Trump and all his henchmen need to go
The House Intelligence Committee has issued its final report: a blistering account of how Donald Trump abused the power of the presidency and obstructed justice. It’s now up to the Judiciary Committee to decide whether the facts laid out in the report merit the impeachment of the president of the United States.
Of course, Trump should be impeached. Only a blind, batty, brain-dead Trumper could look at the evidence and conclude otherwise. No matter how many hissy fits Jim Jordan throws, the facts are not in dispute. One, Trump ordered that almost $400 million in military aid to Ukraine plus a White House visit be blocked unless and until Ukraine agreed to investigate former Vice President Joe Biden, his potential 2020 opponent. Two, Trump invited a foreign government to intervene in an American election (having already welcomed the help of another foreign government in the last one). Three, Trump defied congressional subpoenas for documents and testimony of administration officials in the impeachment probe.
As Michael Gerhardt, University of North Carolina School of Law, told the Judiciary Committee, “If what we’re talking about is not impeachable, then nothing is impeachable.” And then, directly refuting nutty Republican claims that Trump did nothing wrong, Gerhardt concluded: “The president’s serious misconduct ... (is) worse than the misconduct of any prior president, including what previous presidents who faced impeachment have done or been accused of doing.”
At this point, it seems certain that Trump will, and should, be impeached by the House of Representatives. But that’s only the tip of the iceberg. Surely, Trump did not act alone — as we learned from Trump’s EU Ambassador Gordon Sondland.
In his testimony before the House Intelligence Committee, Sondland made two blockbuster statements. First, that military aid to Ukraine was, in fact, conditioned on Ukraine’s launching an investigation into Biden and his son Hunter. “Was there a quid pro quo? The answer is yes.” But even more damaging was Sondland’s stunning revelation that all the top brass in the White House were in on the act: “Everyone was in the loop.”
That “everyone” includes, first of all, Vice President Mike Pence. Under oath, Sondland testified that, shortly before Pence met with Ukraine President Volodymyr Zelenskiy on Sept. 1, he told Pence of his concerns that military aid to Ukraine was being withheld by Trump as leverage to get the investigations he wanted. Pence, according to Sondland, simply “nodded in response.”
Also playing a leading role: former Energy Secretary Rick Perry, who represented Trump at Zelenskiy’s inauguration. According to the House Intelligence Committee report, Perry was one of “Three Amigos” Trump put in charge of dealing with Ukraine, working under the direction of his personal attorney Rudy Giuliani, who cooked up the entire “aid for dirt” Ukraine scheme.
Perry wasn’t the only Cabinet member involved. Add Secretary of State Mike Pompeo. It was Pompeo who followed Giuliani’s direction to fire Ambassador Marie Yovanovitch. It was Pompeo who, through phone calls and emails from both, was kept fully apprised of Giuliani and Sondland’s efforts to link U.S. aid to the Biden investigation, which Pompeo fully supported.
Inside the White House, it was acting chief of staff Mick Mulvaney who made sure Trump’s orders were being carried out. The Intelligence Committee report includes records of phone calls between Mulvaney and Giuliani. It was Mulvaney who told OMB to freeze the $391 million in military aid. And, of course, it was Mulvaney who admitted to reporters there was, indeed, a “quid pro quo,” admonishing them to just “Get over it.”
A surprise addition to the list of coconspirators is California Congressman Devin Nunes, top Republican on the Intelligence Committee, identified in phone records as being in contact with both Giuliani and his now-indicted associate Lev Parnas during the efforts to bribe Zelenskiy.
And then, of course, there’s Giuliani, who first came up with the totally baseless theory of blaming Ukraine, not Russia, for interfering in our 2016 election and easily sold it to his conspiracyprone client.
Bottom line: It’s not enough to impeach Trump. The only way to clean house is to get rid of the entire crooked bunch.