On The Trump-Ukraine Scandal

Beginning with a caveat:  we're under no illusion that the gutless, treason- abetting careerist Republicans in the Senate would ever take up articles of impeachment that the House might forward.  That being said, allowing an unstable, law- breaking buffoon to set precedents for future presidents, without accountability, is perhaps the worst possible outcome for our democracy.  It must be the duty of Democrats to memorialize the many ways this existential threat has abused his power and committed acts that deserve removal from office -- even though that removal may not take place until voters cast their ballots in November 2020.

In the meantime, here's what others are saying today.

George Conway and Neal Katyal:

So it appears that the president might have used his official powers — in particular, perhaps the threat of withholding a quarter-billion dollars in military aid — to leverage a foreign government into helping him defeat a potential political opponent in the United States.

If Trump did that, it would be the ultimate impeachable act. Trump has already done more than enough to warrant impeachment and removal with his relentless attempts, on multiple fronts, to sabotage the counterintelligence and criminal investigation by then-special counsel Robert S. Mueller III and to conceal evidence of those attempts. [snip]

The current whistleblowing allegations, however, are even worse. Unlike the allegations of conspiracy with Russia before the 2016 election, these concern Trump’s actions as president, not as a private citizen, and his exercise of presidential powers over foreign policy with Ukraine. Moreover, with Russia, at least there was an attempt to get the facts through the Mueller investigation; here the White House is trying to shut down the entire inquiry from the start — depriving not just the American people, but even congressional intelligence committees, of necessary information.

It is high time for Congress to do its duty, in the manner the framers intended. Given how Trump seems ever bent on putting himself above the law, something like what might have happened between him and Ukraine — abusing presidential authority for personal benefit — was almost inevitable. Yet if that is what occurred, part of the responsibility lies with Congress, which has failed to act on the blatant obstruction that Mueller detailed months ago.

Leonard Pitts, Jr.:

It’s important to note the context here.

Earlier this month, the Justice Department launched an antitrust investigation of four automakers after they reached agreement with the state of California to maintain higher fuel-efficiency standards than the federal government requires. It can be no coincidence that Trump has long been at war with that state.

At roughly the same time, officials at the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration reportedly were threatened with termination for contradicting Trump’s claim — he tried to prove it by marking a map with a Sharpie — that Alabama was menaced by a killer storm.

Now here’s the acting DNI throwing his body between Trump and accountability. We are seeing the credibility of the federal government mangled in service to this guy’s fragile ego. How weak the guardrails of democracy turn out to be. Even this one — a government of, by and for the people is looking suspiciously like a government of, by and for Trump.

But where guardrails fail, things crash and fall apart. Something to remember as we wait out the long years until next November.

We were told our institutions would save us. They’ll be lucky if they can save themselves.

Molly Jong -Fast on the enablers of Trump rising to the defense:

Like with any crisis in Trumpworld, the Trump Mobius strip of propaganda rolled out a rapid and slightly insane response. Trump’s propagandists met yet another allegation of presidential malfeasance with a smorgasbord of obfuscation, confession, deflection, confusion, and unbridled hostility.

The morning after the whistleblower’s allegations came to light, the president’s favorite breakfast show cheerfully explained to its viewers that what looked like potential treason was in fact merely “the art of the deal.” Yes, possible corruption was actually just deal-making! Geraldo Rivera chimed in to call out the whistleblower for being “annoying, this is a punk, a punk who's snitching out the president's phone calls to a foreign leader”. Newt Gingrich volunteered an “executive powers” defense. Gingrich has himself been plagued by ethics scandals, so perhaps he’s the perfect person to defend such an ethically challenged president.  [snip]

But no one shills for the president quite like the members of his own party, and Missouri Senator Josh Hawley is always happy to go on Fox News and blame “another deep state attack” on whatever’s got the president into trouble this time. Likewise, Tennessee’s Marsha Blackburn blamed the Democrats for the whistleblower, saying, "You will never see the attacks stopped. The left will not give up because they cannot even accept the fact that they lost." All of this is made sillier by the fact that none of these people know who the whistleblower is.

Finally, Oliver Bullough on the Biden non- scandal at the heart of the real scandal:

... [W]hen journalists seek the fire behind the smoke in the Biden-Ukraine tale, they often call to ask my opinion. Many are eager to flesh out what seems a satisfyingly simple conspiracy, but I have to tell them: It isn’t true. The timeline doesn’t work. The investigation into Burisma, Hunter Biden’s employer, had ground to a halt long before the prosecutor was sacked. A subsequent probe into the company’s owner was opened because of a request from Ukrainian legislators, not because of prosecutorial initiative. There is, in short, no there there; the bloggers are putting two and two together — and coming up with 22.

Jon Chait also debunks the Biden non- scandal story here.

(One of those "journalists" seeking the fire behind the smoke is the New York Effing Times' Rudy Giuliani whisperer Ken Vogel -- remember the timeline and take anything he has to report on this with a metric f*ckton of salt.  More on Vogel here. And, more so, here.)