A uniquely corrupt, unpatriotic president
Dems face stark choice on impeaching Trump
Even before special counsel Robert Mueller’s report was released, anyone who had a TV knew that President Donald Trump was too corrupt and compromised for his office. Now we know the same is true for his attorney general, William Barr.
For weeks, Barr has been trying to sell us a Mueller report that simply does not exist. The actual Mueller report details one of the most successful foreign interferences into a U.S. election in the history of the republic. It reveals a presidential campaign eager to suck up the benefits of this “sweeping and systematic” interference, and it unmasks a president who attempted to commit multiple crimes to cover the whole thing up.
But beyond all those revelations, this process has shown we are in an emergency unlike anything since Watergate. Barr is determined to help Trump get away with some of the most unpatriotic and corrupt acts ever committed by a president.
Minutes before Mueller’s 448-page report was released Thursday, Barr held a press conference for his second attempt to describe the fictional report he wishes Mueller’s team had written. As if he had been hacked by Trump’s Twitter feed, he repeated some version of the phrase “no collusion” over and over. We soon learned that Mueller’s report couldn’t possibly clear Trump of “collusion.” Why? It clearly states with the first few pages it does not even address the “concept of ‘collusion.’”
Barr also repeated the sentence fragment that played a starring role in his memo that attempted to exonerate the president: “… the investigation did not establish that members of the Trump Campaign conspired or coordinated with the Russian government in its election interference activities.”
Soon, the world finally saw the whole big shocking sentence: “Although the investigation established that the Russian government perceived it would benefit from a Trump presidency and worked to secure that outcome, and that the Campaign expected it would benefit electorally from information stolen and released through Russian efforts, the investigation did not establish that members of the Trump Campaign conspired or coordinated with the Russian government in its election interference activities.”
In other words, both sides were working toward the same goal. Mueller merely couldn’t prove that they had coordinated their efforts in ways that violated the law.
For instance, the famed “Trump Tower meeting,” where the “Crown prosecutor of Russia ... offered to provide the Trump Campaign with some official documents and information that would incriminate Hillary (Clinton),” didn’t lead to any prosecutions. This isn’t because it wasn’t illegal. It’s because “the government would unlikely be able to prove beyond a reasonable doubt that the June 9 meeting participants had general knowledge that their conduct was unlawful.”
Barr also lied to the public when he said Mueller did not “indicate” that he was leaving the question of obstruction of justice to Congress. The report lays out 10 instances of possible criminal obstruction ranging from “Termination of FBI Director Comey” to “The President’s Conduct Involving Michael Cohen.” It then explicitly says “we concluded that Congress has authority to prohibit a President’s corrupt use of his authority in order to protect the integrity of the administration of justice.”
Trump’s singularly corrupt approach to politics is perfectly in line with avoiding taxes and running a fake for-profit college. America now has to decide if we’re willing to go on with a president who was elected with Russian help and then tried 10 times to obstruct an investigation into that help.
The GOP and Barr have made their decision — to let Democrats carry this burden alone. They know the responsibility to impeach a president will be a distraction for a party that just took over the House by campaigning on issues like health care. But with an attorney general willing to do almost anything to protect Trump, the question isn’t “What’s politically advantageous?” It’s what will be left of our democracy if Congress doesn’t do its job.