Until now, there had been three major Impeachment Investigations of a President of the United States and as a political reporter for fifty two years based in Washington I covered two of them.
I joke that when Andrew Johnson was Impeached and Tried by the Senate within the one year of 1868, I was on assignment covering U S Grant’s presidential campaign. Johnson was acquitted and Grant was elected that year.
But I’ve/we’ve never seen anything move as fast as this!
When Richard Nixon and his Chief of Staff Bob Haldeman cooked up the cover-up of the Watergate burglary by agents of the White House “Plumber’s Unit,” to the time when the White House tape on which we hear the two working out how this Obstruction of Justice would be orchestrated, over two years had elapsed.
That piece of “Smoking Gun” tape, incontrovertible damming evidence cooked Nixon’s goose. He resigned his office in disgrace one step ahead of the Sherriff.
Here, in the case of Donald J Trump vrs. Justice, less than ten days after a “Whistleblower” complaint became public, the “Smoking Gun” transcript of Trump’s crime has been released by the White House.
Donald J Trump is a political “dead man” walking.
Almost none of the Readers of this Blog need be taken step by step through what the transcript clearly shows (partial though it may be) of a telephone call between The President of the United States and the President of Ukraine. They get it without any help from me.
If there are a few readers here who have clung to Trump until now and do have questions, I urge you to read the partial transcript for yourselves. You can figure out how when the 400 million of Congressionally mandated defense aid to Ukraine was being withheld by Trump, his phone call urging that Countries’ president to do “a favor” and investigate Joseph Biden and his son (Biden Pere his possible opponent in the 2020 presidential election) for Corruption with the help of his personal lawyer Rudy Giuliani and the Attorney General of the United States William Barr, people who believe in our Constitution’s mandate that our Elections be free from foreign influence would take grave and urgent exception to Trump’s effort at strong arming Ukraine to dig up dirt on his domestic political opponent.
So, what now?
With “Road Runner” speed, “Wily E Coyote” Trump will be impeached by the U S House of Representatives. The Senate with its majority republicans will have no choice but to conduct a Trial expeditiously even if it spills into next year.
Remember, Andrew Johnson was Tried in an election year. Though Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell had the power to withhold even a hearing for Obama’s Supreme Court nominee Merrick Garland for almost a year, he does not have the power to slow-walk a Senate Impeachment Trial.
And will Trump be convicted and removed from office in that Trial? One can only speculate at this point.
Obviously, if the Senate Republicans, who, with but few exceptions (and even though one of them, bless your heart John McCain, is dead), stand by him, why Trump will not be removed – it takes two thirds of the Senate present and voting to do that and the Democrats can not do it alone.
But I believe that enough Republicans will desert him and vote to convict because I believe that the vast majority of Americans will look at the facts and the evidence and think about the standards of Constitutional and Secular Law and the morality for which this Country has stood until now.
Then, enough Republican Senators will survey sentiment in their states and count the votes for and against their re-election and will convict. I would like to think Senators would base their votes on Trump on the evidence and not their own political futures but I’ll take their epiphany on the “Road to Damascus” any way it comes.
Donald J Trump is a political “dead man” walking.
Of course, I could be wrong; I was certainly wrong in 2016 when, until about three weeks before the election, I was confident that Donald J Trump could not/would not be elected.
If I turn out to be wrong this time, it is not just that I didn’t make the right call again but because I do not understand what so many of our citizens believe in and don’t believe in, do not yet understand how we have changed from the time when a piece of “smoking gun” evidence did in a felonious president and a time when it doesn’t matter.
No, I do not believe I’m wrong.
I believe that a large majority of citizens will see to it that Trump’s passing will be remembered only as one of those trials like our Civil War that tested, to borrow Lincoln’s words, “whether that nation , or any nation so conceived and dedicated, can long endure.”
We endured through the Civil War.
We will endure through Donald J Trump!