December 17, 2019: Two Important Documents Released Regarding Impeachment

 

12/17/19: Two important documents are released today. One is a warning to all Americans. The other is – well, frankly, another inadvertent warning to all of us – that the President of the United States is kind of a loon. The first is a scathing editorial written by William Webster, 96, the only man ever to serve as both director of the F.B.I. and later director of the C.I.A. Webster outlines the threat posed to the rule of law by Trump and his Trumplican enablers. The second warning comes in the form of a letter Trump pens himself.

Webster, 96, felt compelled to speak out.

 

____________________ 

“The rule of law, something so precious it is greater than any man or administration.” 

Former F.B.I. Director William Webster

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In an opinion piece titled, “I Headed the F.B.I. and C.I.A. There’s a Dire Threat to the Country I Love,” Webster calls on all of us to awake. He was originally chosen by President Jimmy Carter to head the F.B.I. – because he was a Republican and the F.B.I. had fallen into disrepute during the Watergate years. Later, Webster served under President Reagan, a man he says he “revered.” 

Now he says he considers it his duty, 

to speak out about a dire threat to the rule of law in the country I love. Order protects liberty, and liberty protects order. Today, the integrity of the institutions that protect our civil order are, tragically, under assault from too many people whose job it should be to protect them.

 

Webster finds President Trump’s attacks on the current F.B.I Director deeply troubling. A ten-year tenure granted to F.B.I. directors is meant to insulate them from political pressure. The “president’s thinly veiled suggestion that the director, Christopher Wray, like his banished predecessor, James Comey, could be on the chopping block, disturbs me greatly.” 

“The independence of both the F.B.I. and its director are critical,” he continues, “and should be fiercely protected by each branch of government.” 

During his years at the F.B.I. helm, 

I reported to four honorable attorneys general. Each clearly understood the importance of the rule of law in our democracy and the critical role the F.B.I. plays in the enforcement of our laws. They fought to protect both, knowing how important it was that our F.B.I. remain independent of political influence of any kind.

 

Attorney General William Barr’s “charges of bias within the F.B.I., made without providing any evidence and in direct dispute of the findings of the nonpartisan inspector general,” also trouble him. Such attacks “risk inflicting enduring damage on this critically important institution.” 

Barr has said that the F.B.I. investigation into Russian interference in the 2016 election was based on a “totally bogus narrative.” 

Webster vehemently disagrees. 

In fact, the report conclusively found that the evidence to initiate the Russia investigation was unassailable. There were more than 100 contacts between members of the Trump campaign and Russian agents [emphasis added throughout, unless noted otherwise] during the 2016 campaign, and Russian efforts to undermine our democracy continue to this day. 

 

He also expresses “profound” disappointment with Rudy Giuliani, a man he once considered a friend. “I hope he, like all of us, will redirect to our North Star, the rule of law, something so precious it is greater than any man or administration.” 

Webster discusses challenges he has seen the nation overcome during a long and eventful life. This current challenge is as dangerous as any heretofore. “This is not about politics,” he warns. “This is about the rule of law. Republicans and Democrats alike should defend it above all else.”

 

* 

There was a quid pro quo. 

WITH the House of Representatives poised to vote on articles of impeachment the next day, President Trump fires off a six-page letter meant to offer a defense from what he considers a scurrilous attack. That letter bolsters the case that Trump has lost whatever few marbles he had left. 

First, you have to wonder what possessed the President of the United States to sit down and start haranguing Speaker of the House Nancy Pelosi, the recipient of the original copy of his bizarre missive. 

And what were the main points Trump hoped to make? Mainly, he wanted to scream about all the horrible people out to get him. There was Chairman Adam Schiff, who “cheated and lied.” There was “a ranting and raving Congresswoman, Rashida Tlaib,” who called him a “mother****r.” Plus, Pelosi! She was the worst! “You do not know, nor do you care, the great damage and hurt you have inflicted upon wonderful and loving members of my family,” Trump cries. Hillary! She was terrible too. So was the F.B.I., which spied on his campaign (an inspector general’s report just said that that charge was unfounded). And James Comey. What a lowlife. Firing him was “one of the country’s greatest decisions.” Trump made that decision. One of the greatest decisions! Of course. Many Democratic lawmakers were “deranged and radical representatives of the far left.” In other words, forget Ukraine. Forget military aid to an ally. Forget U.S. national security – which would be harmed by a delay in the aid. Anyone who voted to impeach the next day, the president howled, was really showing they “revile the voters” and “detest America’s Constitutional order.”

 

Mostly, the letter was nothing more than presidential whining. This was an “invalid impeachment.” Pelosi and the Democrats were “violating” their oaths of office. His opponents were “spiteful.” And, boy, did it piss him off when Speaker Pelosi kept telling reporters that she prayed for him. “You are offending Americans of faith by making that claim. It is a terrible thing you are doing,” he wailed, “but you will have to live with it, not I!” 

(Actually, he was going to have to live with it; he was going to go down in history as one of only three presidents ever impeached.) 

The man accused of abusing his power and threatening the rule of law, did his best to turn the tables on Pelosi and her party – even though he was the one who asked a foreign power to interfere in a U.S. election (again). 

He labeled the impeachment inquiry “an unprecedented and unconstitutional abuse of power.” In other words, he still didn’t know what the U.S. Constitution said. The House of Representatives is granted “sole power” to impeach. 

Second, he said that the articles of impeachment were no good because they “include no crimes.” Again, he failed to understand what the Founding Fathers had said. 

Besides, Ambassador Sondland said there was no “quid pro quo.” He said it!!! That meant, Trump had to be innocent. 

He had to be! 

(BLOGGER’S NOTE: Sondland later testified in what some people would call “plain English.” He said there was a quid pro quo.)

 

If the Democratic standard for impeachment had been applied in the past, Trump continued to wail, “every American president would have been impeached many times over.” Obama would have been impeached probably ten times. That would be nine more times than Trump. George Washington would have been impeached at least twice. Maybe more. Bill Clinton’s penis would have been impeached – multiple times. Only William Henry Harrison would have avoided impeachment, dying after just 31 days in office, before the House could put together an impeachment case. 

Trump wanted to be clear. The Democrats couldn’t impeach him because he won in a landslide in 2016. Pelosi and her crew should back off and respect the 62 million voters who put him in office. 

Forget the 65 million who voted for Hillary. 

They weren’t good Americans.

 

Besides the whistleblower, “started this entire hoax with a false report of the phone call that bears no relationship to the actual phone call that was made,” the president claimed. Once he “presented the transcribed call” (actually a call memorandum) “and shocked the fraudsters” then “the so-called whistleblower, and the second whistleblower, disappeared because they got caught, their report was a fraud, and they were no longer going to be made available to us.” 

Anyone not too lazy to check could peruse the original whistleblower complaint and study witness testimony and see that almost every claim the whistleblower made was validated by more than one witness. Those witnesses all testified under oath. You could even find the whistleblower complaint at Fox News. 

Well, you know who the real victim was in this whole Ukraine affair? Donald J. Trump! “More due process was afforded to those accused in the Salem Witch Trials,” he cried, than Democrats gave him.

 

Then – back to bitching about Nancy Pelosi. She and her party were putting on a “false display of solemnity.” “No intelligent person believes what you are saying,” he writes in his letter to the Speaker. This impeachment is a partisan “coup.” It’s a “plot.” Pelosi has transformed “the House of Representatives from a revered legislative body into a Star Chamber of partisan persecution.” 

Finally, Trump closes: 

It is time for you and the highly partisan Democrats in Congress to immediately cease this impeachment fantasy and get back to work for the American People. While I have no expectation that you will do so, I write this letter to you for the purpose of history and to put my thoughts on a permanent and indelible record.

 

One hundred years from now, when people look back at this affair, I want them to understand it, and learn from it, so that it can never happen to another President again.

 

Then he adds that giant signature of his:

 

 

* 

DEMOCRATS aren’t the only ones who believe Trump should be impeached. Former GOP presidential candidate Carly Fiorina tells a reporter that Trump’s conduct has been “destructive to our republic.” 

“I think it is vital,” she adds, “that he be impeached.” 

She says she voted for him in 2016, but she’d be open to voting for a Democrat in 2020, depending on who it is.

 

* 

AT A MICHIGAN TOWNHALL, Democratic Rep. Elissa Slotkin, a first-term lawmaker, faces a divided crowd. Trump fans in the audience hoot and wave signs. “Impeach Slotkin,” reads one. Supporters stand and applaud. 

Slotkin, a former C.I.A. officer, understands that her announcement, that she will vote to impeach may bring a speedy end to her political career. “In the national security world that I come from,” she tells the crowd, “we are trained to make hard calls on things, even if they are unpopular, if we believe the security of the country is at stake. There are some decisions in life that have to be made based on what you know in your bones is right. And this is one of those times.” 

“On September 19, the President’s lawyer announced proudly on live TV that he had encouraged Ukraine to investigate the Bidens,” she says. 

“On September 22, in response to a reporter’s question, the President affirmed it,” she adds. She tells her audience she was appalled when Trump encouraged China to jump into the fray and investigate a political rival. 

“As a former C.I.A. officer, I believe this lies at the very heart of impeachable conduct,” she concludes. 

She’ll stand on principle, and if it means her time in Congress comes to an end, principles mean more to her in the end.

 

* 

SLOTKIN PROVES not to be alone in her thinking. We already know nearly 900 legal scholars agree. 

Trump should be impeached. 

 

“The mercenary instruments of foreign corruption.” 

Today, 750 historians sign a letter outlining their nearly identical conclusion: 

President Trump’s numerous and flagrant abuses of power are precisely what the Framers had in mind as grounds for impeaching and removing a president….The President’s offenses, including his dereliction in protecting the integrity of the 2020 election from Russian disinformation and renewed interference, arouse once again the Framers’ most profound fears that powerful members of government would become, in Hamilton’s words, “the mercenary instruments of foreign corruption.”

 

Signatories include Pulitzer Prize winners Robert Caro and Ron Chernow and documentary film maker Ken Burns.