The Degrading of Presidential accountability
By Amy Davidson Sorkin
February 1, 2020
The sordid truth of the impeachment trial of Donald Trump is that it will end with the Senate Majority Leader, Mitch McConnell, doing him a favor: delivering the votes, with little regard for the facts. That is sadly appropriate, because Trump’s favors .. and the terms on which he extracts them, remain the trial’s most contested issue. The House managers cited Trump’s statement to President Volodymyr Zelensky, of Ukraine, in their phone call on July 25, 2019 — “I would like you to do us a favor though” — as the crux of a corrupt scheme. Trump’s lawyers countered that he was talking not about his “personal interests” but about America’s ...
... He wanted dirt on a political opponent and was willing to hold up military aid for an ally in order to get it. Trump’s core belief seems to have been that Ukraine, by receiving aid from America, incurred a debt that should be paid to him personally. That equation works only if, as Adam Schiff, the lead House manager, put it on Wednesday, “you view your interests as synonymous with the nation’s interests.” And Trump does ...
... “Every public official that I know believes that his election is in the public interest—and mostly you’re right!” Dershowitz told the senators. And so, “if a President did something that he believes will help him get elected, in the public interest, that cannot be the kind of quid pro quo that results in impeachment” ...
... Perhaps the Republican senators, as they trudged toward casting their vote, were making a calculation about how Trump might return the favor with one for them, or their party, or their country. Or maybe they, too, can no longer tell the difference.
https://www.newyorker.com/magazine/2020/02/10/trumps-impeachment-and-the-degrading-of-presidential-accountability
