Thoughts on the House Intelligence Committee Full Report and the First Day of Hearings before the House Judiciary Committee
I have finished a day and a half reading the Full Report of the House Intelligence Committee and listening to the first day hearing of the House Judiciary Committee.
Several things stood out:
· The House Intelligence Committee’s report is exhaustive and damning. It details Trump and Giuliani’s persistent and concerted months long campaign to get the Ukrainian government and the newly elected Ukrainian President to smear Joe Biden, the Democratic Presidential candidate the President most feared. It involves Giuliani, Trump, a right wing reporter for the Hill newspaper, John Solomon, Vladimir Putin, Victor Orban, the President of Hungary, and several corrupt Ukrainians in Kiev and Florida. And it makes clear that many of Trump’s Cabinet members, including people who should have known much better and put a stop to this such as Secretary of State Pompeo, Secretary of Energy Perry and Chief of Staff Mulvaney and possibly Vice President Pence, were instead either deeply complicit or conveniently looking the other way or shrugging their shoulders. Devin Nunes, the ranking minority member of the House Intelligence Committee appears to be deeply involved. From the phone logs, there is much more information potentially available to the Congressional investigators if Giuliani and his associates would testify. This was not an off hand comment on a casual phone call with another world leader, but a plot involving dozens of players to smear the President’s most feared political opponent. And by the way it does enormous damage to the Ukraine and benefits Russia immeasurably, which is contrary and inimical to US national security interests.
Lev Parnas may yet blow the whistle on the Trump/Giuliani skullduggery, which might turn out to be an even deeper scandal than we yet know; we will see.
· The White House did everything humanly possible to keep any and all Administration officials from testifying before Congress, and it successfully blocked from testifying all of those closest to the President with the most direct personal knowledge of his actions. It provided no documents at all in response to the Congressional subpoenas. The White House attorneys and political appointees at OMB, State, Defense and Energy were involved in this effort to cover up the President’s actions. This tactic was an obstruction of Congress and an impeachable offense per se. If successful, it would insulate this President and future Presidents from being called to account for all manner of Executive Branch wrongdoing.
· The sanctity of US elections is at the heart of our democracy. The use/abuse of Presidential powers with a foreign nation to derail an electoral rival are precisely what the founders feared, anticipated, and for which they established the impeachment process and removal from office as as a strong deterrent and harsh remedy. Abuse of Presidential powers for personal electoral gain is a very strong ground for impeachment. You cannot un-ring this bell; the damage is done, and it will continue to haunt Vice President Biden, who did nothing wrong, in his campaign and haunt President Trump, who sought an sunfair advantage in next year’s contest and got caught.
· To Democrats it looks very much like a repeat of the playbook of the Russian electoral interference against Secretary Clinton in 2016 and of Trump’s efforts to derail the Mueller investigation into his campaign’s ties with the Russians. To Republicans, it looks like part of a never-ending campaign to unseat their President. It’s hard to acknowledge that this time, they have him “dead to rights”
Professor Turley’s comments about taking the time to tie up all the loose ends of the evidentiary investigations and build greater national consensus on Presidential wrongdoing are superficially appealing, until and unless you consider and remember that the Trump Administration was blocking all those very same witnesses from testifying. The Administration’s plan is to rope a dope Congress with federal court cases and appeals to the higher courts delaying the day of reckoning until the next election in 2020 and beyond and then claim voter exoneration. It would be very easy for the White House to release its hold on the production of subpoenaed documents and the testimony of its high officials. It would be easy for influential and respected House or Senate Republicans to state that unless the Administration’s documents and witnesses are produced, we’ll have no choice but to assume they are damaging to the President. And it’s hard for Democrats or anyone else to take seriously those Republican partisans still spinning their President’s fantasies (without an ounce of truth behind them) that Ukraine, not Russia, interfered in our 2016 elections.
But here we are, the Rubicon is crossed; the die is cast!
Prepared by: Lucien Wulsin
Dated: 12/4/19