Norman Eisen - The United States v. Donald J. Trump

I HAVE A CASE FOR THE American people. It is to deliver the ultimate verdict on the high crimes and misdemeanors of Donald J. Trump. You are the witnesses, the victims, andmost importantthe judges and jury. Only you can stop himor allow his high-crime spree to continue. All other remedies available under our constitutional system have been tried. Some have worked, some have failed, and now the final judgment is up to you.

I ought to know. For over three years now I have been pursuing President Trump for his offenses against the law. First as one of Trumps frequent litigation adversaries, involved in almost three hundred legal matters opened against him, his administration, or his allies. Then as special counsel to the House Judiciary Committee for an entire year of intense activity that culminated in my sitting on the floor of the House and then of the Senate as those two awesome chambersthe most powerful legislature in the worlddebated and adjudicated the articles of impeachment.

Indeed, I helped lead the writing of those articles. I was the first staff member to begin drafting them, the last to approve final edits, and involved at every stage in between. They revealed, and the trial proved, that the presidents shocking behavior toward Ukraine and his political opponents was part of a long-running, ongoing pattern of Trumps abusing his power and then covering that up. The articles showed that the president has violated the public interest to further his selfish personal and political gain for years, without regard for how it would hurt each of you and our country. Most urgently, the articles made it clear that when the next crisis cameas we warned it wouldhe would repeat the pattern of abuse and cover-up, to all of our peril.

Despite alerting American institutions to the misconduct of the president, and despite some other successes along the way, our collective efforts have thus far fallen short of removing Trump. Federal and state prosecutors have not ultimately stopped him. Nor have the courts. And Congress has not halted him. As a result, the crises rage on. This is why Im appealing directly to the highest adjudicating body in our democracy. You, the people.

From a number of angles, I have helped rain down legal, political, and public pressure on the president, exposing his misdeeds. These blows would have driven a lesser offender to apologize, recant, and perhaps even resign. Instead, President Trump repeatedly did what he has always done, since the beginning of his career: dodge, deny, and degrade the rule of law. As a result, over the course of my year as special counsel, I contemplated a vast array of impeachment articles. All of them displayed, and were intended to disrupt, Trumps cycle of abusive, obstructive, and criminal misconduct. Within the Judiciary Committee, we maintained a secret running indictment: ten articles of impeachment in all. Ten articles, not two, ladies and gentlemen of the jury. Every one of them will be revealed and explained, for the first time, in the trial that awaits you in these pages. They would have been sufficient to end Trumps presidency in a normal world. The two articles that made it to judgment in the Senate certainly should have been. But ours is no normal world, and Trump is no ordinary criminal.

Our presidents offenses unquestionably include high Crimes and Misdemeanors under our Constitution. Abuse of power in pressuring foreign governments to investigate his U.S. political opponents. Obstruction of justice and of Congress, making true his pledge to fight all the subpoenas. Both the abuse and the obstruction are of a kind we have never seen before in American history. They are paired with other corruption, from offering hush money to mistresses to aid his campaign to the acceptance of forbidden foreign and domestic emoluments after he won. Abuse, obstruction, corruption: Trump has violated the law at a rate and scale unimagined by our founders, such as Franklin, Madison, and Jefferson, all of whom must be spinning with outrage in their tombs.

Ladies and gentlemen of the jury, I will guide you through the unvarnished story of the presidents crimes and their prosecution. Along the way, we will go backstage for a full year of impeachment efforts, starting in February 2019 and ending twelve months later with the conclusion of the Senate impeachment trial. If you have been following this tale, you may be wondering what essential evidence and which elements have evaded the American collective consciousness, including because they were blurred in the chaos. The portrait reflected in conventional wisdom and the media is lacking in crucial featuresones that yield new insights into the repeated strategy, defenses, and tactics used by our president and his often-felonious cohorts.

As we go through this impeachment year together, you will be able to see his pattern of misconduct from a fresh angle, and be better able to trace the through line of Trumps life, candidacy, and presidency: his radical selfishness and assault on our national interest. He asserts his will and then manages the outcomeimmorally, illegally, repeatedly.

These revelations foreshadow the dangerous, even deadly moves he has made since the impeachment and trial, is making as you read this, and will continue to make in the months leading up to the election. The presidents response to COVID-19 follows a pattern of abuse and obstruction similar to the one that got him impeached. He is yet again putting his own personal and political interests first in his response to the pandemicnot America First, but Trump First. The same propensity for quid pro quos that led to his 2016 statement to Russia that you will probably be rewarded mightily, or his 2019 one to Ukraine to do us a favor though, has characterized his treatment of governors seeking aid in the current crisis: If we do that, we will have to get something for it. The presidents obstruction continues, too. The nonstop flow of lies, the attacks on inspectors general and whistleblowers, the refusal to cooperate with congressional investigatorsit is all of a piece, only now it has turned deadly. We warned of exactly this during the presidents impeachment and trial. It will not only continue; it will get worse, unless you stop him.

Some of you may be skeptical. You may think I am being too extreme. I understand your position. I too once urged that people keep an open mind regarding the Trump presidency. I even went as far as assisting his presidential transition, starting before he was elected. I was prepared to play a role in easing him into his presidency. I have dined with the president. I am acquainted with his daughter and son-in-law and many of those around him. I once hoped, sincerely, that Trump could be an ethical president. I learned better. I later held on to the desperate, optimistic belief that Trumps behavior would change, or that his systematic, reckless wrongdoing could be curbed. I now know that, too, to be false.