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Related: Editorials & Other Articles, Issue Forums, Alliance Forums, Region ForumsDavid Corn: With Trump's Impeachment, American Democracy Is on Trial
https://www.motherjones.com/politics/2020/01/donald-trump-impeachment-trial-ukraine-russia-senate/With Trumps Impeachment, American Democracy Is on Trial
This is a momentous test for the US political system.
David Corn
The start of the impeachment trial of President Donald Trump is a reminder that the American political system does include safeguards and norms that are meant to protect the citizenry from corruption and misdeeds in the highest offices of the land. What happens in the Senate over the next few weeks will show whether these measures still matter.
The impeachment process, as shaped by the rules devised long ago by members of the House and Senate, is loaded with archaic tradition and stuffy ceremony. The House speaker signs articles of impeachment. House managers then stride through the Capitol complex to hand-deliver the articles to the Senate chamber. In a somber session, senators take a solemn oath to deliver impartial justice and sign their names one by one in an oath book near the marble Senate rostrum. These rituals were designed to highlight the gravity of the prospect of removing a president and to signal that in the United States, process and principle transcends all. The rule of law trumps power and presidents. At least, it is supposed to.
Trump has tested the system and pushed it to a breaking pointto this breaking point: only the third impeachment trial in the history of the republic. The narrow case against him brought by the House is strong: Trump usedthat is, abusedthe power of his office for personal political gain. The evidence is clear. His hand-picked ambassador to the European Uniona hotelier with no previous diplomatic experience who contributed $1 million to Trumps inaugurationtestified there was an explicit quid pro quo: Trump would not grant a highly sought-after White House meeting to the new Ukrainian president or provide congressionally approved military assistance to Kyiv unless Ukraine announced investigations to sully Joe Biden and to legitimize a crazy conspiracy theory that held Ukraine, not Russia, hacked the Democrats in 2016.
Trumps actions were not in pursuit of any official aim. Period. He didnt give a damn about corruption in Ukraine. In a May 10 letter to the new Ukrainian presidentwhich only became public last weekRudy Giuliani noted that his efforts in Ukraine on behalf of Trump (which centered on digging up dirt on Biden) arose out of his personal representation of Trump and served Trumps private interests. Thats a nice way of saying Giuliani was on a purely political mission at Trumps direction to gather from another government mud to hurl at Biden. This letter ought to be regarded as a smoking gun. And the General Accounting Office on Thursday released a finding that the withholding of aid to Ukraine that Trump ordered violated the law. In other words, the president, in his official capacity, had demanded illegal action for his private benefitto obtain derogatory information on a 2020 political rival and to try to absolve Russia of intervening in the 2016 election.
Those data points should seal the deal. But theres so much more. Other congressional testimony confirmed key elements of the extortion plot. The quasi-transcript of Trumps call with Ukrainian President Volodomyr Zelensky depicts Trump putting the squeeze on the Ukrainian leader with a mobster-like request for a favor. In a stunning interview with MSNBCs Rachel Maddow, Lev Parnas, the now-indicted associate of Giuliani who aided the former New York City mayors search for negative material on Biden, described a brazen shake-down scheme that was headed by Trump, and Parnas maintained that Vice President Mike Pence, Secretary of State Mike Pompeo, and then-Energy Secretary Rick Perry each were co-conspirators. Parnas claims and other evidence suggest there was an even larger conspiracy in which Trumps muscling of Zelensky was related to an attempt by Giuliani and two Fox News regularsJoe diGenova and Victoria Toensing, husband-and-wife lawyersto lobby William Barrs Justice Department to help indicted Ukrainian oligarch Dmytro Firtash escape bribery charges in return for Firtash supplying them negative material on Biden and information that supposedly could discredit the investigation of special counsel Robert Mueller. RudyGate is becoming a scandal of its own.
snip//
So much of Trumps presidency has served up causes for impeachment. Yet still the national debate, due to Trumps incessant shouting of falsehoods and the loud and robotic amen-ing of Republicans and the conservative media, often becomes fixated on debating realitywas an obvious quid pro quo a quid pro quo or not?rather than what to do about that reality. The founders envisioned the possibility of a scoundrel gaining control of the White House. But could they envision an entire political party putting on blinders and becoming the loyal and unyielding foot-soldiers of that scoundrel? Could they imagine a wholesale attack on the rule of law and the principle that no man is above the law? Could they imagine a party-wide abandonment of the elemental notion of checks and balances? This impeachment focuses on one corrupt incident, but it addresses a deeper and wider assault on the nations governance and its most fundamental values. Even if the ultimate verdict for Trump is essentially pre-ordained, how this trial is handled and staged will be one indication of just how broken the system is.
In many of our homes, offices, workplaces, schools, places of worships, and businesses, fire extinguishers are stored and kept in accessible spotsjust in case. They are rarely needed and not often thought about. But they have been purposefully placed in these positions as a precaution. They can be grabbed should an emergency arise and deployed to prevent or limit damage and injury. Our political system has its own safeguardssome written down, others that exist merely in practice. As Trump and his impeachment demonstrate, these protections are there. Yet they are not self-enforcing. They only work if they are used when a threat emerges and disaster strikes.
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