Democrats Announce Articles of Impeachment Against Donald Trump—and in Defense of the Republic

From Esquire

On the morning of December 10, 2019, the Democratic leadership in the House of Representatives announced they were filing articles of impeachment against Donald Trump, American president.

"Today, in service to our duty to the Constitution and to our country, the House Committee on the Judiciary is introducing two articles of impeachment charging the President of the United States, Donald J. Trump, with committing high crimes and misdemeanors," said Jerry Nadler, the chairman of the House Judiciary Committee. "The first article is for abuse of power. It is an impeachable offense for the president to exercise the powers of his public office to obtain an improper personal benefit while ignoring or injuring the national interest...

"And when he was caught, when the House investigated and opened an impeachment inquiry, President Trump engaged in unprecedented, categorical, and indiscriminate defiance of the impeachment inquiry. This gives rise to the second article of impeachment, for obstruction of Congress. Here, too, we see a familiar pattern in President Trump's misconduct. A president who declares himself above accountability, above the American people, and above Congress's power of impeachment—which is meant to protect against threats to our democratic institutions—is a president who sees himself as above the law. We must be clear: no one, not even the president, is above the law."

In the end, Democrats reduced the president's myriad offenses to two simple charges. They did not go into his many attempts to obstruct justice outlined in the Mueller Report, or his possibly systemic violations of the Constitution's Emoluments Clause, in which his businesses accept payments from foreign governments while he, as president, makes American policy towards those governments. (These conflicts of interest call into question every decision the president makes: was it made in the American national interest, or in the president's personal interest?) The popular theory is that Democrats focused on the Ukraine treachery in the first place because they believed it was an act of malfeasance that was straightforward and easy for the public to understand, and the same logic appears to govern their decision when it comes to articles of impeachment: abuse of power, then obstruction of the investigation into that abuse of power.

Many have questioned why Democrats did not at least wait to corral the many witnesses the White House has blocked from testifying before Congress as part of the president's campaign of universal obstruction. Chief-of-Staff Mick Mulvaney is intimately familiar with the Ukraine plot, and would be useful to have under oath. The same goes for Trump's personal lawyer, Rudy Giuliani, or Secretary of State Mike Pompeo, or former National Security Adviser John Bolton. Republicans have complained about their non-participation in complete bad-faith, in the full knowledge their allies in the White House are the reason these people have not appeared. On Monday, the Republican counsel had the audacity to suggest Democrats hadn't been tough enough in trying to force them to testify.

After Nadler was finished, House Intelligence Committee Chairman Adam Schiff got into why Democrats are pressing ahead now.

If indeed it is true that it will be months and months in court to get any of these characters in front of Congress—and it seems like it would be—then Schiff makes a decent point. The assault on American democracy is ongoing (Rudy Giuliani was back in Ukraine a few days ago!) and Donald Trump sees anything except immediate consequences as license to continue and escalate his behavior. Regardless of outcome, the Democrats must mount a defense of the constitutional order—and of free and fair elections in this country—before the president expands his assault on them further. What other foreign governments has he discussed issues relating to the 2020 election with? Who else has he asked to announce an investigation or two? What has he offered them in return for their help? Who does he plan to talk to if he gets off scot-free once again? The infamous Ukraine call took place on the day after Robert Mueller's testimony before Congress.

The issue is whether, despite the piles of evidence Democrats can already call on, all this will be enough to turn the tide against a renegade president. House Republicans have demonstrated they are completely uninterested in honoring their oaths to serve and protect the Constitution of this republic, choosing instead to wail about The Whistleblower and Adam Schiff and how partisan it all is. As Democrats have taken to saying, the evidence is not seriously in dispute. If you don't believe the witness accounts, there's video of the president calling for Ukraine to investigate the Bidens on the White House lawn. His ambassador—who got the job because he was a $1 million-donor—and his chief of staff admitted there was a quid pro quo. The president predicated carrying out his official acts, including sending close to $400 million in taxpayer money allocated by Congress, on a foreign government attacking free and fair American elections for his personal gain.

The only question is whether the calculus will change in the Senate, and so far the signs are not good. If and when the articles of impeachment pass the House, this whole process is handed over to Mitch McConnell in the Senate. What reason is there to believe the trial will be fairly conducted? McConnell won't even give any of the 400 bills House Democrats have already passed the time of day. (That has led those Democrats, in their desperation, to consider passing the president's NAFTA 2.0 bill—the USMCA—in an attempt to show they can Get Things Done. It sends a bit of a mixed message when you Work Together with the same president you say is tearing at the fabric of American democracy.) There is sadly little reason to believe McConnell will conduct the proceedings with honesty or transparency, or that there are Republican senators who are inclined to Do The Right Thing here. That even includes folks in purple-state reelection fights, like Cory Gardner and Susan Collins, or those who are retiring.

If democracy is a muscle, Democrats have flexed it in an attempt to prove things have not entirely atrophied. Even if you question their methods or timing or decision-making, they have, in the end, stood up to a lawless president in defense of this constitutional republic. Assuming the articles are approved by the full House, it's about to go to the higher chamber, where we will all be at the mercy of a ruthless megalomaniac and his caucus, now completely beholden to a conservative movement that has completely lost its grip on observable reality, sliding ever deeper into a cult of personality around the man whose conduct lies in question. "May you live in interesting times," goes the old Chinese curse.

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