The Great Need for Impeachment of Donald J. Trump
I am terribly concerned about the reluctance of the Democratic House leadership to pursue Trump impeachment vigorously and expeditiously. The only potentially good reason not to do so is the theoretical political consideration that it could impair Democratic chances in 2020 of winning the House, Senate, and/or Presidency, as well as various state and local offices. Thus, hopes and plans for the Democratic Party leadership are to beat Trump and his Party at the polls in 2020, with impeachment being a much less important objective, if it’s any objective at all.
But there are several problems with that line of reasoning. First and foremost, our intelligence agencies have told us in no uncertain terms that Russia is planning again to interfere with the 2020 election on behalf of Trump and his Party. Nobody knows all the specifics of how they are planning to do so, or how likely are their chances of success. We know that they are again planning to conduct a social media campaign to influence U.S. voters. More ominous in my opinion is their potential to hack into our electronic voting machines and thereby manipulate the vote count. We know that our voting machines are vulnerable to such manipulation, and we know that Russia will attempt to hack into and manipulate them. The only question is how successful they will be in doing so.
Yet, Trump steadfastly refuses to acknowledge that this is a significant problem, and more important, he clearly is taking no steps to combat it. While our Senate refuses to even consider taking steps to combat this great danger to our democracy, and even repeatedly blocks Democratic efforts to do so, Trump, while providing lip service to the need for election security, refuses to exert any leadership in urging his Republican Senate to do anything about it. That in itself should be considered an impeachable offense. And it should require no further investigation to establish. The evidence for Russian interference in our election was extensively documented in Part I of the Mueller Report, which clearly stated that the interference was “welcomed” by the Trump administration. It is further extensively documented by U.S. intelligence agencies. If refusal to address this grave danger is not considered an impeachable offense, then our democracy has little chance of surviving much longer.
How to achieve victory at the polls despite Russian interference
If no steps are taken to combat Russian interference in our next election, then our best and perhaps only hope is a massive influx of Democratic and other anti-Trump and anti-Republican voters to cancel out whatever election manipulation the Russians are successful in achieving.
But Democratic leadership in the House apparently fears that an unsuccessful attempt at impeachment, or conviction in the Senate, will result in a backlash against the Democratic Party, leading to defeat at the polls in 2020. They say that a Republican Senate will never convict Trump following a successful impeachment, and that the American people are not yet ready for impeachment, as suggested by polls that fail to show a majority of the American people currently in favor of impeachment.
But polls on impeachment depend on how the poll question is phrased. Most polls that I’ve seen ask merely whether or not Trump should be impeached or if the House should hold impeachment proceedings. Such polls generally have shown the percentage of Americans in favor of impeachment to be in the high 30s to low 40s. But many more Americans would be in favor of an impeachment inquiry.
Furthermore, an official impeachment inquiry would be televised, as were the Watergate hearings of the 1970s. Many Americans who currently say that they are not in favor of impeachment simply are not well informed on the subject. A well-structured and televised impeachment inquiry would bring to the attention of the American people on a daily basis the multitude of reasons why Donald Trump is unfit to be President. I don’t see how that could fail to sway public opinion against him and substantially hurt his prospects of being re-elected. Furthermore, as that happens, Republican Congresspersons and Senators and would be faced with a great dilemma. They could either go along with the Democrats in voting for impeachment and conviction, respectively, or they could choose to try to explain to their constituents why they failed to do so. I suspect that many who choose the latter course would be voted out of office in November 2020.
Historical data on the political effects of attempts at impeachment in the United States
To help evaluate that opinion, let’s take a look at the historical data on the subject. There have been three previous impeachment attempts or threatened impeachment in the United States: 1) In 1868, the U.S. House of Representatives voted to impeach President Andrew Johnson on eleven articles of impeachment, which all centered around his firing of a cabinet officer, which at the time was against federal law. He escaped conviction in the Senate by one vote; 2) In 1974, following extensive televised hearings on crimes related to a break-in at Democratic National Committee Headquarters, involving three articles of impeachment (obstruction of justice, abuse of power, and contempt of Congress), President Richard Nixon resigned from office, knowing that he would otherwise be impeached by the House and probably convicted and removed from office by the Senate; 3) In December 1998, President Bill Clinton was impeached for perjury and “obstruction of justice”, primarily related to consensual sex with a 22 year old intern who worked for him. He was acquitted in the Senate in February 1999.
Following his acquittal in the Senate, President Andrew Johnson ran for the Democratic nomination for President in 1868, but won less than a third of the delegates on the first ballot, and failed to win the nomination. The Republican Party, which impeached him, held onto both the House (though with a loss of 4 seats) and the Senate (with no change in composition), and they won the Presidency (Ulysses S. Grant).
In the Congressional elections of 1974, the Democratic Party, which had led the impeachment effort against Nixon, won their House election 291-144, representing a whopping gain of 49 seats. They also won their Senate elections 23-11 and held onto their Senate majority, with a gain of three seats. In the next Presidential election, of 1974, Nixon’s former Vice President, and current President, Gerald Ford, narrowly won the Republican primary, and then lost the general election to Jimmy Carter.
Because Bill Clinton’s impeachment occurred in December of 1998, the Congressional elections of that year occurred prior to impeachment, but while the impeachment effort was a hot issue. However, there was little if any effect on the elections, as the impeaching Party, the Republicans, held onto their House majority (though losing four seats) and their Senate majority (with no change in Senate composition). Following the impeachment and acquittal in the Senate, the Republicans continued to hold onto their House majority in the election of 2000 (though losing two seats), as well as the Senate (though losing 4 seats in the Senate). They also gained the Presidency, with George W. Bush defeating Clinton’s Vice President, Al Gore, though that election was the closest Presidential election in U.S. history, Gore won the popular vote, and Bush’s victory was highly controversial (I would say stolen, though that is not the subject of this post.)
Thus, in summary, past history shows no support whatsoever for the theory that the impeaching Party is likely to suffer adverse political consequences. To the contrary, they won the Presidency in each of the three elections following the impeachment effort, did not suffer a loss of either House of Congress in any of the elections, and indeed, picked up 49 House seats following the impeachment effort against Nixon. In contrast to impressive gains by the impeaching Party following the impeachment efforts against Johnson and Nixon, the results were pretty much neutral following the impeachment and acquittal of Clinton. However, it is important to note that the seriousness of the charges were far more substantial against Johnson and Nixon than those against Clinton. Charges against Trump should be even more serious.
Some very serious impeachable offenses committed by Trump that should require little or no further investigation
It is highly doubtful that when our Founding Fathers wrote the impeachment clause in Article Two, Section Four of our Constitution, that they intended impeachment to be limited to offenses that could result in criminal convictions in court. There are a multitude of offenses that are not defined as criminal, and yet would obviously make a person totally unfit to be President of the United States. Regarding the term “high crimes and misdemeanors”, when our Constitution was written, a misdemeanor was not defined as a crime. What then is a “high misdemeanor” supposed to mean. This is not defined in our Constitution, and there is little agreement on precisely what it means. However, certainly it should include any offense that clearly makes one unfit to hold the office of President. There is very little disagreement on that. One typical suggested definition for "high crimes and misdemeanors" is, for example: “acts so dangerous to the public that he may not be allowed to remain in office until the next election”.
Nor is there any mention in the Constitution that in order to “convict” a President to remove him from office (I don’t believe that our original Constitution, written in the 18th Century, allowed women to be President), that the stringent criminal standard of “beyond a reasonable doubt” should be applied. Everyone should have basic human rights, which includes a right to freedom, except in extraordinary circumstances, such as being found guilty beyond a reasonable doubt, of serious criminal offenses. But nobody has an inalienable right to be President of the United States. Our Constitution includes an impeachment clause because of the necessity of removing a President from office if found to be unit for the office or dangerous to our country.
Given that, here are some things that I believe should be a slam dunk for impeachment of Donald Trump, with little or need for any further investigation. I believe that there are actually hundreds of impeachable offenses that he’s committed since becoming President, but these are just some of the most obvious and easy to establish:
1. Obstruction of Justice, as extensively detailed in Volume II of the Mueller report.
2. Collusion with Russia to enable them to interfere in the 2016 election, as extensively detailed in Volume I of the Mueller report. Note: Although the Mueller report states that Mueller’s investigation did not establish “conspiracy” with Russia, as legally defined, beyond a reasonable doubt, the report does extensively describe collusion of the Trump campaign with Russia’s effort to assist them, throughout much of the more than 200 pages of Volume I, under the general rubric that Trump “welcomed” Russia’s assistance.
3. Refusal to take any steps to ensure a fair election in 2020, despite unanimous or near unanimous conclusions of Trump’s own intelligence agencies that Russia will again interfere in the 2020 U.S. elections to manipulate them in Trump’s favor.
4. Refusal to release his tax returns, as required by law – not to mention extensive aggressive efforts to prevent anyone else from releasing them.
5. Refusal to obey Congressional subpoenas – not to mention aggressive efforts to prevent numerous potential witnesses from obeying Congressional subpoenas relating to Congressional investigation of potentially impeachable offenses committed by Trump.
6. Numerous incidents of public incitement to violence, evidenced by numerous publicly available videos.
7. Habitually lying to the American people, as documented in more than ten thousand incidents, by the Washington Post.
8. Taking hypocrisy to absurd lengths by making punishment of undocumented immigrants the primary centerpiece of his campaign and presidency, while knowingly and simultaneously employing a multitude of such immigrants as cheap labor for his own businesses.
9. Wantonly cruel treatment of immigrants, including but not at all limited to separation of children from their parents, in some cases associated with deaths.
10. Using the office of the Presidency in multiple ways to enrich himself.
11. Failure to take any action against, or even acknowledging Saudi Arabia’s brutal murder of an American resident.
Concluding remarks
Our Founding Fathers recognized that democracy is a fragile system, which requires constant vigilance by those who have it, in order to keep it. That was a major reason why they included an impeachment clause in our Constitution. The above items and much else in Trump’s behavior as President have consistently demonstrated his utter disregard for our laws and our Constitution, and his seething contempt for Congress, all of our public institutions including the Office of the Presidency, the American people, and all other peoples of the world, with the exception of a few powerful and brutal dictators. And clearly, he has no moral compass whatsoever.
To allow such a man to remain as our President without making a vigorous attempt to get rid of him, in accordance with our Constitution, is a disgrace to our country and to all those in a position of power who refuse to fight back. It reminds me of how Hitler took over Nazi Germany. Like Hitler, Trump often talks about being “President for life”. He does so with a transparent pretense of just joking about it, but I’m quite sure that that is his goal – and that he will stop at nothing to achieve it, especially given the potential consequences to him if he doesn’t remain in office. He has bragged publicly that, in his fight against Democrats, he has the military, the police, and all sorts of other tough guys on his side. Does anyone really believe that he wouldn’t make our country into a police state if he could? He is clearly attempting to replace our whole government with nothing but obsequious devotees who he can count on to put loyalty to him personally above loyalty to our country or anything else. The longer he stays in power, the closer he gets to achieving that. Already, our Department of Justice is nothing but a Trump servant.
We must fight back, and impeachment is the only legal, non-violent way to do it. We cannot count on an election that is a year and a half away, and likely to be rigged to some unknown extent, to get rid of him. Even if he is ultimately acquitted by his Republican Senate, history suggests that daily televised hearings of his many offenses against our country are far more likely to weaken him than they are to cause a backlash in his favor.
I am aware that Jerry Nadler, as Chairman of the House Judiciary Committee, has stated that in some sense an impeachment inquiry is already underway. I am grateful for that as a move in the right direction. But I have two problems with it. One is that it is currently unofficial, which means that it is not televised. Consequently, whatever inquiry is currently underway, it is not generating much public support for impeachment, as did the Watergate Hearings of 1973-4, which generated so much public pressure against Richard Nixon that he was forced to resign, rather than face an actual impeachment vote and trial and conviction in the Senate. Secondly, Nadler has stated that this informal “impeachment inquiry” might or might not result in an actual impeachment vote in the House, depending upon where the inquiry leads. That statement suggests that we don’t already have a mountain of evidence for impeachable offenses against Trump – which is preposterous. For these reasons, and given the apparent extreme reluctance to impeachment of the House leadership, I am not at all certain that the current informal impeachment inquiry is going to be fruitful.
If you agree with what I’ve written here, please contact your Congressperson to urge them to support impeachment if they haven’t already done so, or to show support for them if they already have.
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