We have a republic: will we keep it?

A version of this was published in the Winter Park Times, Nov. 8, 2019

https://winterparktimes.com/opinion/columnists/setting-a-precedent/

Update Nov. 12, 2019

Admiral William Mcraven, (ret)
https://www.nytimes.com/2019/10/17/opinion/trump-mcraven-syria-military.html

"It is easy to destroy an organization if you have no appreciation for what makes that organization great. We are not the most powerful nation in the world because of our aircraft carriers, our economy, or our seat at the United Nations Security Council. We are the most powerful nation in the world because we try to be the good guys. We are the most powerful nation in the world because our ideals of universal freedom and equality have been backed up by our belief that we were champions of justice, the protectors of the less fortunate.

But, if we don’t care about our values, if we don’t care about duty and honor, if we don’t help the weak and stand up against oppression and injustice — what will happen to the Kurds, the Iraqis, the Afghans, the Syrians, the Rohingyas, the South Sudanese and the millions of people under the boot of tyranny or left abandoned by their failing states?
If our promises are meaningless, how will our allies ever trust us? If we can’t have faith in our nation’s principles, why would the men and women of this nation join the military? And if they don’t join, who will protect us? If we are not the champions of the good and the right, then who will follow us? And if no one follows us — where will the world end up?
President Trump seems to believe that these qualities are unimportant or show weakness. He is wrong. These are the virtues that have sustained this nation for the past 243 years. If we hope to continue to lead the world and inspire a new generation of young men and women to our cause, then we must embrace these values now more than ever."

If we let President Donald Trump off the hook for misusing the power of his office for his own political benefit we could cause the eventual end of our democracy. There are those who will say what he did was wrong, but it was not wrong enough to justify impeachment or removal by the Senate. Consider this. How Congress acts will create a precedent for some future wannabe dictators from the left or from the right who think they too can get away with it. Many democracies in our modern era have died a creeping death because citizens allowed their constitutions and laws to be abused. Our founders feared the rule of a tyrant (king, dictator or autocrat) would reoccur. They had fought a revolutionary war to rid themselves of one. They wrote safeguards into the Constitution. If those safeguards are ignored, wrongdoings go unpunished, or unexposed, there is a likelihood that sometime in our future we could see our democracy replaced by an autocrat getting away with ignoring laws and the Constitution as Trump did. It is not only about members of Congress who fear being primaried or concerned with their reputation in history. It is also about the future of the kind of governance our children and grandchildren will have. Frequently quoted Ben Franklin on the passage of the Constitution: “We have a republic if we can keep it”. American democracy is being tested.

Important guardrails protecting us from the demise of democracy are written into our Constitution: the separation of the three co-equal branches of government and their ability to have specified kinds of checks over one another. A major difference between a dictatorship and a democracy is that the rule of law trumps the rule of a person in a democracy. In a dictatorship, the autocratic leader tells you what the laws are or mean and persecute you for not adhering or daring to protest. Impeachment by Congress is one of the Constitution's checks against this happening. Important witnesses have braved repercussions to their own futures to provide confirmation of evidence already public in the record of a telephone call between President Trump and the President of Ukraine, and slips of the tongue of officials. Corroborating evidence is emerging from the behind doors inquiry that Trump used the powers of his office to get help from a foreign government for his 2020 re-election bid. The impeachment inquiry is now moving into the light of public hearings and voters will have a chance to see and hear for themselves if this is a sham, an unfair process, and a partisan takedown, as Republicans claim.

Charges being investigated by the House are whether the President asked, pressured, or demanded the Ukraine President to help Trump’s re-election. Soliciting, accepting and using aid from foreigners for election purposes is by itself a crime per election laws. Our democracy, our elections, are of, by, and for Americans, not of, by, or for Russia, China, or any other country. In the July 25 telephone call, Trump asked the new Ukrainian president to find dirt on the family of Joe Biden, his most feared opponent in the upcoming 2020 US elections. He further conditioned a visit to the White House and the release of bi-partisan supported military aid Ukraine desperately needed if they agreed to the favors he asked. That phone call described a “quid pro quo”, a Latin phrase, meaning “I will give you something you want (quid), the release of US military aid and a White House visit, though if you do what I want (the quo)’“, and investigate Hunter Biden’s Ukraine business. That kind of bargaining is used to support national security policy’s established objectives, but that is not what this quid pro quo involved. It was to benefit Trump’s re-election. Trump’s defense that the deal was to fight corruption in Ukraine is a farce since any reference to corruption the President made only mentioned Biden’s son’s Ukraine business dealings.

https://www.newsweek.com/federal-judge-slams-trump-attacks-judiciary-1470674

Trump's defense: So what there was quid pro quo: just get over it?

Revised: 10/20/19 and 10/22/19 and 10/23/19
 A version was published in the Winter Park Times  October 25, 2019 as Four Presidents impeached; none removed.
https://winterparktimes.com/opinion/columnists/four-presidents-impeached-none-removed/
(note: Winter Park Times heading was written by the editor and sounds technically misleading: Four impeachment processes were indeed referenced in the column, 2 happened (Andrew Johnson, Clinton)  1 the president (Nixon)  resigned before the vote, and the fourth is the current attempt and predicted likely.  The first three resulted in no removal of the president and this one regarding Donald Trump will likely result in impeachment, but he will likely not be removed either. The reason: 2/3 vote of the Senate is required to remove the President, after a trial,  and requires a strong bi-partisan vote. In 2019, given the partisan makeup of the Senate, all Democratic senators and twenty Republicans would be needed to find the President guilty and removed. In the House that actually votes on impeachment, due to the historic win of Democrats in 2018, the House's majority is comfortably Democrat, with a 41 seat advantage over Republicans and a simple majority is all that is needed to impeach. Impeachment is like a grand jury resulting in a list of charges, in this case, to be referred to the Senate for trial. A  difference of impeachment  is that unlike a criminal process, impeachment is not dependent on a finding of a violation of any crime, but the guidelines  as laid out in the Constitution listed as reasons, bribery, treason, high crimes, and misdemeanors,  are left to the House to interpret and do not require a finding of "beyond a reasonable doubt" as would be the proof required in a criminal case. In any case, impeachment is very rare, the process is historic,  rarely attempted, and the chances are the result will not be a president removed from office.)


What the president did was bad, but it was not bad enough to impeach or remove from office?
This may be the only excuse GOP members can use to vote against impeachment or for Senators to vote for acquittal, given the facts and evidence that have emerged. It is a judgment call.   If the criteria is whether the acts affected public policy and breaking laws,  this 2019 impeachment inquiry is far more serious than prior ones were.  A crime was committed and admitted and national security policy was involved. In Bill Clinton's case, it was his lies about a dalliance with an intern, and in Nixon's, it was his lies about his role in the Watergate Breakin.   Letting the president off the hook for these actions would allow future corrupt presidents to do likewise.


On October 17, 2019, Mick Mulvaney, the president's chief of staff, inadvertently admitted that the President used freezing critically needed military aid to force the new president of Ukraine to undertake investigations concerning the hacking of the Democratic National Committee servers in the 2016 elections. In effect, he verified a quid for quo did occur. He conveniently ignored the rough text of Trump's July 25 telephone call where not only was that issue listed as one of the "asks" and favors of the Ukraine president, but also included was the investigation into Joe Biden's son. So 'politics happen in foreign policy', said Mulvaney, but "we should just get over it. "He later tried to walk back the damning admission that there was a quid pro quo and ask so what?  This appears to be the beginning of a defense tactic.  Admit the deed happen, but make it look like it is no big deal, not worthy of impeachment and removal from office.

That's a hard argument to make, especially since last year the President shouted to high heaven with relief when the Mueller report exonerated him personally of collusion with the Russians to tilt the election his way though Russians were indicted and Trump associates went to jail for lying about contacts with Russians. Trump had been very afraid that would be grounds for impeachment.  Now he himself was actually the initiator of collusion with a foreign government, demanding Ukraine find dirt on his opponent to help him win in 2020 and to undermine the Mueller findings that it was not Russia who hacked the DNC, but Ukraine. in 2016.   As TV attorney Ari Melber noted, "he went from no collusion to pro collusion".   It breaks federal election laws just to " solicit, accept, or receive"something of value from a foreign government.         

To add gravitas, Tump risked our national security interests. He froze Congressional appropriations for  military aid Ukraine desperately needed in their hot war with Russia in their eastern provinces and conditioned that aid  release on some "favors" with the infamous word in a telephone conversation with the Ukrainian President,  who asked for release of the frozen military aid, with  "though", as he listed the favors he wanted. That was the quid pro quo, the bribery, to which Mulvaney admitted.
Ambassador Bill Taylor's opening statement to testimony before a House impeachment inquiry was a witness to the smoking gun, yes there was a quid pro quo: https://www.cnn.com/2019/10/22/politics/bill-taylor-deposition-text-messages/index.html?fbclid=IwAR3IeZ4Se2RKfbHrfH9rGj8JKXduTYm8ZXlvxive4zqCF4jMKabHQeg9TJE

That we should just get over it, that happens all of the time, quid pro quo's to force governments to bend to our will, helps us pursue our foreign policy and national security objectives, per Mulvaney. But that is not what Trump's objective was in this case. The purpose of the pressure on Ukraine was not for helping US national security to keep Russia from spreading further control over eastern Europe; it was to benefit Trump himself in elections.

 We have had only four presidents ever impeached in our 250-year history and no vote has ever passed in the Senate that met the two-thirds needed to remove the president after the trial there. (Nixon resigned before the impeachment vote and this fourth one is very likely)   Probably it will not happen this time either. Twenty GOP senators would have to vote with the Democrats to meet the 2/3 threshold.  In recent times, we have impeached for lessor travesties.  One involved lies about a cover-up of a break-in of the Democratic National Committee's headquarters (Nixon) and lies about a sexual dalliance with an intern (Bill Clinton).   In 2019, the difference is that the President has not so much lied about it, but that he openly and brazenly enlisted collusion for campaign support  from a foreign government and he used as bribery to get that support with  tools dangling  a visit to the White House and withholding military aid deemed important to our own national defense against an adversary.  So we are supposed to get over this?

________________________________________________________________________________
This section will also be reproduced as a separate blog postings and future updates post 10/22/19 will be in that new posting:  GOP's defense in impeachment inquiry sounds better than it is.
Other diversions:

The Mueller  report in over 125 pages in graphic detail  concluded that Russia did indeed help
Trump get elected in 2016, but it was just there was not enough evidence that Trump himself
conspired with a foreign power.  A biartisan Senate intel committee found after extensive review it was
Russia, not Ukraine.  Their reports was issued in early October 2019. https://foreignpolicy.com/2019/10/08/bipartisan-senate-report-undercuts-trumps-account-of-2016-meddling/   Trying to put the blame on Ukraine instead is strange. Speculation is that Trump wants an excuse to
remove sancitons from Russia imposed because of their 2016 meddling. ..one more favor Trump
can do for Russia and Putin.

 The 2018 election did have consequences, turning the House decisively from red to blue, putting the Democrats in charge with the simple majority to needed to impeach.  However, to claim this is unfair, the implications are that impeachment could only occur if the party in power was the same as the presidents.  If so, impeachment would never happen if party discipline held. Trump's day in court, his chance to rebut and defend himself will be in the trial in the Senate. That is how the Constitution was constructed.    Impeachment is like a grand jury findings of probable cause laying certain charges that rise to the standard justifying impeachment. Criteria worthy of impeachments could include bribery, treason, or high crimes and misdemeanors. That proof Trump had committed a crime that broke some law is not necessary and what defines high crimes is up to the House.

The other  GOP defenses are that Taylor is the deep state.  Take a look at his credentials: He was appointed by Sec. State Pompeo who called him from his retirement. He was West Point, Viet Nam veteran, and career diplomat that had served both Democrats and Republicans.  He does not need employment.
His credibility is unimpeachable.

The other GOP defense: the process is unfair. Both Democrats and Republicans were in the room during Taylor's testimony and asked questions.  The President is using his media megaphone and tweets full of lies and insinuations and attempts to divert attention to lynching victimization, etc. There will be a chance to do this in the public, too.  So there will be hearings held in public and cross-examination by the GOP.  If the impeachment vote is sent to the Senate, there will be a full-blown trial and the GOP will get their day in court.   Unlike Nixon and Mueller, there was no law enforcement examination of the issue via a special counsel so the House must do that. Impeachment is like a grand jury to determine the cause and prosecution charges, where those testifying are under oath and are not represented by attorneys or department minders.  House democrats fear that if all depositions are held in public, then witnesses can coordinate answers and the truth will be that much harder to find or reveal. That is a common prosecution tactic, to keep witnesses from knowing what the one before them said so they could back them up.



It appears at this time in the early impeachment inquiry in the House that Trump had also set loose some ghostbusters, Rudy Guiliani and Attorney General Bill Barr. Guiliani and his accomplices began pressuring the Ukraine president to investigate conspiracy theories that had been debunked many times before, that Hunter Biden, Joe's son, had committed some crime in his business dealings with Ukraine and that Joe had interfered to stop the Ukraine prosecutor. In fact, Vice president Joe Biden and the whole western world was trying to get that prosecutor off any investigations (Biden's energy company was not under investigation at that time)  as corrupt himself and to ferret out corruption with more vigor, not less.  Trump's ghostbusters per reports of House depositions of State Department officials were working around official diplomats to pressure the newly elected Ukrainian president to launch those investigations into conspiracy theories. When he balked, they dangled a White House meeting as a reward, and when he balked again, the military aid freeze was begun, followed by the July 25 telephone call.  Trump's private attorney Rudy Guiliani, who himself was working some side deals to control Ukraine's energy company for some clients. Ghostbuster Barr set out on an international trek to find evidence of another conspiracy theory that the entire Mueller report was started was due to a deep state conspiracy.  None of this gets at the evidence and facts of the Mueller report; it just tries to undermine it by questioning the motives of some in the CIA, FBI, and national security apparatus.  Mueller's integrity has been beyond reproach. In fact, he may have bent a bit the other way, by not investigating the financial dealings with foreign banks to see if there was a Russian angle.

Another diversionary argument is specious:  Is receiving dirt on an opponent from a foreign government a forbidden thing of value so it breaks federal election laws?  Per the head of the US election commission: it is: https://www.vox.com/2019/6/14/18677631/trump-campaign-finance-law-fec-illegal-fbi     However, as Nixon found out, you do not have to be convicted of a crime for an article of impeachment such as abuse of powers, to be thrown at you.
https://www.buzzfeednews.com/article/zoetillman/justice-department-trump-call-ukraine-thing-value

Trump's outrageous tweet that the House impeachment process is a lynching...aside from his dog whistle to his racist supporters..has one major difference between the two: The Constitution provides for legal action and the end result would be removal from office; lynching was a murder without due process. The best discussion of impeachment I found was : https://www.law.cornell.edu/wex/impeachment

LAW.CORNELL.EDU

IMPEACHMENT

The impeachment provisions of the Constitution839 were derived from English practice, but there are important differences. In England, impeachment had a far broader scope. While impeachment was a device to remove from office one who abused his office or misbehaved but who was protected by the Crown,...

 That impeachment will pass the House is very likely.  The votes are there. The text of the infamous July 25 telephone call is verified by the administration.  Now evidence to back up charges that a quid pro quo took place is emerging between Mulvaney's slip and the flood of State Department officials and former members of the administration willing to be witnesses and to be deposed.     Already 52% of voters per recent polls want not only Trump impeached,  an action similar to a grand jury indictment, but over a majority want the Senate to hold a trial and remove him from office. It will take a 2/3 vote of Senators to vote to remove him from office, a high bar, that has never been met before by a vote. Given the party makeup of the Senate, that will require 20 GOP senators and all Democratic senators to vote for conviction and removal from office.  Now  GOP Senators are terrified of being primaried if they do not pledge allegiance to the person of Trump himself.  Even if the Senate does not convict, Democrats could damage Trump so much that he would be handily defeated in his run for re-election a year from now.  Democrats are taking a gamble doing this, fearing a backlash if the President is acquitted in the Senate, but it is not a very big risk given the public nature of the evidence and the Trump party discipline imposed by fear and tweets.

This is another line of the White House defense:  US can withhold aid if they believe the money will be used corruptly, so we did. In this case, that was never the conditions laid as favors asked by Trump. that one gets 4 Pinocchios.  In the July 25 telephone call between Trump and the Ukraine president no mention was made of general corruption, but only of Biden and the favors asked only had to do with Biden then and until early September.  2 days after the Whistleblower complaint was made public, the aid was restored.  Neither the White House or the Department of Defense had conducted a review of general corruption as a condition of releasing aid; our other European allies had determined that Ukraine had taken measures with their judiciary to combat corruption; the US Ambassador to Ukraine had been recalled because she was fighting corruption and not cooperating with the Guiliani shadow efforts .  Guiliani was running a scheme parallel to US official policy to force Ukraine president to claim publicly that he had opened an investigation of the Bidens and whether Ukraine, not Russia, hacked the DNC. The testimony of  Ambassador Bill Taylor makes clear that the aid was conditioned on the Ukraine president agreeing to White House demands. https://www.washingtonpost.com/politics/2019/10/23/trump-mulvaneys-claim-that-corruption-concerns-held-up

One more defense line from the White House was that Taylor's testimony was hearsay. Some was, some was not since he was a participant dealing with the messages and texting.  He came equipped with contemporaneous notes and documents.  In a grand jury, which is like this phase of impeachment,
heresay is permitted and it is permitted in an impeachment process. (Linda Tripp's testimony in the Clinton process is an example of that).
https://www.nytimes.com/2019/10/17/us/politics/mick-mulvaney-trump-ukraine.html
http://nymag.com/intelligencer/2019/10/trumps-potential-senate-impeachment-trial-what-we-know.html

https://history.house.gov/Institution/Origins-Development/Impeachment/

https://www.nbcnews.com/politics/trump-impeachment-inquiry/read-full-transcript-trump-s-conversation-ukraine-s-president-n1058581

https://www.newyorker.com/news/news-desk/the-invention-of-the-conspiracy-theory-on-biden-and-ukraine?fbclid=IwAR0ZOA6Tk1BZ7xVOyLJgRpxrGvUlkx8S

https://thehill.com/policy/international/465151-ukraine-president-says-he-will-happily-investigate-whether-country

https://www.axios.com/trump-tax-returns-house-democrats-subpoena-court-ruling-46f369a5-976c-45b6-865a-c9ec6fdc5407.html

https://www.reuters.com/article/us-usa-trump-whistleblower-ukraine-buris/ukraine-agency-says-allegations-against-burisma-cover-period-before-biden-joined-idUSKBN1WC1LV?fbclid=IwAR2C303PXWzF2V540JbFfpf7awVVDUsDcHsC90FFYBM5LcZ7nspa5iqcC98

https://www.nbcnews.com/tech/internet/trump-seized-conspiracy-theory-called-insurance-policy-now-it-s-n1062096
DNC hacked themselves

https://thehill.com/policy/international/465151-ukraine-president-says-he-will-happily-investigate-whether-country

https://www.newyorker.com/news/news-desk/the-invention-of-the-conspiracy-theory-on-biden-and-ukraine?fbclid=IwAR1wudXBIUqgruIaEuq8MS_9_o5OaWwlA5UqzJhv8Gq6FPj9VEIHVQHderI

https://www.washingtonpost.com/politics/2019/10/08/gop-theory-that-ukraine-set-up-trump/?fbclid=IwAR05CjcPwjDMtuqcJtBWNPLaDQQYusF34GZ5MxSZv4WIRuVkqmmuKXB7Mr0

https://www.newsweek.com/fact-check-clintons-russia-trump-688592?fbclid=IwAR0mo8779it79ByOBTM89SqC1AO7qsvRrofQ6Btoj-gtRR6rKkEx1nGeLMA

https://www.apnews.com/d7440cffba4940f5b85cd3dfa3500fb2    Guiliani, Rick Perry, oil gas
Ukraine

https://www.cnn.com/2019/10/03/politics/chairs-on-volker/index.html
Pay attention to pages 9 and 10

https://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/2019/10/03/may-ukrainian-oligarch-said-giuliani-was-orchestrating-clear-conspiracy-against-biden/

https://uscode.house.gov/view.xhtml?req=(title:52%20section:30121%20edition:prelim)