Earth to Trumpworld: Consistent obstruction of justice DEMANDS impeachment!
Everybody who paid attention knew all along about Donald Trump's deep and long-standing corruption, his contempt for the rule of law, his childish petulance, his shallowness, his blase ignorance, his mediocre intellect, and his obsession with self-glorification to the exclusion of pretty much anything else as the driving force for everything he says and does. The most ominous thing about the man is that he could become president in the first place. At a moment at which more information is available to the average American than ever before, we have become overwhelmed and resorted to emotion as the driving force in our political decision-making. Donald Trump's presidency would not have been imaginable even ten years ago.
The man is simply too blatantly and obviously unfit for the office to have been ever taken seriously by an America that had any idea what it was doing. Unfortunately, a plurality of the voters in the 2016 Republican primaries did not know what they were doing- and didn't care.
During the campaign for the Republican nomination, Mr. Trump said (was he bragging? Complaining? Wool-gathering?) that if he committed murder in broad daylight on Fifth Avenue in New York, he wouldn't lose any votes. He has never said a truer thing. Donald Trump isn't bothered by the fact that he doesn't know what he's talking about; he makes up his "facts" out of his head as he needs them. And that's all he ever needs: his supporters will believe or pretend to believe, literally anything he says regardless of the evidence.
So the president stands on the brink of an impeachment that cannot help but end in his acquittal by a Senate dominated by Trump sycophants regardless of the evidence.
And even if we ignore the fact that despite all the cries of "hearsay," the very White House transcript of Mr. Trump's telephone conversation with Ukraine President Volodymyr Zelensky constitutes the "smoking gun" Richard Nixon's supporters complained that his accusers never produced, Mr. Trump's conduct in the face of not only the House impeachment inquiry but also as regards the Mueller investigation has been essentially an effort at stone-walling, a refusal to cooperate with a completely legal investigations, a posture of being above the law, and an insistence on being unaccountable.
The report of the House Intelligence Committee puts it well: "No other president has flouted the Constitution and power of Congress to conduct oversight to this extent." Nixon initially resisted releasing the White House tapes, but when the Supreme Court ruled against him he ultimately "accepted the authority of Congress to conduct an impeachment inquiry and permitted his aides and advisors to produce documents and testify to Congressional committees.'
Both in the impeachment inquiry and the Mueller investigation, President Trump forbade his aides and others accountable to him to do what Richard Nixon ultimately recognized that the Constitution demanded to be done. Not only did Mr. Trump fail to cooperate with the Mueller investigation and that of the House Intelligence Committee, but he obstructed their work in every possible way. Charlie Sykes makes the case quite well here.
He cannot be allowed to get away with that. If he does, the principle of executive accountability to anybody between elections will be damaged badly and perhaps beyond repair. Donald Trump's refusal to be accountable cannot be allowed to become a precedent.
Mr. Trump has been guilty of so many acts which cannot reasonably be described other than as obstruction of justice, done openly and unapologetically, that the principle of the balance of power between the branches of the Federal government, of mutual accountability between them, and the very rule of law demand his impeachment. The price of failing to hold him accountable to these is jeopardizing the entire principle that the president is accountable between elections to anybody.
Donald Trump's entire presidency has been an attack on the Constitution, on the rule of law, and on the thing that the man hates and fears more than anything else: accountability. Never mind his malfeasance in office. The 2020 election might well be the proper forum to litigate that. But there is a reason why this man hates whistle-blowers; why he refuses to release his tax returns, why he reacts to any criticism or disagreement with him with an abusive Twitter-storm. An American president- or any leader of a free nation- must be accountable even in between elections.
This president refuses to be, the Constitution provides only one remedy for that, and to fail to apply that remedy would be (no, will be; the Senate will never vote to convict Donald Trump no matter what the evidence) to establish the principle that the President is above the law.
As Charlie Sykes observed earlier today, historians will someday be in possession of all the evidence Mr. Trump is trying to keep out of the hands of Congress and away from the awareness of such of the American people as would care. And they will look back at this hour and wonder, "What the hell were they thinking to let this guy keep this a secret?" Especially when his elaborate efforts to keep it all secret themselves constitute a clearly impeachable offense, and one stronger than the case for impeaching Richard Nixon over the Watergate coverup.
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