Just sayin’:
If I offer to pay you money to kill someone, I have committed a crime (conspiracy to commit murder) whether you follow-up on my offer or not. That is the law.
The law also provides that, if I threaten to harm you physically or economically unless you do something for me, I have committed a crime (extortion).
Similarly, the law says that if I offer to give you something of value in exchange for you taking (public) official action to benefit me, I have committed a crime (bribery).
Everyone knows what a conspiracy is, and what extortion and bribery are. We’ve all seen plenty of TV law and order productions that focus on these common crimes.
And, so, anyone who has followed the House of Representatives’ Impeachment Proceedings objectively has already gotten a pretty good whiff of the conspiracy, extortion and bribery shenanigans engineered by President Trump and his Administration with regard to Ukrainian politics and the upcoming 2020 Presidential election.
If Impeachment were a criminal justice proceeding, the lead perpetrator, Donald Trump, would be facing jail time, for sure. He’d probably take a plea deal.
However, Impeachment is a political, not a judicial, remedy, reserved via the Constitution to address cases of abuse of the office of President of the United States. The House of Representatives prepares the “complaint”, much as a District Attorney might, and then the Senate hears the case and votes to convict or acquit.
As this spectacle has unfolded, and the various facts and testimony about the Trump Administration’s conspiracy, extortion, and bribery efforts have publicly come to light, GOP Senators have come up with a variety of public comments that telegraph (to their constituents and the President) how they will vote on the Impeachment matter.
The word “inappropriate” has been commonly thrown about: as in, “Yes, his actions were inappropriate but not criminal.” Probably a dozen Republican Senators have already used this ploy, as if to say “Sure, he’s got some rough edges, but he means well.”
We’re going to hear that “inappropriate” excuse a lot over the next few months as this Impeachment drama moves to its final conclusion, which will undoubtedly be the acquittal of our Republican President by the Republican-majority Senate.
Just as the Russian-influenced 2016 Presidential Election interference was exquisitely detailed in the Mueller Report, and then blown off by the GOP, the Ukrainian scandal, and what it means to our democracy, will be buried by the GOP-dominated Senate. The decision will be, “Inappropriate behavior, but not rising to the level of a high crime or misdemeanor.”
And, life will go on, and President Trump will be further emboldened to run our country like a personal fiefdom making up his own rules as he goes along.
It is appalling to me that the American public has seemingly come to ignore the routine “inappropriate” behavior of this particular President and of his enablers, the Republican Party.
If you are the Chief Executive, and your regular daily conduct in all facets of performance is “inappropriate”, then you are abusing the office of President of the United States. That is an impeachable offense, according to the Founding Fathers. Period.
Forgetting the Ukrainian dust-up for the time being, what other “inappropriate” behavior has President Trump perpetrated in three years?
Here’s a small list:
Publicly mocking the disability of a journalist at a press conference
Publicly calling-out journalists (except his Fox News cheerleaders) as “enemies of democracy”
Publicly insulting the parents of a slain, heroic American soldier because of his ethnicity
Publicly praising White Supremacist participants in the Charlottesville protest riots
Publicly identifying wide swaths of Federal civil servant employees as traitorous “Deep State” opponents or, merely, “human scum”
Publicly praising despotic, non-Democratic rulers throughout the globe
Publicly welcoming foreign assistance in U.S. elections…after the Mueller Report
Publicly insulting longtime allies of the United States
Publicly demeaning his own Cabinet and sub-Cabinet appointees who dare to disagree with him
Publicly disparaging a U.S. Federal District judge who was born in Indiana as a “Mexican”
Publicly announcing that the U.S. didn’t want immigrants from “shit hole countries”
Publicly lying to American citizens (over 13,000 documented false or misleading claims in three years)
We can now add to that list the recent revelations that our President conspired, bribed, and extorted specified action by a foreign country (“quid pro quo”, or something for something) to damage the Presidential election prospects of an American citizen.
Our current President seems to think it was appropriate for a foreign country to meddle in our domestic elections (i.e. Russia in 2016) and help him win re-election in the following election (i.e. Ukraine in 2020). And, the GOP seems to think this is appropriate, as well.
One wonders what the GOP’s attitude will be when/if the Democrats retake the White House. Will the GOP then welcome foreign government schemes to help Democratic candidates? Doubtful.
In just three years, our government has seen the end of “transparency”, press conferences, the exponential expansion of “Executive Privilege”, total disregard of the Constitution’s Emoluments Clause (i.e. the prohibition of office holders benefitting financially from their position), and a change from Senate-confirmed Cabinet and sub-Cabinet appointees to “acting” officeholders directly under the thumb of Mr. Trump.
President Trump has nominated, and the G.O.P. Senate has confirmed, a raft of Federal Judiciary lifetime appointments, many of which involve “lawyers” who have never served as a judge and some who have never tried a case in court. Their qualifications: fealty to Donald Trump.
Our State Department has now apparently been replaced by a shadowy foreign policy program which is apparently run by President Trump’s private attorney, Rudy Giuliani, who is totally unaccountable to Congress and the American electorate.
By the way, as things usually do when Rudy Giuliani is involved, when Rudy screws the pooch on behalf of the President, I’ll bet that President Trump’s response will be “He was acting on his own”, “He never told me about that”, or, more likely, “I hardly ever talked to the guy. Rudy who?”
Inappropriate? I think so.