Republicans: There’s No Point in More Evidence, Trump Will Just Obstruct It
If the president don’t turn over any of the relevant documents, you must acquit. Photo: Win McNamee/Getty Images
Republicans have spent the impeachment trial alternatively arguing that the House had not produced enough evidence to prove its case, and that more evidence is unnecessary. Last night, they introduced a novel new argument: It would be pointless to introduce more evidence, because the White House will simply block it in the courts. “A growing number of Republicans are pointing to President Donald Trump’s threat to invoke executive privilege in order to make their case against subpoenas sought by Democrats for key witnesses and documents,” reports CNN.
There are several remarkable things about this new rationale. First, Republicans have spent days lambasting Democrats for refusing to let the courts to exhaust every last Trump appeal. (Jay Sekulow: “The president’s opponents, in their rush to impeach, have refused to wait for judicial review.”) They deemed the House impeachment proceedings a “shoddy work product” for this reason, but are now prepared to argue that it’s too late and they can’t fix it.
Trump himself is arguing that the House had too few witnesses — because he blocked them! — but that the Senate should not try to get those witnesses, because “they had their chance.”
Second, the fatalistic assumption that Trump can block any new evidence is probably wrong. John Bolton, for one, has offered to testify (and, as a former White House employee, cannot be blocked). Some experts argue that, as a matter of law, the Senate is in a stronger position than the House to swiftly compel documents and testimony Trump has blocked. In any case, if the Senate wants to at least try to get more evidence, it can give the process a few weeks. There’s no reason to throw in the towel before even trying.
It is true, of course, that Trump will continue to withhold as much evidence as he can, as long as he can. But this raises a third point about his lack of transparency: Doesn’t it make Republican senators question his protestations of innocence? After all, Trump is very much not conceding that he pressured Ukraine to undertake ordered-up investigations. His defense does not merely say his actions don’t merit removal — it denies the key factual predicate of the articles of impeachment. Republicans in Congress have dutifully followed his argument, yet Trump is blocking all the relevant evidence. Doesn’t this bear upon his underlying guilt? Why is he withholding access to documents and witnesses that would presumably exculpate him?
And finally, bear in mind that refusing to cooperate with any investigation is one of the things Trump is charged with in one of the two articles of impeachment. Trump’s blanket rejection of any legitimate oversight role for Congress, and his calculation that he can withhold all evidence on every investigation of his administration and run out the clock is the second high crime.
Republican senators are saying the first crime hasn’t been sufficiently proven, but they can’t get the evidence that might prove it, because Trump will drag it out too long. Every Republican argument for refusing to convict Trump simply takes his bad faith as a background fact, and focuses all the scrutiny on the way other actors have dealt with it. What are you gonna do? The guy is obstructing Congress. Sure, we could try to get more testimony against John Gotti, but Gotti will probably just bribe or murder all the witnesses. Might as well end the trial quickly and vote not guilty.
What We Know About Trump Going Into 2020
What We Know About Trump Going Into 2020
Photo: ERIN SCOTT/Bloomberg via Getty Images
There is merit, at times, to thinking about what might have been.
Counterfactual history can help us see what our factual history has actually
told us.
So reflect for a
second on the campaign of 2016. One Republican candidate channeled the actual
grievances and anxieties of many Americans, while the others kept up their
zombie politics and economics. One candidate was prepared to say that the
Iraq War was a catastrophe, that mass immigration needed to be controlled, that
globalized free trade was devastating communities and industries, that we
needed serious investment in infrastructure, that Reaganomics was way out of
date, and that half the country was stagnating and in crisis.
That was Trump. In
many ways, he deserves credit for this wake-up call. And if he had built on
this platform and crafted a presidential agenda that might have expanded its
appeal and broadened its base, he would be basking in high popularity and be a
shoo-in for reelection. If, in a resilient period of
growth, his first agenda item had been a major infrastructure bill and he’d
combined it with tax relief for the middle and working classes, he could have
crafted a new conservative coalition that might have endured. If he could have conceded for a millisecond that he was a newbie
and that he would make mistakes, he would have been forgiven for much. A touch
of magnanimity would have worked wonders. For that matter, if Trump were to
concede, even now, that his phone call with President Zelensky of Ukraine went
over the line and he now understands this, we would be in a different world.
The two core lessons
of the past few years are therefore: (1) Trumpism has a real base of support in
the country with needs that must be addressed, and (2) Donald Trump is
incapable of doing it and is such an unstable, malignant, destructive
narcissist that he threatens our entire system of government. The reason
this impeachment feels so awful is that it requires removing a figure to whom
so many are so deeply bonded because he was the first politician to hear them
in decades. It feels to them like impeachment is another insult from the
political elite, added to the injury of the 21st century. They take it
personally, which is why their emotions have flooded their brains. And this is
understandable.
But when you think of
what might have been and reflect on what has happened, it is crystal clear that
this impeachment is not about the Trump agenda or a more coherent version of
it. It is about the character of one man: his decision to forgo any outreach,
poison domestic politics, marinate it in deranged invective, betray his
followers by enriching the plutocracy, destroy the dignity of the office of
president, and turn his position into a means of self-enrichment. It’s about
the personal abuse of public office: using the presidency’s powers to blackmail
a foreign entity into interfering in a domestic election on his behalf, turning
the Department of Justice into an instrument of personal vengeance and political defense, openly obstructing
investigations into his own campaign, and treating the grave matter of
impeachment as a “hoax” while barring any testimony from his own people.
Character matters.
This has always been a conservative principle but one that, like so many
others, has been tossed aside in the convulsions of a cult. And it is Trump’s
character alone that has brought us to this point. That’s why the editorial in the Evangelical
journal Christianity Today is
so clarifying. Finally — finally — an Evangelical outlet telling the truth in
simple language:
[President Trump] has hired and fired a number of people who are
now convicted criminals. He himself has admitted to immoral actions in business
and his relationship with women, about which he remains proud. His Twitter feed
alone — with its habitual string of mischaracterizations, lies, and slanders —
is a near perfect example of a human being who is morally lost and confused …
To the many Evangelicals who continue to support Mr. Trump in spite of his
blackened moral record, we might say this: Remember who you are and whom you
serve.
It is this profound immorality
that made this week inevitable. Yes, inevitable. Put a man of this sort —
utterly unprepared, utterly corrupt, and with no political or governing
experience at all — into the Oval Office, and impeachment, if there is any
life left in our democracy, is inevitable.
Yes, some partisan
Democrats were out to destroy him from the very beginning and have merely been
seeking a pretext ever since. Yes, some have overreached in their Russia
fixation. And I’m not going to deny the troubling facts outlined in the
Inspector General’s report on the FBI’s dangerously sloppy FISA requests
when the Russia question first emerged in summer 2016. These are parts of the
truth that demand inquiry and reflection. But they are largely irrelevant to
the question in front of us.
The impeachment was
inevitable because this president is so profoundly and uniquely unfit for the
office he holds, so contemptuous of the constitutional democracy he took an
oath to defend, and so corrupt in his core character that a crisis in the
conflict between him and the rule of law was simply a matter of time. When you
add to this a clear psychological deformation that can produce the
astonishing, deluded letter he released this week in his own defense or the manic performance at his Michigan rally Wednesday night, it is staggering that it has taken this
long. The man is clinically unwell, preternaturally corrupt, and
instinctively hostile to the rule of law. In any other position, in any other
field of life, he would have been fired years ago and urged to seek medical
attention with respect to his mental health.
I fear the
consequences of impeachment. I fear the resentment it might stir up, the
divides it could deepen, the rancor it will unleash. But I fear more profoundly
the consequences of not impeaching. And there is something clarifying —
something that pierces the strongman atmosphere that now dominates Washington —
about the sheer fact of it. We live in a republic whose forms have not
completely degenerated into meaninglessness. Despite near-insane attempts to
describe a constitutional process as a “coup,” despite senior senators
declaring they will violate their oath to be an impartial juror in the
forthcoming trial, despite machinations from Mitch McConnell that he intends to
turn the trial into a damp squib, the Constitution’s mechanisms just worked. We
now need to believe in these mechanisms, in the cooling process of constitutional
norms, which are now in operation. The Speaker should not step on her own smart
strategy and play games with the articles of impeachment. Send them to the Senate now. Then hold the Senate responsible
for what it does with them.
And enough of the
world-weary cynicism that all of this is futile! It is, in fact, deeply
regenerative of the norms of accountability that we have allowed to erode too
easily for too long. A Senate trial could further illuminate the damning fact
pattern. Around 50 percent of the public
already backs this process. Some Republican senators may wish to behave
according to the Constitution and the rule of law — and if that gives us a
small majority for impeachment, if nowhere near enough to remove him, that
helps cauterize this experiment in one-man rule for the record. An
already-impeached president may have more of an uphill fight to get reelected.
There are glimmers of hope still around.
We can’t know the
future. But we can know our duty. The only way past this is through it. And
this is not a depressing truth. We can keep this republic. We can isolate this
presidency as a cautionary tale. We can refuse to be gaslit. We can become
Americans again — in the restless, querulous refusal to be any tyrant’s
plaything and any con man’s mark.
Citing Nothing but a Few
Talking Points, Legal Scholars Conclude Trump Engaged in Impeachable Conduct
Citing Nothing but a Few
Talking Points, Legal Scholars Conclude Trump Engaged in Impeachable Conduct
As the impeachment fiasco continues,
legal scholars have weighed in and taken sides. Most recently, one such group
enlightened everyone with a joint letter supporting the president’s
impeachment.
While the
letter made for some fairly interesting reading, its drafters ultimately
reached an incorrect conclusion.
In a letter signed
by many self-proclaimed legal scholars, the “factual” basis for impeachment was
summed up as follows:
“In light of these considerations,
overwhelming evidence made public to date forces us to conclude that President
Trump engaged in impeachable conduct. To mention only a few of those facts:
William B. Taylor, who leads the U.S. embassy in Ukraine, testified that
President Trump directed the withholding of hundreds of millions of dollars in
military aid for Ukraine in its struggle against Russia — aid that Congress
determined to be in the U.S. national security interest — until Ukraine
announced investigations that would aid the President’s re-election campaign.
Ambassador Gordon Sondland testified that the President made a
White House visit for the Ukrainian president conditional on public
announcement of those investigations. In a phone call with the Ukrainian
president, President Trump asked for a ‘favor’ in the form of a foreign government
investigation of a U.S. citizen who is his political rival. President Trump and
his Chief of Staff Mick Mulvaney made public statements confirming this use of
governmental power to solicit investigations that would aid the President’s
personal political interests. The President made clear that his private
attorney, Rudy Giuliani, was central to efforts to spur Ukrainian
investigations, and Mr. Giuliani confirmed that his efforts were in service of
President Trump’s private interests.”
According to
these scholars, the so-called “facts” referenced in their letter support their
conclusion that the president engaged in impeachable conduct. However, the
“facts” that they referenced were selective in nature and incomplete. A review
of the testimony of the various witnesses reflects the flaws in their reasoning
and analysis.
In their letter, these scholars used
Taylor’s testimony in an effort to establish Trump’s alleged impeachable
conduct. However, they omitted the fact that Taylor didn’t
speak to, or have any direct communication with, the president regarding the
requests for investigations, and that much of his testimony was based on what
former U.S. Special Representative for Ukraine Negotiations Kurt Volker and
Sondland told him. In other words, Taylor relied on hearsay evidence and
what others allegedly told him, which is inherently unreliable.
Gordon Sondland, the U.S ambassador to the European Union, testifies
before the House Intelligence Committee on Capitol Hill on Nov. 20, 2019. Chip
Somodevilla/Getty Images
To further
bolster their conclusion, these legal scholars conveniently pointed to one
specific portion of Sondland’s testimony. However, they seemingly overlooked
Sondland’s subsequent testimony.
Specifically, when questioned by Republican
counsel Steve Castor, Sondland stated,
“I never heard from President Trump that aid was conditioned on an
announcement of [investigations].” Sondland made further concessions when further questioned:
Steve Castor: “The president never told you about any preconditions for the aid
to be released?”
Gordon Sondland: “No.”
Mr. Castor: “The president never told you about any preconditions for a White
House meeting?”
Mr. Sondland: “Personally, no.”
Additionally, Sondland admitted that
his initial testimony about the existence of a quid pro quo “arrangement” was
based on his “beliefs” or “assumptions” as opposed to any direct evidence.
During his testimony, he also confirmed that the president personally
told him, “I want nothing, I want nothing. I want no quid pro quo,” which was
consistent with his prior deposition testimony,
where he said Trump told him, “I want nothing. I don’t want to give them
anything and I don’t want anything from them.”
Finally, their
reliance on the president’s request for a “favor,” as set forth in the
transcript of the telephone call between Trump and the president of Ukraine, is
petty and, in and of itself, doesn’t constitute impeachable conduct (the
transcript speaks for itself). Moreover, the fact that Giuliani may have played
a role in the president’s desire to investigate corruption in Ukraine doesn’t
constitute impeachable conduct, as the president is entitled to investigate
such corruption.
While it’s not
unusual for people to reach different conclusions on a given set of facts, it’s
vital to consider all of the facts when doing so and not let personal
animus cloud one’s judgment. In this case, there was no direct or firsthand
evidence of any impeachable conduct. Rather, there was testimony that amounted
to nothing more than speculation, conjecture, assumptions, and hearsay.
It goes without saying that such so-called
evidence shouldn’t form the basis of a presidential impeachment, no matter how
much those on the left and some in academia want it to, because of their strong
dislike of the president (i.e., Pamela Karlan, who recently testified as an impeachment expert and agreed that
impeachment was warranted, “previously told a 2017 American Constitution
Society panel that she couldn’t stomach walking past the Trump International
Hotel in Washington, D.C.,” according to Fox News).
As a matter of fact, it wasn’t too long ago
when more than 1,700 law professors nationwide
signed a letter urging the Senate to reject Supreme Court nominee Brett Kavanaugh:
“Judge
Kavanaugh exhibited a lack of commitment to judicious inquiry. Instead of being
open to the necessary search for accuracy, Judge Kavanaugh was repeatedly
aggressive with questioners. Even in his prepared remarks, Judge Kavanaugh
described the hearing as partisan, referring to it as ‘a calculated and
orchestrated political hit,’ rather than acknowledging the need for the Senate,
faced with new information, to try to understand what had transpired. Instead
of trying to sort out with reason and care the allegations that were raised,
Judge Kavanaugh responded in an intemperate, inflammatory and partial manner,
as he interrupted and, at times, was discourteous to senators.”
Kavanaugh was
ultimately confirmed, despite the partisan attacks and incorrect conclusions
reached by some in academia.
While
professors and legal scholars are free to form their own opinions, they should
do so objectively and in a manner in which they consider all of the
facts, as opposed to those selective “talking points” that appear to support
their desired conclusions.
In this case,
the recent letter supporting Trump’s impeachment was “incomplete” and
unsubstantiated. Sadly, the alleged “facts” cited in the letter appear to have
been selectively chosen in an effort to paint a grim picture of the president’s
alleged conduct.
In reality,
the testimony, when considered in its entirety, painted an entirely different
picture that easily refuted this unsubstantiated conclusion.
Elad Hakim is a writer, commentator, and
attorney. His articles have been published in The Washington Examiner, The
Daily Caller, The Federalist, The Algemeiner, The Western Journal, American
Thinker, and other online publications.
Views expressed in this article are the
opinions of the author and do not necessarily reflect the views of The Epoch
Times.
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