The Impeachment Papers

^November 20, 2021 George Will looks back, with disgust: “They are two wings that cannot fly together – a Bannon-Breitbart group of arch-reactionaries and a group of more traditional party regulars who are as exciting as a traffic sign. Each blames and hates the other even more than liberal Democrats. For all of them it’s going to be a long four – or forty – years.”

^December 1, 2020. The Supreme Court rules 5-4 in support of Trump’s pardons of others, though the liberal dissenters are convinced that they appear designed to cover up the commission of crimes in which he was a co-conspirator. But by 8-1 it rules that his self-pardon is not constitutional. Justice Ginsburg, now a vigorous 88 and in probably her last major decision, opines against authoritarianism and monarchy.

“True, the pardon power appears nearly unlimited. But this Catch 22 is surely not what the Founders intended. That’s why no president and indeed no governor in our entire history has ever attempted such an evident abuse of power. As written by Sir Edward Coke in the famous Bonham’s Case in 1610, we will apply our sense of ‘common right and reason’ and be the final judge of what justice means.”

The lone dissenting vote is Gorsuch, who embraces what he calls “judicial modesty since the plain language of Article 2, Section 2 puts no limits on pardons.” Ginsburg, known for her subdued sarcasm in chambers, confides to Justice Sotomayor, “Good luck in the next 30 years trying to get that good-looking robot to ever rule against the most right-wing position possible. His views petrified the day he walked through the Federalist Society’s door.”

^January 21, 2022. Kellyanne Conway – who had been called “Satan’s trophy wife” by Stephen Colbert back in the summer of 2017 — gets her own hour show on Fox and a $4 million contract from HarperCollins to write, “Analyze THIS Alternative Fact! How I Speed-talked and Out-smiled all of them.”

November 10, 2020. The ticket of Mike Pence and Nikki Haley – their posters read “Mike & Nik” and “America Luuvs Guvs” – enter the general election trailing the Democratic ticket by 17 points due to the taint of Trump. They lose in an electoral rout, 74 million to 57 million votes and 408 electoral votes to only 130. The Senate goes Democratic 54-46 and the House Democratic majority grows from 230 to 242.

*Says 45: “Mike tried but, let’s face it, he’s not me. And we lost the Congress because they didn’t stand tall with me.”

*The next morning, the President-elect tells a large ballroom room of delirious supporters: “America will again be governed by the democratic premise that ‘we’re-all-in-this-together’, not ‘you’re-on-your-own-buddy.’ By Thomas Jefferson not Robinson Crusoe. So we’re going to fight for communities, not just big corporations, and my Cabinet will be stocked by people with ideas and ideals. No more foolish tweets about silly feuds. No more officially sanctioned intolerance and extremism. The American Democratic Experiment of 1776 is fresh again.”

February 20, 2020. Today Trump tells AP, “World War II was really terrible but it’s not clear why America had to attack Germany after Pearl Harbor. Anyone wonder why all these wars occur on the Democrat Party’s watch?”

Confusion over Frederick Douglass was one thing but stunning ignorance by a commander-in-chief another. Rattled commentators start writing more about the 25^th Amendment. Ratified in 1967, it allows for removal of a president for incapacity once a vice-president so declares and the Cabinet and Congress concur. It’s never been used to remove a President.

After the WWII comment, embarrassed conservatives have finally had it: Charles C. W. Cooke, editor of NationalReview.com, enlists 37 allies to urge Pence to invoke the amendment because ”for either mental or physical reasons, Mr. Trump can no longer effectively function as the President. That doesn’t mean that our philosophy is wrong, only that our President is.” Nine hundred psychologists and psychiatrists, ignoring the so-called “Goldwater Rule,” write Pence that “this president is so delusional and damaged that he is simply incapable of heading any organization, least of all the federal government.”

Pence ignores the pressure. In memoirs two decades later, he admits, “I saw up close how impulsive and vulgar this President was, just like the Mrs. told me from the start. But no way was I going to ensure my place for centuries as a Republican Judas who chose himself President.”

September 12, 2019. With Chief Justice Roberts presiding, the two legal teams line up – John Dowd and Ted Cruz versus David Boies and Laurence Tribe.

Cruz: “Most of the House’s case is based on the President being infantile and obnoxious. Trust me, I know that he can be. But vulgar misconduct in a President cannot be disqualifying or else Andrew Jackson and Lyndon Johnson wouldn’t have lasted a month.”

Understanding the long odds against conviction given the two-thirds threshold, Boies takes a surprising tack: “The problem for America is not any one fact but the whole truth about Donald J. Trump – he is glaring unfit to be president of America by dint of his unstable, uninformed, nasty, shallow, racist, misogynistic narcissistic behavior. He’s spent down our 231 year-old world-wide bank account of good will in just three years. And all of you know it.”

“While he lacks a sense of consequence, as the final judges you should not: millions of climate refugees, millions losing their health insurance, millions more growing up distrusting the courts, the media, and the presidency – that is, our very democracy. Since the Founders drafted the Impeachment provision before there were political parties, their actual ‘original intent’ was for you today render your judgment based on conscience and country, not party label. I’m sure you will.”

September 7, 2019. The Friday before the Monday Senate Trial is to begin, three million Americans – carrying 10 million petition signatures – pour into Washington to protest Trump…triple the size of the previous largest protest ever in one place on American soil (the June 12, 1982 rally for a Nuclear Freeze) and five times the number who attended 45’s Inaugural.

“We meet today on the steps where Dr. King told us of his dream,” says march chair Gloria Steinem. ”Today he would tell us of his dream of a president who again is judged not by the color of his hair but by the content of his character – whether he has honesty, humility, empathy. He doesn’t… and America deserves better!” She is drowned out by chants of “Lock him up” and
“Get him out!”Trump responds that night with a tweet:

“Sorry losers. I’m STILL the president and you’re not.”

August 10, 2019. Resignation is also being secretly gamed out between Trump’s lawyers and Mueller’s top staff in the Special Counsel’s secure law offices on M Street. “We represent something you crave – a client out of office,” says lead Trump counsel John Dowd. “But you have the power to mitigate damage and liability to our client. Let’s talk.”

Dowd proffers three non-negotiable demands in exchange for a resignation like the one VP Spiro Agnew got in 1973. Drop the pardon appeal; keep his files away from state investigations; not require any disgorgement of any “ill-gotten gains.”

Within a half hour, Mueller rejects all three, reminding Team Trump that they’re not in Manhattan anymore. “His abuses were so glaring,” he tells a glum Dowd, “that we’d violate our oaths of office to even consider dropping our pardon case or sealing our files. Nor can we allow future politicians to think they can milk public office for self-enrichment.”

That night Trump, fuming, stares at a draft resignation speech. “I just found out that I have both Diabetes Type 2 and Vertigo. Notwithstanding my great stamina…so I’ll be resigning the office of President noon Friday.”

August 6, 2019. The House approves the first three reported Articles by a vote of 235 to 200, while Dereliction/Abuse is agreed to by 230 to 205. On behalf of nearly all his Caucus, Speaker Paul Ryan goes to the well of the House floor. “To take such a drastic step, I believe this body needs hard forensic evidence – like that Blue Dress or that incriminating tape. Lacking that, we shouldn’t punish someone who’s made some rookie mistakes in an effort to enhance our freedom.”

Yet 15 Republicans, largely from swing, purple districts, break ranks from their party leadership to form what they call “The New Chapter GOP.” “We have to look in the mirror and in the faces of our grandchildren about what we did with an abusive President — and our party label will provide no defense. We believe in the-rule-of-law, not law-by-rulers.”

July 27, 2019. Nadler continues: ”We cannot, however, definitively document the extraordinary allegation of treason by actively and personally colluding with Russia to influence the election. While it beggars belief that he was unaware of the many now known interactions between his campaign and agents of Russia to rig the election or even about a possible quid pro quo of softer sanctions for more hacking, ‘conscious parallelism’ in this context is not sufficient proof. His staff’s conversations with intermediaries are dismaying if not disloyal – especially those admitted by Donald Trump Jr. But they are still shy of ‘scienter’, a treasonous intent on the part of the President, not to mention that the Constitution requires two witnesses to prove treason and there are none who have come forward.”

“Last, problems of the ‘slippery slope’ have led us to not report out an Article for systemic lying. His hundreds of documented falsehoods are unprecedented — especially those he insists on repeating even when corrected (Obama illegally wiretapped him, 3-5 million ‘illegals’ all voted for Clinton) and when he admittedly makes up conversations with the head of the Boy Scouts and president of Mexico.

“These have warped and poisoned public debate so millions can’t know what to believe. While we’d like to demonstrate to future candidates that relentless lying doesn’t pay, we cannot come up with a red-line-test for distinguishing between ‘twistifications’ (Jefferson’s word), white lies and willful, repeated, consequential lies.”

July 27, 2019. After five months of hearings, deliberations, leaks and massive coverage, the House Judiciary Committee, in a largely party-line vote of 24-17 – with two Republicans in favor — today reports out four separate articles of while dismissing two others. According to Chairman Nadler:

“First, it’s beyond doubt that Trump did try to ‘Obstruct Justice’ by his own incriminating statements, actions and tweets – including the firings of five prosecutors overseeing investigations into him [Bharara, Yates, Comey, Rosenstein, Mueller], release of classified information about the case to Russian officials in the Oval Office, constant belittlement of the investigation as a “witch hunt”, admissions about his motives, the lie about a secret taping, drafting of a misleading statement of Juniors meeting with Russians, even his pardon’ in this context.”

“Second, he also did profit from foreign emoluments by publicizing and maintaining ownership in properties run by his children that kept receiving discretionary benefits from foreign entities. Indeed, according to evidence gathered by this Committee, he and his family’s net worth rose from $2.1 billion to $5.1 billion so far while in office. His defense that ‘my sons are brilliant’ wasn’t taken literally by the Committee.”

“Third, he committed perjury denying under oath that he pressured Comey to go easy on Flynn given Comey’s contemporaneous notes and conversations, interviews with White House staff, and Trump’s history of persistent lying both under oath and daily as president. His penchant for perjury and lying does not prove this case but helps explains it.”

January 30, 2019. Capping a month of extraordinary news, the new House Judiciary Committee chair – the brainy, understated Jerry Nadler of New York — announces the creation of a special subcommittee to begin to investigate the possible Impeachment of the 45^th President. 

Says Nadler:  “There is so much public evidence on such an array of misconduct that the Congress, under its duty in Article II, Sec. 4, has an obligation to study the possible removal of President Donald J. Trump from office.”

“We will have open public hearings and access to all the files of the Special Counsel and Senate/House Intelligence Committees. Like the Rodino Committee, we are searching for facts and a bi-partisan vote, if possible.”

Kellyanne Conway: “I can personally vouch that President Donald  Trump is the most honest President ever. Certainly at least since Lincoln. And why is the media still ignoring Hillary’s failure to release all her emails and ties to uranium oligarchs?”