Michael DAntonio - High Crimes: The Corruption, Impunity, and Impeachment of Donald Trump

Just another Witch Hunt by Nancy Pelosi and the Do Nothing Democrats!

Donald Trump, president of the United States, via Twitter, September 29, 2019

As Virginia congressman Gerald Connolly walked a private corridor to a conference room hidden inside the Capitol, his mind was divided. This wasnt a new condition. A decade in Congress had taught Connolly, a white-haired sixty-nine-year-old with a brushy mustache, to deal with the fact that issues constantly competed for his attention. Also, members of Congress were always occupied, simultaneously, by the business of governinglegislation, hearings, constituent concernsand by the game of election politics. If you couldnt juggle it all, you didnt belong in the House.

Speaker Nancy Pelosi had agreed to spend a little time listening to a few House Democrats who wanted more vigorous support for a two-state solution to the Israeli-Palestinian conflict. Connolly had worked on this issue since the 1980s, when he was an aide to the Senate Committee on Foreign Relations. It mattered to him. But in this moment, on the morning of September 26, 2019, an immediate crisis was overwhelming Washington and pushing aside every other concern.

President Donald Trump had tried to extort an allyUkraineby withholding promised military aid for its war against Russia until he received help in his campaign for reelection. This scheme involved him in a variation on the scandal of the 2016 campaign, when Russia made a sweeping online effort to boost him, harm his opponent, and sow confusion among voters. The outlines of the new plot, revealed by a whistleblower, indicated an abuse of power unparalleled in the history of the presidency. For House Democrats like Connolly, the Ukraine ploy capped a long list of offenses, including obstruction of justice and accepting emolumentsmoney from foreign and domestic sourcesthat had already qualified Trump for impeachment. For months, they had pushed Pelosi to support a vigorous impeachment process, but she had resisted. Obstruction and emoluments are difficult things to explain. Impeachment is the most profound action Congress can take against a wayward president. Pelosi didnt want to pursue it unless the path was clear-cut, so, even as two hundred members of her caucus had called for action, she had resisted to the point where it seemed she would move only in the event that Trump was caught during a crime in progress. Then he was.

In the very moment when Trump had seemed to escape accountability for all his other apparent crimes, he had recklessly engaged directly in this obvious and blatant corruption. He had done so during a phone call with Ukraines president, Volodymyr Zelensky, which had been monitored in real time, and then reviewed later, by dozens of White House national security experts. Many of these men and women were career officials who had sworn to protect the United States of America, not the person of Donald Trump. At least one had been so alarmed by what had transpired on the call that he or she had used a formal process for reporting executive branch national security breaches to a small group of senators and representatives with the clearances and authority to investigate. The investigation, and press reports about the call, had led to this point where impeachment was more likely than ever.

Inside the Speakers conference room, Connolly noted the clear autumn sunlight that streamed through the windows that overlooked the National Mall. Water tumblers and glass bowls filled with foil-wrapped Ghirardelli chocolates were set on the wooden table that filled much of the space. (Ghirardelli was based in Pelosis district, and as a chocolate lover, she always kept them at hand.) Connolly also noted an oil portrait of Abraham Lincoln as he would have looked when he served in the House. One of just a few presidents who had served first in the House, Lincoln enjoyed an extra measure of respect on Capitol Hill. A few feet away, on the other side of a thick wall, tourists milled about Statuary Hall, where a plaque marked the spot once occupied by Lincolns desk. Ethan Allen, Daniel Webster, and thirty-six other stone and metal figures stood in the hall. Enrico Causicis Liberty and the Eagle statue, which featured the lone woman in the rotunda, gazed down from above a doorway where she has stood for two centuries.

Although the artworks and architecture reliably inspired visitors, they were little noticed by those who inhabited the House, except at history-making moments. Connolly felt the connection to history as Speaker Pelosi entered the room wearing a white dress and a blue-and-red necklace. The Democratic women in Congress had taken to wearing white in an homage to the suffragists of the previous century and to signal their stand against what they regarded as Trumps immorality. Connolly detected that Pelosi, too, seemed distracted. As the group took their places at the table, he reached for the nearest bowl of chocolates and took one. He unwrapped it as his colleague Alan Lowenthal, who represented Long Beach, California, started to explain why it was time for the House to pass a new resolution on the two-state concept. Connolly liked him, but, boy, could he talk, and for a moment, Connolly lost focus as Lowenthal started to drone. Then Connolly heard Pelosi say something that showed she wasnt focused on Lowenthal either.

I just got a call from the president.

As he glanced at Pelosi, Connolly could see that she was wrestling with whether to say more.

Lowenthal didnt seem to notice what had happened and returned to the matter of Israel. Inside his own mind, Connolly screamed in the fuzzy staccato voice, the one that still betrayed he was a son of Boston and that cable news addicts would recognize in an instant. He imagined himself saying: Shut up, Alan! This is history happening. Shes talking about impeachment!

Lowenthal paused. Pelosi spoke again. Connolly would later recall that she said, Were going to be in a whole new ball game here soon, with much tougher things to worry about.

With a little encouragement, Pelosi then told the small group that the Democratic Caucus would meet at 4:00 p.m. to discuss impeachment, and then she would have a press conference at 5:00. What this meant was obvious. Less than ten months into her term as Speaker of the House, Pelosi was going to drop the block she had placed on impeachment.

Before noon, rumors flew around Capitol Hill. One that proved true was that in his call, Trump had told Pelosi that he wanted to work something out. All year long, Pelosi had done everything to spare the country, if not the president, this trauma. But it was too late. Now, a reality the president had courted so recklessly was coming to pass.

Impeachment wouldnt mean Trumps removal, since his partisan enablers in the Senate would guarantee the result of his trial