Official White House Photo by Tia Dufour
President Donald J. Trump on Friday, Jan. 24, 2020, in the East Room of the White House.
House Democrats in President Donald Trump’s impeachment trial have already succeeded in presenting a detailed, easily understood description of how Trump’s illegal withholding of U.S. military assistance from Ukraine benefitted Russia’s national interests rather than our own.
What should be an unthinkable accusation—that any U.S. president would ever intentionally assist American democracy’s most dangerous world adversary—becomes a lot more credible after Americans have watched their president publicly side with Russian President Vladimir Putin against the unanimous opinion of U.S. intelligence that Russia massively interfered in the 2016 election to help elect Trump.
After that, Trump illegally withholding nearly $400 million in U.S. military assistance to defend Ukrainians dying in a war with Russia becomes just a side benefit for Russia when Trump abuses his presidential power to pressure Ukraine’s president into announcing two phony criminal investigations benefitting Trump politically. One such investigation was intended to damage the reputation of former Vice President Joe Biden, a strong potential Trump opponent in the 2020 election, and another was to bolster a fraudulent conspiracy theory created by Russia that it was tiny Ukraine, not Russia, that illegally interfered in the 2016 U.S. election.
“Does anybody really question whether the president is capable of what he’s charged with?” asked Congressman Adam Schiff, the lead House impeachment manager. “No one is really making the argument ‘Donald Trump would never do such a thing.’ Because, of course, we know that he would and, of course, we know that he did… It’s pretty obvious—whether we can say it publicly or we can’t say it publicly—we all know what we are dealing here with this president.”
What Most Americans Already Know
It was one of the most powerful moments in the House case against Trump because Schiff was simply stating what most Americans already know. Those identified by Schiff as being unable to speak the truth publicly were many Republican senators in the room who are fully aware of the damage Trump’s presidency is doing to our democracy but fear voting to remove him would end their own political careers.
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Schiff and the other impeachment managers were determined not to make it easy for all those Republican senators who know better. It had to be uncomfortable for many of them when Schiff described the pride Putin must have felt standing next to Trump back in 2018 at a joint press conference in Helsinki, Finland, hearing the president of the United States spout Russian propaganda: “[Trump’s] promoting this kooky, crazy server theory cooked up by the Kremlin! Right next to the guy that cooked it up! It’s a breathtaking success for Russian intelligence! I don’t know if there’s ever been a greater success for Russian intelligence!”
That was the same fraudulent Russian propaganda Trump was still hawking a year later. In that infamous telephone call, Trump told Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky to work with Trump’s lawyer Rudy Giuliani and U.S. Atty. Gen. William Barr to find a mythical Democratic National Committee server hidden in Ukraine with incriminating evidence of U.S. election interference. (It doesn’t exist. Servers keep stuff in something called the Cloud.)
Republican senators may feel their political survival depends upon acquitting Trump, but it just as easily could be fatal. Plenty of passionately anticommunist conservative voters may be smart enough to recognize when Trump is serving Putin’s interests instead of American interests. It’s especially risky when Republicans appear to be headed toward quickly voting to acquit Trump without making even a pretense of conducting a fair trial by calling administration witnesses with direct knowledge of Trump’s actions and subpoenaing all the documents Trump refused to turn over to Congress. Thanks to popular television, voters know what trials are supposed to look like. They know trials have witnesses testifying under oath and don’t allow the accused to decide what evidence jurors are allowed to see.
The most absurd complaint Republican senators made during the trial was they weren’t hearing anything new. That was after Republicans repeatedly voted 53 to 47 along party lines against hearing anything new by defeating Democratic motions to call witnesses or subpoena administration documents Trump withheld from the House. As Democratic New York Sen. Kirsten Gillibrand said on Twitter: “Don’t bury your head in the sand and then complain it’s dark.”
Republicans tried desperately to ignore every warning Schiff gave them. Here’s the one they ignore at their peril: “More emails are going to come out. More witnesses are going to come forward. They’re going to have more relevant information to share. And the only question is, do you want to hear it now? Do you want to know the full truth?”
Republicans don’t, of course. But with details already leaking out to boost the sales of the forthcoming book by former National Security Advisor John Bolton, they may regret not doing more to protect themselves from the avalanche of damaging revelations that could bury them before the next election.
