Impeachment will punish and deter even if the Senate won't convict
By Max Boot
Columnist
September 30 at 9:26 AM
... The bad arguments, cynically spread by President Trump and his toadies, go to the substance of the allegations against him. Faced with damning evidence that, as the whistleblower put it, “the President of the United States is using the power of his office to solicit interference from a foreign country in the 2020 U.S. election,” his disingenuous defenders toss out one lame alibi after another.
Trump didn’t break any laws. Actually, it’s a crime for an American candidate to solicit or accept “any contribution” from a foreign national. But you don’t have to break the law to be impeached.
There was no quid pro quo. Wrong. There was. Right after Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky expressed his desire to buy U.S. munitions, Trump said, “I would like you to do us a favor though.” He then went on to ask Ukraine for its help, first, to clear him of charges of collusion with Russia and, then (“the other thing”), to “find out about” Joe Biden. This demand was buttressed by Trump’s stoppage, at least a week before the call, of nearly $400 million in U.S. aid ...
The president is allowed to ask for foreign help with a corruption investigation. True, but there is no investigation of Biden — and if there were, it would be conducted by the FBI, not the president’s personal lawyer. The reason there’s no investigation is that Biden did nothing wrong in pressing Ukraine to get rid of a corrupt prosecutor — who was not, contrary to Trump’s lies, probing the energy company on whose board Hunter Biden sat. Trump was asking for the Ukrainians to start an investigation to help him politically ...
https://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/2019/09/30/even-if-senate-wont-convict-impeachment-will-still-punish-deter/
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