L E T T E R F R OM T HE E D I T OR
Impeach, And Then Convict
BY PAUL SCHINDLER
After two and a half tumultuous
years of the Trump
presidency — with signifi
cant evidence of campaign
fi nance violations, obstruction
of justice, and using the presidency
for self-enrichment, among other
misdeeds on Donald Trump’s part —
we have now arrived at the “smoking
gun” moment.
As the result of a whistleblower
complaint fi led on August 12 by
a government intelligence offi cial,
Congress and the public got its fi rst
inkling of a July phone call Trump
placed to Ukraine’s new president,
Volodymyr Zelensky, during which
he repeatedly pressed him to launch
a new investigation into the Hunter
Biden’s business dealings in that nation
— and what role Joe Biden, when
he was vice president, may have
played in inappropriately abetting his
son’s fi nancial gains.
Let’s get the Biden matter out of
the way right away. It’s a red herring.
Biden’s intervention in Ukraine was
on behalf of President Barack Obama
and consistent with the efforts of
other Western democracies working
to assist that nation in resisting Russian
aggression while cleaning its
own house. No credible link between
the former vice president’s actions
there and his son’s business interests
has ever been demonstrated.
Trump, as with so many issues,
is throwing dust in the air hoping
to obscure the ability of Americans
to see the true picture. He is trying
to smear a Democratic presidential
hopeful that he fears could be a formidable
2020 opponent.
Enlisting a foreign government to
carry out opposition research — indeed
a criminal inquiry — into a
political rival’s background clearly
violates Trump’s oath of offi ce, even
if there were not that matter of $390
million in congressionally appropriated
military aid being held up by the
White House.
In the coming days, all the president’s
men and women will be throwing
around the term quid pro quo in
arguing that Trump, in the transcript
summary released September 25 ,
made no direct link between freeing
up the money being held back and
his request for a “favor.”
This is disingenuous and irrelevant
on several levels. First, it’s very
clear that the call was all about trading
favors. Zelensky thanks Trump
for “your great support in the area
of defense” and adds, “We are ready
to continue to cooperate for the next
steps…” Trump immediately follows
up by saying, “I would like you to do
us a favor though…” and spells out his
ask for more investigation into Biden,
saying that he will put his personal
attorney, Rudy Giuliani, and his attorney
general, Bill Barr, in touch to
brief the Ukraine president and his
prosecutor on what he termed the
“horrible” Biden situation. Zelensky
responded that his prosecutor “will
look into the situation.”
This was a classic shakedown of
the new leader of a nation critically
dependent on US help by the most
powerful person on earth.
If that were not enough, the Washington
Post published a story this
week on the frantic efforts by administration
insiders to get a handle on
exactly what Rudy Giuliani — a private
citizen who works as Trump’s
personal mouthpiece — was up to in
Ukraine and why money appropriated
to assist Ukraine in fending off Russian
aggression, something in the US
national security interest, was being
withheld.
It wasn’t just administration offi -
cials who felt they were in the dark.
So, too, did members of Congress.
Even as stalwart a Trump defender
as South Carolina Senator Lindsey
Graham pressed the administration
on what the hold-up on the money
was. On September 11, after repeated
entreaties from members of his own
party, Trump fi nally released it.
It defi es reason to come to any
other conclusion on what was at play
than that Trump was using congressionally
authorized funds deemed
critical to US interests to exact help
from a foreign government to smear
a domestic political opponent. That is
un-American.
If that seems hyperbolic, read the
Washington Post op-ed by seven
Democratic members of the House
who are military veterans and only
came to endorse impeachment this
week. They write, “This fl agrant disregard
for the law cannot stand. To
uphold and defend our Constitution,
Congress must determine whether
the president was indeed willing to
use his power and withhold security
assistance funds to persuade a foreign
country to assist him in an upcoming
election.”
Perhaps the most signifi cant reason
that the no-quid pro quo defense
of Trump is wanting is that we have
not yet seen the whistle blower complaint
or heard from the whistle
blower. The July phone call with Zelensky
clearly played into the whistle
blower’s concerns, but we need to
learn the entire context of events that
led that individual to raise “urgent”
concerns up the chain of command.
From that evidence, we are likely to
learn in specifi c detail why so many
within the administration, as the Post
reported, were desperate to fi gure out
what Trump and Giuliani were up to
and why the money was being held
back — and even worked to block the
president from picking up the phone
to call Zelensky.
In this regard, it bears remembering
that Dan Coats, the director of
National Intelligence often reported to
be at odds with Trump over his disregard
for the work of intelligence professionals,
resigned just three days
after the whistle blower fi led their
complaint. Was Coats motivated by
the very same concerns? Was Coats
the whistle blower? These are questions
that need answers.
And impeachment is the vehicle to
get at those answers.
We wouldn’t even know what we
know so far if not for the threat of impeachment.
Despite the obligation of
Coats’ acting replacement to turn the
whistle blower complaint over to Congress,
Joe Maguire instead took Attorney
General Barr’s advice to withhold
it. Without the unwavering efforts of
House Intelligence chair Adam Schiff,
the story might never have advanced
to where we are today.
This is all of a pattern with Trump.
Since the Mueller report found no
evidence that he conspired with the
Russians in the 2016 election, the
president has stonewalled congressional
efforts to get to the bottom of
the obstruction of justice which the
special counsel made abundantly
clear Trump tried mightily to carry
out. Trump is also, of course, essentially
an unindicted co-conspirator
➤ IMPEACH & CONVICT, continued on p.19
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