10/25/19: There were no witness scheduled Friday in the impeachment inquiry. So, we had a chance to catch up on the nuts and bolts of news. Let’s take them as they come. Trump? Can we trust him?
Or should we put our trust in all the
witnesses so far?
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Laura Ingraham is not happy with the way Bill Taylor spaced his document. |
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In
1787, James Madison warned that a future president “might betray his trust to
foreign powers.”
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The president told reporters recently, that he had talked to Sen. McConnell about his telephone call with President Zelensky. “He read my phone call [the memorandum] with the president of Ukraine,” Trump claimed. “Mitch McConnell, he said, ‘That was the most innocent phone call that I’ve read.’ I mean, give me a break.”
Alas, McConnell had to admit to reporters later that he had never talked to Trump about his call.
McConnell now had fresh proof that Trump was a practicing liar. That meant, the Senate Majority Leader had no choice but to tell a lunchtime gathering of GOP lawmakers that they were screwed and Trump was going to jail.
No, I jest.
McConnell knew the facts of the case, so far, were looking bad.
So, according to one Republican in attendance, he told members, “This is going to be about process.”
Knowing it was going to be hard to defend the
president for holding up military aid to an ally, simply to force the leader of
that ally to interfere in a U.S. election, McConnell had a creative idea.
Republicans should complain about the way Democrats were running the inquiry.
Trump might be liar in all matters, large, small, medium-sized, and microscopic. But Democrats weren’t playing fair. They wouldn’t let witnesses testify in public so that other witnesses, having heard what had already been said, could shape their testimony accordingly.
In the meantime, Chairman Schiff had made clear. Once enough evidence was gathered, public hearings would commence.
(Ask someone old enough, how public hearings went for President Nixon.)
We also learned that Sen. John Thune, the second ranking Senate Republican, was unhappy with the way Chairman Schiff and the Democrats were running the inquiry. Well, then, reporters asked, what had he been able to gather from the information so far leaked or released?
“The picture coming out of it based on the reporting we’ve
seen is, yeah, I would say it’s not a good one,” Thune admitted.
*
ON FRIDAY, we learned that it’s likely to get worse for Trump before it gets better. Tim Morrison, a current member of the National Security Council, has made it clear that despite White House efforts to block him, he would testify next week. Morrison reportedly listened to the July 25 phone call between Trump and Zelensky. That would put him in a position to bolster the testimony of Ambassador Bill Taylor. Based on leaks, so far, it seems Morrison will say he agrees with Taylor’s assessment.
That is: Trump was holding up military aid until the Ukrainians agreed to investigate Joe Biden and his son.
Could it get worse for Team Trump next week?
Oh, yes, much, much worse. We learn that former National Security Advisor
John Bolton is in negotiations to testify himself. That’s right. Trump’s third
National Security Advisor, head of his National Security Council, might make
the trek to Capitol Hill and speak his piece. Of course, it’s possible Bolton
will sing the praises of the president and Press Lacky Grisham will liken his
testimony to the “song of cherubim.”
*
LET’S WRAP IT UP for today, with one last right-wing nut making headlines. Former Acting Attorney General Matt Whitaker appears on Fox News. He tells host Laura Ingraham that impeaching the president thirteen months before an election is “not good for the Republic.”
(Neither is having a president bend U.S. diplomacy to place personal interests ahead of national security.)
Naturally, Ingraham agrees. She works for Fox News. She would agree if Whitaker said Trump had the right to practice polygamy in the White House. “Mueller failed,” she says, in his earlier effort to bring Trump down. Whitaker says the “global elitists” are out to get the Orange Hero. Finally, he offers up this gem. “Abuse of power is not a crime. Let’s fundamentally boil it down, the Constitution is very clear that there has to be some pretty egregious behavior.”
In
other words, Trump can’t be impeached.
*
“The Executive ought therefore to be impeachable for treachery.”
IF ONE TAKES the time to study the U.S. Constitution, one discovers it’s not nearly that simple.
You might assume a former Acting Attorney General would know that, unless you kept in mind that Whitaker was a Trump appointee. We know the Constitution says only that an individual can be impeached for “high crimes and misdemeanors.”
Even the Founding Fathers couldn’t make up their minds what that phrase should be meant to include. James Madison, speaking at the Constitutional Convention, on July 20, 1787, favored a clause outlining the power of the legislative branch to impeach a president. He talked of a need to guard against the chief executive in cases of “incapacity, negligence or perfidy.”
For example, a future president, Mr. Madison warned, “might betray his trust to foreign powers.”
(Ring any
bells???????)
According to Madison’s notes from the Convention, there was a spirited debate. Mr. Pinckney (he failed to specify which “Mr. Pinckney,” and there were two) “did not see the necessity of impeachments.” Mr. Rufus King also had doubts. Mr. Edmund Randolph admitted that “impeachment was a favorite principle with him. Guilt wherever found,” he said, “ought to be punished.” “In some respects the public money will be in his hands,” Randolph warned of any president. The temptation might prove too much for ordinary men. Ben Franklin explained that the power of impeachment would serve as a guard against more violent methods of removing a chief executive. Elbridge Gerry also “urged the necessity of impeachments. A good magistrate will not fear them. A bad one ought to be kept in fear of them. He hoped the maxim would never be adopted here that the chief magistrate could do no wrong.”
(Or pardon
himself if he did?????????????????????)
Gouverneur Morris spoke last that day, more than two hundred years ago. His “opinion had been changed by the arguments used in the discussion,” he said. Morris noted, for example, that “Charles II was bribed by Louis XIV.”
The president, in the system the Founding Fathers envisioned, might more easily be tempted by riches, since he (or she, in modern parlance) had no hereditary interest in government, as did royals.
Morris continued,
He may be bribed by a greater interest to
betray his trust; and no one would say that we ought to expose ourselves to the
danger of seeing the first Magistrate in forign [sic] pay, without being able
to guard against it by displacing him…The Executive ought therefore to be
impeachable for treachery.
Nine state delegations, therefore, voted in favor of the proposition: “Shall the Executive be removable on impeachments &c.?”
Only South Carolina voted “nay.”
Six days later, as delegates hammered out details of the new plan, Madison notes that it was agreed the Constitution should specify removal of a president for “malfeasance or neglect of duty.”
That
wording was refined on August 6. It was now proposed that the Constitution
specify impeachment of the president for “treason, bribery, or corruption.”
On September 8, delegates revisited the matter. At that point, as the proposed new plan of government read, the president was removable only for “treason or bribery.” George Mason argued for adding, after bribery, the words: “or maladministration.” His motion was seconded.
Madison
warned that such a definition was “so vague” as to put any president in the
hands of a hostile Senate. Mason, withdrew his suggestion and substituted the
phrase “high crimes and misdemeanors.” The vote of the states was 8-3, the
motion carrying. (At the time, Rhode Island was not represented; and all but
one member of the New York delegation, Alexander Hamilton, had gone home in a
huff.)
Yet
another adjustment was deemed necessary; and “the vice-President and other
Civil officers of the U.S.” were added to the list of those impeachable. That
list already included members of the legislature and federal judges. A
suggestion that members of the Supreme Court be granted the final vote in cases
of impeachment – not the Senate – was defeated.
On September 14 one last proposal was made. It was suggested that such wording be added to the Constitution: “that persons impeached be suspended from office until they be tried and acquitted.”
This
was voted down, eight states against.
So, the question of what the term “high crimes and misdemeanors” means was not in any way as simple as Mr. Whitaker was trying to make it sound on an evening, more than two hundred years later, on a Fox News show, to the benefit of his lord and master, Donald J. Trump.
And you might think a highly-paid Fox News pundit would have sniffed out the subtleties and enlightened her viewing public.
You would be wrong, of course. Ingraham had sorted through all the issues related to the testimony of half-a-dozen witnesses who had appeared before the House Intelligence Committee. You could not put anything past Ms. Ingraham. Her keen nose had sniffed out the key to the impeachment inquiry. Her defense of President Trump would be rock solid. Yes, she was bothered by the single-spacing of Ambassador Taylor’s fifteen-page, opening statement.
Fifteen pages! Single-spaced! It put her in mind of some doltish young job seeker, turning in a lousy resume. This, she said, would be a person you would “never want to hire.”
Spacing!
Really.
