Season of the witch: Donald Trump, unindicted co-conspirator
Specifically, Cohen stipulated that he did so on orders from Mr. Trump. If that is true, the President of the United States is guilty of a felony, and of what is most certainly an impeachable offense.
In essence, Mr. Trump is an unindicted co-conspirator with Cohen. He is unindicted for one reason: he is the President of the United States. That's also the reason why Richard Nixon remained an unindicted co-conspirator in the Watergate affair. But unindicted or not, that status made Mr. Nixon's impeachment inevitable had he chosen to remain in office, and prompted his resignation.
The difference is that the current Congress, like the Republican party in general, is in such absolute thrall to Mr. Trump that the man who once boasted that he could commit cold-blooded murder at high noon on Fifth Avenue in New York without losing any votes could probably get away with almost anything without being impeached. Whether that remains true under the next Congress remains to be seen.
Now, here's the thing: the charges against Cohen weren't filed by Special Prosecutor Robert Mueller. They were filed by the U.S. Attorney for the Southern District of New York. If the Mueller investigation is indeed a "witch hunt," that doesn't help Trump with regard to the use of campaign contributions to pay off his former girlfriends.
Manafort's conviction does arise from the Mueller investigation. But neither have anything to do with Russia. Rather, the investigation into possible collusion between the Trump campaign and Russian intelligence in attempting to influence the 2016 election led to the charges against Manafort. An awful lot of former Trump campaign aides seem to be on their way to prison as a result of that "witch hunt." As someone said, rarely does a witch hunt turn up quite this many witches!
But is the investigation by a special prosecutor appointed by Mr. Trump's own attorney general a politically inspired "witch hunt?" Is Donald Trump really, as he claims (and tweets) so often, just a poor, picked-on victim? There is no question that many people- myself emphatically included- have been deeply suspicious of his personal fitness for the office he holds on several grounds from the moment he announced his candidacy. There were questions about his judgement, his psychological makeup, his knowledgeability about the subjects he'd have to deal with has the president, his tendency to make wild and unsubstantiated claims and charges and often absurd proposals, his penchant for responding to even mild and well-intentioned criticism or even disagreement with over-the-top personal attacks, and his competence as an executive given his consistent lack of success in running businesses. But always lurking in the background were suspicions about his personal honesty.
Donald Trump has never had a reputation as someone who played by the rules. He is famous for refusing to honor contracts with vendors and others, pointing out to them that it would cost them more to sue him than to accept the loss. He has either been adjudged or pleaded guilty to illegal or unethical behavior over 250 times during his business career. This is the guy responsible for Trump University. If there is any other president in our history who, like Mr. Trump, had to pay out millions as a result of judgment in a civil RICO case, I don't know who that might be.
When he was elected president, he declined to follow the example of every president in recent history and release his tax returns. Despite having massive investments- "disproportionate," I believe was the word Donald Trump, Jr. used to describe them- in Russia as well as in North Korea, Iran, and other problematic places, he declined after his election to divest himself of those investments, choosing rather to put them into a "blind trust-" administered by his own children!
He has put together a tangled web of personal, charitable, and political financial dealings so complex that it would probably take years for a team of expert forensic accountants to untangle it. Whenever concerns about his behavior are raised, however mild, or he is criticized for anything at all, he becomes defensive and personally attacks his critic.
In the interest of making our political discourse not only less vitriolic but a little saner, I, therefore, propose that the president and his supporters acknowledge that, whatever he may or may not be guilty of, this record and this pattern of behavior on the part of any president would cause reasonable concern in the media and provide ample ammunition for the kind of partisan attacks which- however out of hand they may have gotten on both sides- have been part and parcel of our American political landscape ever since Thomas Jefferson defeated John Adams.
I would further suggest that, while both Barack Obama and Hillary Clinton also did some very dubious things, neither of them has ever been convicted or pled guilty to breaking the law, served under the shadow of far fewer grounds for reasonable, non-partisan suspicion than does Mr. Trump, and are believed by far fewer rational people to have maybe ordered the murders of Vince Foster and a succession of other figures in the political career of the Clintons, operated a child sex ring, been either gay or a Muslim, or been born in Kenya than Mr. Trump is seen as guilty of not being exactly a straight shooter when it came to business ethics.
Next, I would point out that although many Trump supporters seem not to have gotten the memo, the indictment of a large group of specific individuals including two known FSB agents also implicated in electronic interference with the parliamentary elections in several of our European allies has prompted President Trump to admit that Russia was, in fact, behind the hacking of the computers at the Democratic National Committee during the 2016 election campaign. He did that in spite of having repeatedly rejected that conclusion when arrived at by both the FBI and the CIA, and only days before having done so once again in the presence of Vladimir Putin when the latter denied any Russian involvement.
Mr. Trump claimed to have "misspoken" after reversing himself, though the context of his remarks in response to Putin's denials makes that claim problematic.
Mr. Trump and Putin have had a long-standing mutual and oft-expressed admiration for each other. In fact, Mr. Trump has often expressed admiration not only Putin but for such tyrants as Chinese President-for-Life (a title for which Mr. Trump, incredibly, expressed admiration!) Xi Jinping, murderous Philippine strongman Rodrigo Duterte ("“I just wanted to congratulate you because I am hearing of the unbelievable job on the drug problem,” he told Duterte- who boasts of dealing with accused drug dealers by having them murdered without a trial), Turkey's tyrannical Recep Tayyip Erdogan, and Egypt's Abdel Fattah el-Sisi. While calling him a "bad guy" for killing terrorists, Trump praised the late and unlamented Saddam Hussein by continuing, "He did that so good. He didn't read them the rights. They were terrorists. Over." He thinks Libya would be better off if the late Libyan dictator Moammar Gaddafi were still running things. He expressed admiration for the "strength" the Chinese Communist Party showed in crushing the uprising in Tiananmen Square and appeared to side with them against the protestors, calling the gathering "a riot."
I'll come back to Mr. Trump's affinity for dictators in a moment. But for now, let's focus on his history with Russia.
One of his advisors, and later his first National Security Advisor, Michael Flynn, held a meeting before Mr. Trump's inauguration in which he appears to have undermined the sitting president, Barack Obama, by giving assurances that sanctions Mr. Obama placed on Russia after the invasion against Ukraine would be removed once Mr. Trump took office. Gen. Flynn is a longtime admirer of Putin who attended at least one testimonial dinner for him in Moscow. Former Secretary of State Rex Tillerson seems to have behaved with patriotism and honor at every turn. But he had been decorated by Putin and was a personal friend of the Russian strongman. It is not without wonder that a president who had been the beneficiary of what seemed even then to have been Russian meddling in our election and had so often expressed admiration for Vladimir Putin was appointing such American friends of Putin to two of the most important foreign policy positions in his administration.
We know for absolutely certain that during the campaign several representatives of the Trump campaign met with sources close to the Russian government who had offered to provide "dirt" against former Secretary of State Hillary Clinton obtained by Russian espionage against the United States.
Flynn has pled guilty of lying to the FBI about his Russian contacts during the campaign. So did former Trump campaign advisor George Papadopoulos.
Former Trump Deputy Campaign Director Rick Gates pled guilty to conspiracy against the United States and lying to investigators.
Alex Van der Zwann, the son-in-law of one of the richest men in Russia, pled guilty to lying to Federal investigators about his contacts with an official in Trump's campaign and was sentenced to 30 days in prison and a $20,000 fine.
Konstantin Kilimnik, an associate of Manafort in Ukraine reputed to have ties with the Russian government, is facing charges of having tampered with witnesses concerning their past lobbying for the pro-Russian former government of Ukraine.
Does any of this prove that Donald Trump or even the Trump campaign colluded with Russia's attempt to undermine the integrity of the 2016 election? Of course not.
Does it pose a concerning pattern which an objective observer might think warranted an investigation if only to clear the air? Absolutely.
Is it unreasonable that the media, the opposition, and a large part of the general public looked upon Mr. Trump with an unusual amount of suspicion where his ethics were concerned, and that talk of nearly inevitable impeachment was going around even before he took office?
Not really.
First, Mr. Trump's personal history and his pattern of behavior since his election would result in any president of either party being looked upon by the media, by the opposition, and by the American people with an unusual degree of suspicion. Where Mr. Trump's record and behavior don't plainly merit a certain degree of reasonable distrust, they invite it- and invite it in such a way that a savvy politician in his position who had nothing to hide would go to great lengths to avoid inviting it.
Secondly, an awful lot of people from Mr. Trump's campaign and administration are doing an awful lot of lying for some reason and going to jail for it. Perhaps, as some claim, they told their lies to protect themselves. But doesn't having hired so many people who have to lie to the FBI and other investigators to protect themselves in itself raise questions about Mr. Trump- not only about his judgment in hiring them but about his own possible involvement in so pervasive a pattern in his administration?. Some, like Flynn, are reported to be cooperating with the Mueller investigation, and their behavior would never have been discovered were it not for that investigation. The same is true of Manafort's fraud. Whether or not Mr. Trump is personally involved in their misdeeds, a great many laws have been broken by officials of his campaign and his administration, and the pattern is disturbing.
Third, given the known facts about the Russian interference in the 2016 election on Mr. Trump's behalf, whether he sought it or not; about the existing relationships and the pattern of secretive meetings between Trump campaign officials and the Russians; aboutMr. Trump's anxiety to defend Putin and the Russians even at the cost of taking their side against the American intelligence community; and perhaps most of all about his own firing of James Comey when the then-director of the FBI refused to pledge his personal loyalty and to personally exonerate him on the spot; and about his ongoing attempts to discredit the Mueller investigation and even Mueller personally rather than to cooperate and establish the truth, it is simply not possible for any intellectually honest person not to believe, just as Attorney General Sessions saw long ago, that there are more than adequate grounds to pursue an investigation of the matter. Even if Mr. Trump is innocent of any wrongdoing whatsoever, his behavior in the face of perfectly reasonable questions would be an impression of a guilty man worthy of an Oscar.
And it's hard not to notice that. Mr. Trump is acting like a guilty man, and his supporters are acting like people who believe, deep down, that he is a guilty man. And it is simply not possible for any intellectually honest person to call the Mueller investigation a "witch hunt." It may not uncover anything more than unrelated misdeeds. But that in itself is a legitimate accomplishment, and in any case, there was more than sufficient reason for a special prosecutor to be appointed and an investigation conducted. Contrary to what the president's supporters claim, the pattern of clandestine meetings between Trump campaign official and the Russians, some explicitly conducted in the expectation of benefiting politically from the fruits of Russian espionage against the United States and then lying about it itself establishes perfectly reasonable grounds for this investigation, and the cry of "witch hunt" simply doesn't fool anybody who isn't not only willing but eager to be fooled.
Moreover, it bespeaks a contempt for the law and for due process which ill-befits a president, and especially one who through a career of cutting corners and refusing to be held accountable for anything has richly earned the healthy suspicion of any reasonable person to make such a claim, or for his supporters to agree. And this is especially the case as it relates to a president so full of admiration for dictators who take his solicitation of violence against demonstrators at his rallies a step further, and kill them in Tiananmen Square, or dispense with formalities like trials and due process before killing the accused, like Duterte and Saddam Hussein. Neither the man now the movement he led to power bespeaks a commitment to due process or the rule of law, and Mr. Trump's response to the Mueller investigation is perfectly in keeping with that pattern,
We don't know what will eventually come of the Manafort case, as far as the fate of this administration is concerned. But let nobody say, in the wake of yesterday's developments in the Cohen case, that there are no grounds for impeaching Donald Trump. If Trump were not the president, Cohen's testimony alone would be enough to indict him, and if he hadn't turned the Republican party into a gaggle of mindless sycophants devoid of principle, a congressional investigation into Cohen's claim that Mr. Trump ordered the hush money to be paid to Stormy Daniels and Karen McDougal would already be underway, and articles of impeachment would already be in the process of being drafted.
That's exactly what would have happened at this point in any previous presidency. And you bet your MAGA hat that it's exactly what would have happened with this very Congress if Barack Obama were still president.
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