admired FBI chief whose actions helped Trump get elected. The Democrats emerged as the champion of the FBI and US intelligence services and the rule of law.
Upside down and changing places are partisan attitudes toward Russia. The FBI and our intelligence services kept us safe from the Soviets in the Cold War, when Russians were viewed as our sworn enemies. The Democrats are now the ones viewing Russia as an enemy and the GOP is either in denial the Russians interfered with the 2016 elections or asking, so what is wrong with that? In spite of the post-Soviet era thaw, the rise of former KGB operative Vladimir Putin to near dictatorial control of Russia and looking to reassemble the former Soviet influence in East European border states, has resulted in the US intelligence agencies considering Russia an adversary. On the other hand, Donald Trump sees Russians as a trusted ally with their foreign policy goals worthy of his support. Trump in Helsinki publicly has proclaimed he trusted Putin and Russian intelligence services over our own and after other secret meetings with Putin, he took Putin's word for it that denied Russians interfered in the 2016 elections. Trump has taken actions to lift sanctions on Russians for their expansion into Ukraine, Crimea, and interference in the 2016 elections and advocated measures to weaken NATO's mutual defense function that is keeping Russians from advancing their control of NATO members. Turning a blind eye to any evidence of Russian interference presented by Mueller, the GOP seems not to care that Russians attempted to twist the minds of US voters with their use of social media and advertising, subverting US democracy's purpose of our freedom to reflect the will of our own citizens and to destroy our trust in democratic processes.
____________________________________________________________________________
Donald Trump's strategy to protect his presidential power is to investigate the investigators. His goal is to destroy the credibility of the Mueller report without having to provide evidence refuting its findings. He wants voters to consider the motivation of the investigators as disloyal to him and to ignore the facts and conclusions. To rationalize his goal, his view is that law and order mean whether the enforcers and the intelligence services are loyal to him instead of whether they are loyal to the United States and to the Constitution to which they swore to defend when they took office. These intelligence and law enforcement agents did not pledge allegiance to the president, or the institution of the presidency. A dictator demands loyalty to himself, not to the impartial rule of law. Once the GOP were the law, order, and strict Constitution folks. How times have changed with Democrats as the ones citing the original intent of the Constitution, assuming the mantle of defenders of the rule of law, and opposing the expansion of executive powers over the legislative branch.
Last week Trump accused those investigating him as committing "treason" against him. He has claimed the FBI was engineering a coup against his presidency. He believes he is the person to whom we pledge allegiance, not the United States and the democracy for which it stands. He is above the law, he thinks. Those are the words and thoughts worthy of a dictator. Treason is an accusation Trump has recently been throwing around as a way to charge his enemies with not pledging allegiance to him. Treason has two elements: working with a foreign enemy against the interests of the United States with a foreign power with which we are at war. .That definition does not include working against the interests of the president in power.
Even more frightening, Trump is ordering all of the US intelligence services and federal law enforcement to cooperate with an investigation to see if "treason" was committed against him by beginning the investigation into Russian interference in 2016. Trump's loyal Attorney General Bill Barr has appointed a special counsel to investigate the investigators and the president granted him powers to declassify classified information, possibly exposing to our adversaries sources and methods. At the same time, the Trump administration is stonewalling sharing with Congress all of Mueller's underlying evidence and the unredacted version of the redacted report and forbidding across the board any of his administration testifying before House committees. Last week two separate federal judges ruled against Trump's stonewalling tactics, as the conflict between Trump and the House now moves to the courts.
Since Mueller found no evidence beyond a reasonable doubt the Trump campaign intentionally coordinated or conspired with the Russians to fix the 2016 campaign, Trump himself was exonerated of criminal conspiracy. The service to US security the Mueller report and the text of indictments provided was to lay out measures the Russians conducted to shape the 2016 election to serve their national interests, not ours.
However, Robert Mueller cited ten examples with evidence Trump endeavored to obstruct justice ( aka the investigation) including ordering his subordinates to lie and cover-up. Mueller also wrote he could not indict a sitting president of a crime per department rules and he plainly wrote he did not exonerate him of those violations. Trump's lawyers tried to contend that Trump failed in executing obstruction so he committed not a crime, but federal statutes only require that he ""endeavored, not that he had to succeed. Trump's loyal AG Barr tried to deceive the public by claiming Trump was exonerated of "collusion". Mueller never looked at the more passive campaign actions of publicly encouraging, ignoring or denying, aiding and abetting, and receiving information and intelligence, popularly called "collusion", because there is no such term in the criminal code or a provision to prosecute collusion as a crime.
________________________________________________________________________________
More on treason From the US Federal code: "
Whoever, owing allegiance to the United States, levies war against them or adheres to their enemies, giving them aid and comfort within the United States or elsewhere, is guilty of treason". If there were suspicions anyone was working on behalf of a foreign government, it was Trump himself and the over one hundred contacts of his campaign and White House associates had with the Russians. Little did Donald Trump know until later that the FBI had launched a secret counterintelligence investigation a July 31, 2016, alarmed by the frequent contacts Trump's campaign staff had with Russian operatives and evidence of advance information a campaign official had of Russian hacking. All of the upper echelons of the FBI were registered Republicans and of the law and order traditions, and many were veterans of the Cold War, aware that Russia was an adversary, not a friend, of the United States. In early January 2017, US intelligence agencies warned Trump of Russian activities in the 2016 election, which he questioned and then ignored. That was even before Trump demanded loyalty from FBI Director Comey and fired him over "this Russian thing", later firing Flynn. Trump even fired Sally Yates, the acting attorney general who warned him of the Russian connections of Mike Flynn, his national security advisor, who was vulnerable of blackmail. Flynn later "resigned" and pled guilty of lying to the FBI. That was even before Trump demanded loyalty from FBI Director Comey and fired him over "this Russian thing".
________________________________________________________________________________
18 U.S. Code § 2381.Treason "Whoever, owing allegiance to the United States, levies war against them or adheres to their enemies, giving them aid and comfort within the United States or elsewhere, is guilty of treason and shall suffer death, or shall be imprisoned not less than five years and fined under this title but not less than $10,000; and shall be incapable of holding any office under the United States.(June 25, 1948, ch. 645, 62 Stat. 807; Pub. L. 103–322, title XXXIII, § 330016(2)(J), Sept. 13, 1994, 108 Stat. 2148.)
https://www.npr.org/2018/04/03/599120190/madeleine-albright-warns-dont-let-fascism-go-unnoticed-until-its-too-late?
fbclid=IwAR35fL5KyaCKmm12Y1TFgdMsNGQstMobekUoHIp0xqCAFdrkb4oM2jT2GZA
https://abcnews.go.com/Politics/acting-attorney-general-fired-trump-set-testify-russias/story?id=47263460
https://www.nytimes.com/2017/01/06/us/politics/russia-hack-report.html
__________________________________________________________________________________
.
.
