Charles Pierce: What Trump Has Done Is Already Impeachable By Any Reasonable Standard [View all]

[kpete]

What Trump Has Done Is Already Impeachable By Any Reasonable Standard
If we're following the constitution, as soon as the president* asked the question, he was guilty of a high crime.

BY CHARLES P. PIERCE
NOV 21, 2018

Taking the side of a foreign despot who murdered and dismembered an American resident journalist, a clearly impeachable offense, and another story about the deeply corrupt hack whom you intend to use to obstruct justice in the biggest way possible. You have to admit, that's a helluva two hours right there. From the Times:

President Trump told the White House counsel in the spring that he wanted to order the Justice Department to prosecute two of his political adversaries: his 2016 challenger, Hillary Clinton, and the former F.B.I. director James B. Comey, according to two people familiar with the conversation.

The lawyer, Donald F. McGahn II, rebuffed the president, saying that he had no authority to order a prosecution. Mr. McGahn said that while he could request an investigation, that too could prompt accusations of abuse of power. To underscore his point, Mr. McGahn had White House lawyers write a memo for Mr. Trump warning that if he asked law enforcement to investigate his rivals, he could face a range of consequences, including possible impeachment.

The encounter was one of the most blatant examples yet of how Mr. Trump views the typically independent Justice Department as a tool to be wielded against his political enemies. It took on additional significance in recent weeks when Mr. McGahn left the White House and Mr. Trump appointed a relatively inexperienced political loyalist, Matthew G. Whitaker, as the acting attorney general.

Here's the thing. If we're still following the Constitution, as soon as the president* finished asking the question, he was guilty of a high crime and liable to impeachment and removal from office. It doesn't matter that it never happened, or that McGahn talked him out of it. Given his position, the very suggestion by the president* that the Justice Department behave as his personal Praetorian Guard is an obstruction of justice and an abuse of power. McGahn should've walked that conversation over to Robert Mueller's place as soon as he left the Oval Office. However, he didn't, and the Times leaves us with this little land mine deep in the story.

It is unclear whether Mr. Trump read Mr. McGahn’s memo or whether he pursued the prosecutions further.

It is? We're "unclear" whether the president* actually acted on this notion, compounding his felonies, and we're "unclear" whether investigations of Clinton and Comey might be underway right now. That's one fcklord of a cliffhanger right there, NYT.

Perhaps more than any president since Richard M. Nixon, Mr. Trump has been accused of trying to exploit his authority over law enforcement. Witnesses have told the special counsel’s investigators about how Mr. Trump tried to end an investigation into an aide, install loyalists to oversee the inquiry into his campaign and fire Mr. Mueller.

If everybody does his or her job the right way, they're going to have to bring the copies of the indictments up the Potomac by barge.




MORE:
https://www.esquire.com/news-politics/politics/a25250046/donald-trump-james-comey-hillary-clinton-saudi-arabia/