Thoughts on the President’s Defenses to Impeachment
The President’s defenses seem to be: 1) I didn’t do it; 2) it was perfectly fine to do it; 3) I was justified in in doing it since Joe Biden is a bad guy and Ukraine is corrupt, and 4) it was not a serious crime warranting my removal from office.
1) I didn’t do it; I just asked for one simple little favor. The evidence is pretty overwhelming out of the President’s mouth, his Chief of Staff’s mouth, the EU Ambassador’s mouth and the National Security Advisor’s book manuscript that the President asked Ukraine for an investigation of Joe Biden, ordered Ukraine’s congressionally authorized and appropriated military aid held up, ousted the US ambassador, directed his Administration’s officials to assist his personal attorney Rudy Giuliani in pressuring Ukraine, and this was all carried out with the President’s knowledge over a six month time frame if not longer.
2) It was perfectly fine to do it. This is the Dershowitz/Mulvaney defense; “everybody does it”. Yes, we pressure foreign leaders all the time to cooperate with US national security objectives. No, re-electing the President (any President) is not a legitimate US national security objective. It may be the President’s personal objective, and he can lawfully ask his domestic allies for campaign help, for contributions to his campaign, for the range of permissible help derailing an opponent. But no, you cannot go to a foreign government and ask for the same kind of help. “Would you mind investigating my political opponents, putting him in the dock, trying him and putting him in one of your jails” is not ok; “would you help me get elected or re-elected with a little campaign dirt I can throw on my opponents” is not ok either. The framers said so repeatedly when debating and explaining the sorts of conduct that would be impeachable during the deliberations and ratification process for the US Constitution. This was the threat to our own democratic elections that our founders most feared when we were a small nation, struggling to birth our fledgling democracy, caught between the British, the French and the Spanish, all with colonies on our national borders seeking to dominate and control us. And that concern of our founders is even more palpable and imperative today when our nation’s President carries such inordinate and unimaginable weight, influence and authority over so many nations and their leaders around the globe. Of course, most would want to do our President “a favor”.
Now look at the form you sign when and if you contribute to political campaigns. You will sign a form that you are not a foreign national contributing to the candidate of your choice; that privilege is open only to Americans. This is hard baked into our democratic election systems for very good reasons of protecting our electoral integrity from foreign influencers. Why exactly and where does it sat that the President alone is exempt from the law?
3) “I was justified in in doing it because Joe Biden is a bad, corrupt guy, and Ukraine is a bad corrupt nation, and it tried to prevent my election”. Let’s address each in turn.
First. As Vice President, Joe Biden successfully pressured the leaders of the Ukraine to get rid of Prosecutor General Victor Sholkin, who the US, including US Republican Senators Ron Johnson and Rob Portman, and the EU and most Ukrainian leaders believed was corrupt. Sholkin was not investigating Burisma, the Ukrainian natural gas energy company where Joe Biden’s son, Hunter Biden, was on the board. Yuri Lutsenko, the succeeding Prosecutor General, affirmed that there was no wrongdoing by either Joe or Hunter Biden in the Ukraine. Ambassador Kurt Volker told the Congress that the allegations by Sholkin through Rudy Giuliani were baseless and false. These falsehoods about the Bidens and the Ukraine emanated from Sholkin and were spread by Rudy Giuliani and a discredited reporter for the Hill named John Solomon. In my own opinion, Hunter Biden should not have been on the Board of Directors of Burisma; he was not well-qualified, and it created a poor appearance, much of which he has since acknowledged. But there is no evidence at all that he took part in any corruption or other wrongdoing while serving on the Board.
Second. The Ukraine has had severe corruption problems (one of its disgraced leaders is residing in Russia under the protection of Vladimir Putin), which the Obama Administration, some Trump Administration officials, and Congressional leaders have pushed them to eliminate. The Trump Administration approved aid to the Ukraine in 2017 and 2018 with no expressed concerns about corruption, and most importantly they provided military assistance with overwhelming bi-partisan support. The Ukraine elected a new President and a new Parliament in 2019 committed to eliminating corruption, and they passed new legislation in an effort to end systemic corruption. The Defense Department certified in late May that the Ukrainian efforts to stem corruption satisfied the Congressional requisites to the Ukraine’s funding, and it announced that the aid would start flowing in June. Secretary Perry, Ambassador Volker and Ambassador Sondland (the three amigos) met with the President of the Ukraine and told the President of their favorable impressions of Ukraine’s new President and his commitment to cleaning up corruption in the Ukraine; yet the President continued his hold on the military aid to the Ukraine. The President was withholding the aid, not to review Ukraine’s anti-corruption efforts, no such review was ever even initiated, but in furtherance of the Trump/Giuliani scheme to get Ukraine to smear his potential election rival, Joe Biden.
President Trump has also expressed concerns about EU burden sharing in providing assistance to the Ukraine; however in point of fact the Europeans have equaled and exceeded our own assistance. "Our bilateral assistance to Ukraine of $1.4 billion is almost at the U.S. level," said the German Embassy official. The U.S. has disbursed nearly $1.5 billion since 2014 in security assistance to Ukraine, while the European Union has provided about $15 billion, mostly in the form of loans.” There is also no evidence that President Trump was using EU Ambassador Sondland to increase EU contributions to the Ukraine; he was being used as part of the pressure campaign on the Ukraine to announce investigations of the Bidens.
Third. There is no evidence at all that the Ukraine tried to prevent Trump’s election in 2016 as President Trump asked the Ukraine’s President to investigate. That is a total fabrication from President Putin and the Russian intelligence services to President Trump. In fact it was Russia who interfered in multiple ways to benefit Candidate Trump and harm Candidate Clinton during that election because of the Obama era sanctions on Russia for invading the Ukraine and annexing its territory. There is and never was a DNC server somewhere hidden in the Ukraine. These are the unsupported ravings of some right wing extremists, opinion writers, Radio and TV personalities, aided, encouraged and abetted by President Putin.
4) It was not a serious crime warranting my removal from office. The Constitution uses the phrases “treason, bribery and other high crimes and misdemeanors” to refer back to the British parliamentary practice and standards to hold the King’s ministers and officers to account for their actions. It is not about committing a serious felony; it’s about attacking the very foundations of our constitutional democracy – in this case free and fair elections and the Constitutional checks and balances on the President’s powers. Impeachment for abuse of power (in this case asking another country to interfere in our upcoming Presidential elections) and for refusing to allow any executive branch witnesses to testify before Congress in its impeachment inquiry go to the very foundational issues for which the Caonstitution’s framers and the nation’s founders reserved impeachment. Congress is at the zenith of its powers when investigating the President’s alleged wrongdoing in an impeachment inquiry. The notion that the President can forbid all Executive Branch employees from testifying or providing documents to Congress in an impeachment inquiry is the act of a despot or a tyrant. We have three co-equal branches of government; we have a system of checks and balances, and the House has the sole constitutional authority and infrequently used responsibility of impeachment to hold the President to account. The President cannot keep them from doing their job mandated in the Constitution by withholding all testamentary and documentary evidence of his actions. This is far worse than erasing part of a White House tape of the President’s incriminating words as in President Nixon’s case; this is equivalent to erasing all documentary records and all recollections within the Executive Branch of President Trump’s alleged conduct in question. This is an attempted cover up of massive industrial proportions. The Presidential abuse of power in question here is not some persistent scheme to promote his own family’s business interests or to protect the secrecy of an affair with a White House intern or a porn star, or to conceal tax returns; it goes to free and fair elections argued and hard fought by Americans for Americans, with Americans making the decisions. Last time there was Russian interference. Whether or not or how much the Trump campaign conspired is still murky (no, Mueller did not exonerate the Trump campaign on these issues, it said it could not prove them beyond a reasonable doubt and there was still outstanding information that they could not access). This time it is Ukrainian interference, which the Trump campaign is actively soliciting, encouraging and heavily pressuring its President to make knowingly false statements and initiate baseless investigations about his potentially strongest election rival.
The efforts to shut down the potential testimony of John Bolton, the efforts to shut down publication of his book, and to try to destroy his reputation in advance of his testimony is a clear and compelling manifestation of how desperate the President is to cover up legitimate questions about his conduct. Why so many Republican Senators are going along to get along, to avoid calling key Administration witnesses and requiring production of relevant documents, I have no idea. But there is a stench decades long, miles wide, and multiple fathoms deep surrounding President Trump and some of his key select acolytes, from which the GOP leadership should disassociate.
Prepared by: Lucien Wulsin
Dated: 1/29/20