Impeachment: An evolving menu
Donald Trump, unlike Bill Clinton in the 1990s, doesn’t seem to know when enough is enough, writes Paul Waldman
Yesterday brought a remarkable development in Donald Trump’s impeachment saga: While the US President stands to be impeached for using the power of his office to pressure a foreign government to investigate one of his political opponents, he is responding to the crisis by — wait for it — using the power of his office to pressure a foreign government to investigate one of his political opponents.
“China should start an investigation into the Bidens, because what happened in China is just about as bad as what happened with Ukraine,” Trump told reporters.
China is obviously not the same as Ukraine; it isn’t dependent on the United States for weapons and protection, so China’s leaders are likely to just laugh this request off.
Nevertheless, Trump’s bizarre plea shows just how blinkered his view of this whole scandal is.
His strategy — if you can call it that — has quickly come into focus. That strategy is, like so much of what we have seen over the last three years, an unfiltered expression of the man himself.
And a look back at the last time the US went through impeachment offers such a stark contrast that it illuminates how American politics have changed and how unique Trump really is.
If you were a Republican watching Trump’s news conference on Thursday with the President of Finland, you would not have been reassured. Trump said he had been under attack for three years, blasted the completed special counsel’s Russia probe and said he was considering filing a major lawsuit, although he didn’t say who it would be against. He also said House Speaker Nancy Pelosi hands out subpoenas like they’re cookies.
That he would lie is by now to be expected, but perhaps more important was how angry, aggrieved and petulant he was, lashing out at his opponents and the assembled reporters alike. The display showed that, regardless of whether you agree with him that this is all a witch hunt, Trump is most definitely not in control of his emotions and reactions.
Behind the scenes, things are as disorganised as you’d expect. As the New York Times reports: “For now, the White House has no organised response to impeachment, little guidance for surrogates to spread a consistent message even if it had developed one, and minimal coordination between the President’s legal advisers and his political ones.”
That’s the first striking contrast with the way President Bill Clinton approached his impeachment in 1998 over his affair with Monica Lewinsky.
Though Clinton could be volatile in private, in public he was careful to communicate that he was not only calm and in control, but that he was “compartmentalising” (in the word that became popular at the time), dealing with impeachment when he had to but spending the bulk of his attention on the work of the presidency.
Though it might have been only partially true — Clinton spent plenty of time on the scandal — that he was working for the American people while Republicans were consumed with an unnecessary impeachment wasn’t just the message the White House decided on; they laboured to make it a reality. As Clinton press secretary Joe Lockhart describes it, chief of staff John Podesta went so far as to forbid anyone in the White House who wasn’t working directly on impeachment from even talking about it.
In contrast, Trump is making clear that he’s thinking about nothing else. He sits watching television much of the day, furiously rage-tweeting at what he sees. You’ll never hear Trump say, “I don’t want to talk about that, because I have more important things to do.”
Another key contrast with 1998 is that, while Clinton believed that he could prevail if the discussion was as calm and reasonable as possible, Trump believes that his path to success lies in turning everything up to 11, ramping the volume and the outrage.
That’s in no small part because as much as Clinton tried to keep Democrats in line, he was focused on persuading people in the middle that the impeachment was wrong. He had the benefit of a strong economy to help him make the case that he was doing a good job, but at the time it was still possible for people to make judgments that crossed party lines.
By the time Clinton’s Senate trial began, two-thirds of the public was on his side. That was in large part because the Clinton impeachment featured something we often say we need but never actually have: a national conversation. For an entire year, Americans talked in their homes and workplaces and in line at the supermarket about whether Clinton’s misdeeds were serious enough to warrant removing him from office. By the end of that collective deliberation, they decided the answer was no.
There will be no such national conversation this time. It was never likely, given the nation’s intense polarisation and the fact that the conservative media have such an iron grip on Republicans. But Trump will do everything he can to make it impossible. Trump wants impeachment to be partisan. If anyone around him suggests otherwise, it won’t matter, because he’s the one making the strategy and doing the communicating.
That strategy is, as always, pure Trump: frenzied, dishonest, impulsive, erratic, angry and convinced that if what’s worst in Americans can be properly stimulated he will emerge the victor.
When Republicans in the Senate vote to acquit him (as they almost inevitably will), he’ll declare himself vindicated and say the whole thing was a waste of time. But before we get there, he’ll remind us on a daily basis of what led us here in the first place.
Trump wants impeachment to be partisan. If anyone around him suggests otherwise, it won’t matter.
The former special US envoy to Ukraine testified yesterday of turmoil within the State Department over President Donald Trump’s push to investigate Joe Biden and his family, placing Rudy Giuliani at the centre of the effort.
Kurt Volker, who resigned last week after being named in a whistleblower complaint that sparked the House impeachment inquiry of Trump, appeared for nearly 10 hours behind closed doors. He told lawmakers he was never pressured by Trump or others around the Administration to have Ukraine conduct the investigation of the Democratic rival, and in fact said he had warned Ukrainians to steer clear of American politics.
Yet Volker also recalled being told that plans for a meeting between Trump and the new Ukrainian President were being put on ice, according to one person familiar with the private meeting who, like others, spoke on the condition of anonymity.
The appearance by Volker is the first in what is expected to be a series of interviews with officials inside and outside the State Department. House investigators want to understand more about the Trump team’s search for damaging information about the former Vice-President, who is now a Democratic presidential contender and top Trump rival.
Republicans leaving the interview with Volker claimed it helped show there was no quid pro quo when the officials asked for a probe. But Democrat Eric Swalwell, a member of the House intelligence panel, disputed that. He described a text from one senior department official that read, “It’s crazy if we are trying to leverage US dollars in security assistance for help in a political campaign.”
Swalwell said after the meeting that Volker told them that “multiple people” in the State Department were worried there was a connection between US military aid that was being withheld from Ukraine amid the Administration’s push for an investigation.
The daylong session left uncertainties. Volker denied any personal involvement in Trump’s push on Biden, yet reports yesterday indicated he had knowledge of a draft statement, intended for new Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskiy, that would have committed Ukraine to conduct the investigations Trump was seeking.
Ukraine never issued the statement, and it’s unclear if it came up during Volker’s testimony.
The State Department said Volker has confirmed that he put a Zelenskiy adviser in contact with Giuliani, Trump’s lawyer, at the Ukrainian adviser’s request. Giuliani has said he was in frequent contact with Volker.
Volker told investigators yesterday that he warned Giuliani not to rely on information coming from Ukraine’s former top prosecutor, Yuri Lutsenko. The former prosecutor general reportedly had been in contact with Giuliani, the person said.
Swalwell said they had text messages from as early as May showing that officials were concerned about Giuliani, who has played a central role in Trump’s efforts to launch a Ukrainian corruption probe into the Bidens.
Volker was in office as the Administration was holding back the US$250 million ($400m) for Ukraine.
At the time, Trump was pressing Zelenskiy about the Bidens.
Volker told the House investigators it was unusual for the US to withhold the aid, but he said he was given no explanation for it, the person said.
The former envoy spent hours behind closed doors as lawmakers and staff pored through dozens of pages of text messages, photos and other correspondence during the interview, according to those familiar with the meeting.
Volker resigned last Saturday after being asked to testify to Congress about the whistleblower complaint that describes how Trump repeatedly prodded Zelenskiy for an investigation of Biden and his son Hunter, while his Administration delayed the release of military aid to help Ukraine fight Russia-backed separatists. The complaint says Volker met in Kiev with Zelenskiy and other Ukrainian political figures a day after the call, and he provided advice about how to “navigate” Trump’s demands.
Hunter Biden served on the board of a Ukrainian gas company at the same time his father was leading the Obama Administration’s diplomatic dealings with Kiev. Although the timing raised concerns among anticorruption advocates, there was no evidence of wrongdoing by either the former Vice-President or his son.
Volker agreed to a voluntary interview with lawmakers and congressional staff and was said to be eager to tell his side of the situation.
As the impeachment inquiry focuses on Ukraine, Trump doubled down yesterday by publicly calling on China to also investigate Biden and his family, potentially setting off more alarms in Congress.
“China should start an investigation into the Bidens,” Trump said outside the White House. Trump said he hadn’t directly asked Chinese President Xi Jinping to investigate, but it’s “certainly something we could start thinking about”.
The State Department’s role in Ukraine has become deeply entangled in the impeachment inquiry as Secretary of State Mike Pompeo confirmed that he was also on Trump’s July 25 call with Zelenskiy.
It was reported this week that Volker met last year with a top official from the same Ukrainian energy firm that paid Hunter Biden to serve on its board. The meeting occurred even as Giuliani pressed Ukraine’s Government to investigate the company and the Bidens’ involvement with it.
Pompeo accused the congressional investigators of trying to “bully” and “intimidate” State Department officials with subpoenas for documents and testimony, suggesting he would seek to prevent them from providing information. But the committee managed to schedule the deposition with Volker, and one next week with Marie Yovanovitch, who was US ambassador to Ukraine until she was removed from the post in May.