Kitabı oxu: «The Case for Impeachment»

Contents

Cover

Title Page

Copyright

Praise for The Case for Impeachment

Author’s Note

Introduction

CHAPTER 1: High Crimes and Misdemeanors

CHAPTER 2: The Resignation of Richard Nixon: A Warning to Donald Trump

CHAPTER 3: Flouting the Law

CHAPTER 4: Conflicts of Interest

CHAPTER 5: Lies, Lies, and More Lies

CHAPTER 6: Trump’s War on Women

CHAPTER 7: A Crime Against Humanity

CHAPTER 8: The Russian Connections

CHAPTER 9: Abuse of Power

CHAPTER 10: The Unrestrained Trump

CHAPTER 11: Memo: The Way Out

CONCLUSION: The Peaceful Remedy of Impeachment

Notes

Acknowledgments

About the Author

Also by Allan J. Lichtman

About the Publisher

Author’s Note

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Impeachment will “proceed from the misconduct of public men, or, in other words, from the abuse or violation of some public trust,” and “they relate chiefly to injuries done immediately to the society itself.”

—Alexander Hamilton, The Federalist, 1788

I began thinking about impeachment before the November 2016 election. For weeks, my students had been asking who I thought would be our next president, Hillary Clinton or Donald Trump. Finally, on a late evening in mid-September 2016, I leaned back in my chair and peered out into the hall at the mostly darkened offices of American University in Washington, D.C. I had just finished my analysis: Donald Trump would win the presidency. My forecast ignored polls, debates, advertising, tweets, news coverage, and campaign strategies—the usual grist for the punditry mills—that count for little or nothing on Election Day. I had used the same proven method that had led me to forecast accurately the outcomes of eight previous elections, and I’d kept my eye on the big picture—the strength and performance of the party holding the White House currently. After thirty-two years of correctly forecasting election results, even I was surprised by the outcome.

Among those who noticed my prediction was Donald J. Trump himself. Taking time out of preparing to become the world’s most powerful leader, he wrote me a personal note, saying, “Professor—Congrats—good call.” What Trump overlooked, however, was my “next big prediction:” that, after winning the presidency, he would be impeached.

Here I did not rely on my usual model, rather I used a deep analysis of Trump’s past and proven behavior, as well as the history of politics and impeachment in our country. In the short span of time between Trump’s election and this book’s publication in April 2017, his words and deeds have strengthened the case considerably. History is not geometry and historical parallels are never exact, yet a president who seems to have learned nothing from history is abusing and violating the public trust and setting the stage for a myriad of impeachable offenses that could get him removed from office.

America’s founders, who had so recently cast off the yoke of King George’s tyranny, granted their president awesome powers as the nation’s chief executive and commander-in-chief of its armed forces. Yet they understood the dangers of a runaway presidency. As James Madison warned during the Constitutional Convention, the president “might pervert his administration into a scheme of peculation or oppression” and “betray his trust to foreign powers,” with an outcome “fatal to the Republic.” To keep a rogue president in check, delegates separated constitutional powers into three independent branches of government. But knowing that a determined president could crash through these barriers, they also put in place impeachment as the rear guard of American democracy.¹

After exhaustive debate, the framers agreed on broad standards for impeachment and assigned this absolute power not to the judiciary, but to elected members of the U.S. House and Senate. By doing so they ensured that the fate of presidents would depend not on standards of law alone, but on the intertwined political, practical, moral, and legal judgment of elected officials. Hamilton explained that impeachments broadly cover “the abuse or violation of some public trust” and are properly “denominated POLITICAL.”²

This book will escort you through the process and history of impeachment; as your warning about the dangers of Trump’s rogue presidency; and as your guide to the myriad transgressions that I predict will lead to his impeachment. I invite you to follow each chapter and decide for yourself when Trump has reached the critical mass of violations that triggers the implosion of his presidency.

In The Case for Impeachment, I’ll look beyond the daily news cycle of events which will have continued to evolve to focus on the big picture of the impeachment process and the Trump presidency. I’ll take you through constitutional debates and the gritty politics of past impeachments. I’ll explain how Trump threatens the institutions and traditions that have made America safe and free for 230 years, and I’ll make clear why a Republican Congress might impeach a president of its own party. I also include a personal memo to President Trump on how he might dispel the clouds of controversy overhanging his presidency and avoid impeachment. I am not calling here for a witch hunt against an unconventional presidency or for snaring Trump on some minor or technical violation. The point is to assess at what point impeachment becomes necessary to protect America’s constitutional liberties and the vital interests of the nation. An impeachment of a president need not imperil the institution of the presidency. “The genius of impeachment,” said historian Arthur Schlesinger Jr. is “that it could punish the man without punishing the office.”³

The impeachment of an American president is rare, but not exceptional. The U.S. House of Representatives has impeached two presidents, Andrew Johnson in 1868 and Bill Clinton in 1998; another, Richard Nixon, only averted impeachment with a timely resignation. Counting Nixon, one out of every fourteen U.S. presidents have faced impeachment. Gamblers have become rich betting on longer odds than that.⁴

But forget historical odds. Trump has broken all the usual rules of politics and governing. Early in his term, he has stretched presidential authority nearly to the breaking point, appointed cabinet officials dedicated to destroying the institutions they are assigned to run, and pushed America toward legal and constitutional crises.

No previous president has entered the Oval Office without a shred of public service or with as egregious a record of enriching himself at the expense of others. Trump’s penchant for lying, disregard for the law, and conflicts of interests are lifelong habits that will permeate his entire presidency. He has a history of mistreating women and covering up his misdeeds. He could commit his crime against humanity, not directly through war, but indirectly by reversing the battle against catastrophic climate change, upon which humanity’s well-being will likely depend. His dubious connections to Russia could open him to a charge of treason. His disdain for constitutional restraints could lead to abuses of power that forfeit the trust of even a Republican Congress.

What are the ranges and limitations of presidential authority in a system of separated power? What are the standards of truthfulness that a president must uphold? Where should the line be drawn between public service and private gain? Can a free press continue to function in the United States? How can America guard against foreign manipulation of its politics? What responsibility does the president have to protect the earth and its people from catastrophic climate change? When should impeachment be invoked or restrained? These are timeless issues that will decide the future of American democracy. The case for impeaching Donald Trump must be situated in the history of past impeachments—but if you’re really anxious, you can jump ahead to chapter 3 and start right in on Donald Trump.

In his inaugural address, Trump slammed his favorite target, Washington politicians. “For too long,” he said, “a small group in our nation’s capital has reaped the rewards of government while the people have borne the costs.” Yet this small group holds in their hands the power to impeach and remove the forty-fifth president.

It is our responsibility to arm ourselves with the knowledge needed to protect our great nation and keep alive its most precious traditions. Already millions of Americans and many more people worldwide have risen in protest against the dangerous presidency of Donald Trump. His impeachment will be decided not just in the halls of Congress but in the streets of America.

Introduction

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The Trump administration is awash in investigations, by Special Counsel Robert Mueller, the U.S. House and Senate Intelligence Committees, and the Senate Judiciary Committee. There’s hope to be found in these inquiries. Still, it is past time for the investigation that matters most to President Donald Trump and the American people: an impeachment investigation by the House Judiciary Committee. This committee investigates potential impeachable offenses and decides whether to recommend articles of impeachment to the full House, which possesses the sole constitutional authority necessary for impeaching a president. If impeached, the U.S. Senate has the authority to remove the president from office by a two-thirds vote.

To date, in early November 2017, much new public evidence has emerged that points to collusion between the Trump team and the Russians. Meanwhile, President Trump has ignored nearly all my earlier advice on how to avoid impeachment, choosing instead to endeavor to obstruct the Russia investigation, exacerbate his conflicts of interest, edge closer to committing a crime against humanity on climate change, and continue his abuse of presidential power. Trump’s transgressions have reached the point where Congress must assess whether he poses a clear and present danger to America’s national security and the freedom and liberties of her people.

An impeachment investigation should not turn on disputes over the president’s style or policies, but only on what Alexander Hamilton termed “the abuse of violation of some public trust” that leads to “injuries done immediately to the society itself.” By placing the power to impeach in an elected body, the framers recognized that the assessment of impeachable offenses demands moral, legal, and political judgment.

THE RUSSIAN CONNECTION

The Russian sword of Damocles now hangs over this administration by the slenderest of threads. Despite repeated claims of innocence from Trump and his associates, they’ve engaged in a recurring pattern of deception concerning their ties to the Russians. They conceal and lie, and then when caught, claim that all contacts were innocuous. The publicly known evidence for collusion between the Trump team, and perhaps Trump himself, and the Russians is circumstantial, but powerful. Many Americans have been indicted and convicted of serious crimes based on circumstantial evidence.

The most compelling evidence of collusion comes from a previously undisclosed meeting between Kremlin-connected Russians and the highest echelons of the Trump campaign—son Donald Trump Jr., son-in-law Jared Kushner, and then–campaign manager Paul Manafort. According to email evidence, the meeting in question was set up by Rob Goldstone, the manager for pop singer Emin Agalarov, who is the son of Russian oligarch Aras Agalarov. Trump had previously sought to partner with the elder Agalarov—a close ally of President Vladimir Putin—on ambitious real estate deals in Russia.¹

GOLDSTONE TO TRUMP JR., JUNE 3, 2016

Emin just called and asked me to contact you with something very interesting.

The Crown prosecutor of Russia met with his father Aras this morning and in their meeting offered to provide the Trump campaign with some official documents and information that would incriminate Hillary and her dealings with Russia and would be very useful to your father.

This is obviously very high level and sensitive information but is part of Russia and its government’s support for Mr. Trump – helped along by Aras and Emin.

What do you think is the best way to handle this information and would you be able to speak to Emin about it directly?

I can also send this info to your father via Rhona, but it is ultra sensitive so wanted to send to you first.

TRUMP JR. TO GOLDSTONE, JUNE 3, 2016

Thanks Rob I appreciate that. I am on the road at the moment but perhaps I just speak to Emin first. Seems we have some time and if it’s what you say I love it especially later in the summer. Could we do a call first thing next week when I am back?

GOLDSTONE TO TRUMP JR., JUNE 7, 2016

Emin asked that I schedule a meeting with you and The Russian government attorney who is flying over from Moscow for this Thursday.

TRUMP JR. TO GOLDSTONE, JUNE 7, 2016

Great. It will likely be Paul Manafort (campaign boss) my brother in law and me, 725 Fifth Ave 25th floor.

Based on this email chain and subsequent meeting, “it’s now established that the campaign was aware of, and involved in, Russian attempts to meddle in the election,” said Cornell University law professor Jens David Ohlin. “The only question now is whether President Trump was personally involved or not.” Another authority, Michigan law professor Samuel Gross, said, “This is beginning to look a lot like a criminal conspiracy … You can be indicted on less evidence than this.”²

Donald Trump Jr. lied multiple times about the Russia meeting, both before and after its disclosure. In March 2017, Trump Jr. told the New York Times, “Did I meet with people that were Russian? I’m sure, I’m sure I did. But none that were set up. None that I can think of at the moment. And certainly none that I was representing the campaign in any way, shape or form.”³

On July 8, after the Times broke the story of the June 9 meeting, Trump Jr. commented, “It was a short introductory meeting. I asked Jared and Paul to stop by. We primarily discussed a program about the adoption of Russian children that was active and popular with American families years ago and was since ended by the Russian government, but it was not a campaign issue at the time and there was no follow up.”⁴

Then, after the Times indicated on July 10 that it had in its possession the email chain for the meeting, Trump Jr. again changed his story, this time issuing a tweet that said, “Obviously [not] the first person on a campaign to ever take a meeting to hear info about an opponent … went nowhere but had to listen.” Despite that claim, he never did cite any examples of other leaders of a presidential campaign meeting with representatives of a hostile foreign power to amass incriminating data on their opponent.⁵

Moments before the Times reported on the existence of the emails, Trump Jr. preemptively released them, saying he was being “totally transparent”—this after months of dissembling. That same day, he told Sean Hannity of Fox News that nothing else of significance would emerge about the meeting. “This is everything,” Trump Jr. said. But “everything” it was not. The press discovered that several more Russians had attended the meeting than Trump Jr. had disclosed, including Irakly Kaveladze, who was well known for moving money into the United States for wealthy Russians. Kaveladze attended as a representative of Aras Agalarov, whom Goldstone had identified as having met with Russia’s “Crown prosecutor” and having received her offer to provide incriminating information about Clinton. Also present was Rinat Akhmetshin, a Russian immigrant to the States with connections to Russia’s oligarchs and the Kremlin.⁶

Even Donald Trump Jr.’s best attempt at impersonating the naïve American ignorant of all things Russian wouldn’t have been enough to fool the American people. In 2008, he’d bragged that “Russians make up a pretty disproportionate cross-section of a lot of our assets,” and just months before the June 2016 meeting, the Trump Organization was in hot pursuit of a real estate deal in Moscow.

Donald Trump Jr. denied having participated in telephone calls about the meeting, but phone records revealed that several such calls were indeed held between him and Emin Agalarov. Trump Jr. insisted to Senate investigators that he had no recollection of the content of those conversations. He said that the meeting was so inconsequential that Manafort was on his phone for most of it. But Manafort was not making outside calls; he was using his phone to take meeting notes.⁷

According to Donald Trump Jr., he’d maintained no more than a “casual relationship” with Goldstone since the two first met in 2014. Yet, in one of the most important but overlooked emails, Goldstone disclosed much deeper ties to the Trumps. Goldstone reveals that he had direct inside access to Donald Trump Sr. “via Rhona.” Rhona Graff is a multi-decade Trump loyalist and assistant, who, according to an article published in Politico well after the June 2016 meeting, was a conduit to Trump Sr. for “longtime friends and associates,” not casual acquaintances. Goldstone even addresses Trump’s gatekeeper by her first name only. This purported connection raises serious questions about direct collusion between candidate Trump and the Russians.⁸

Donald Trump Jr. assured Hannity that he did not tell his father about the meeting. Yet White House press secretary Sarah Huckabee Sanders confirmed that three days before the Hannity interview, President Trump had “weighed in as any father would” on drafting Trump Jr.’s initial misleading account of the meeting. The Washington Post reported without contradiction from the White House that President Trump did more than just “weigh in”; he dictated the statement while aboard Air Force One, en route to Washington from a meeting in Germany. The big question is when Trump Sr. learned of the June 2016 meeting. If he learned about it only after the media broke the story more than a year later, his input on the misleading memo could still expose him to an obstruction of justice charge. If he knew about the meeting at the time it took place, then he could be subject to charges of collusion with the Russians as well.⁹

Once more, Trump Jr. changed his story—this time in written testimony presented to the Senate Intelligence Committee. His latest explanation: “To the extent they [the Russians] had information concerning the fitness, character or qualifications of a presidential candidate, I believed that I should at least hear them out … Depending on what, if any, information they had, I could then consult with counsel to make an informed decision as to whether to give it further consideration.” He claimed, however, that the Russians provided “no useful information” about Clinton, adding that “at this time [June 2016] there was not the focus on Russian activities that there is today.” Trump Jr. denied any recollection of his father’s participation in drafting his initial statement on the June 9 meeting.¹⁰

Regarding his exclamation of “I love it” in the flurry of emails exchanged with Goldstone, Trump Jr. explained that “it was simply a colloquial way of saying that I appreciated Rob’s gesture.” That Trump Jr. expected anyone to believe those words of enthusiasm were not a direct response to the Russian government’s offer to help elect his father and provide incriminating information on Clinton is really quite incredible. In his message to Goldstone, Trump Jr. had remarked that the information would be especially useful “later in the summer,” when he expected the Republican National Convention to nominate Trump as the party’s presidential candidate.¹¹

The questions raised by Trump Jr.’s series of ever-changing accounts are extensive and pressing. Who of sound mind could believe that the Russians were a reliable and objective source on “the fitness, character, or qualifications of a presidential candidate,” especially when the stated purpose of the meeting was to provide intel on Clinton so damning that it might sway the election in candidate Trump’s favor? And by what means other than illegal spying and thievery could the Russians have obtained such previously undisclosed dirt on Clinton?

If the meeting was of so little consequence, why did its participants shroud it in secrecy for so long? Why the rush to consult with lawyers after the fact if nothing about the meeting had a whiff of potential illegality? Why didn’t an email saying that the meeting invitation was “part of Russia and its government’s support for Mr. Trump” set off loud alarm bells for the candidate’s son? Why didn’t Trump Jr. immediately report this evidence of probable foreign meddling in the election to the FBI? Why did Donald J. Trump Sr. say in campaign rallies immediately after the meeting that damaging information on Clinton would be forthcoming? How did Trump Jr. forget about the president’s involvement, just a couple of months earlier, in drafting his critical first statement about the meeting? These lies are potentially relevant to Trump Sr.’s impeachment if Trump Jr. was protecting his father from contemporary knowledge of the June 2016 meeting.

Ask John Sipher and Steve Hall, two former CIA officials who served under Republican and Democratic administrations, and they’ll tell you that the June 9 meeting had all the hallmarks of a recruitment operation by Russian intelligence. Sipher and Hall posited that, once the Russians unearthed derogatory material by hacking into the emails of the Democratic National Committee, they “might then have seen an opportunity for a campaign to influence or disrupt the election.” When Trump Jr. responded with “I love it” to Goldstone’s “fishing” email, “the Russians might well have thought that they had found an inside source, an ally, a potential agent of influence on the election.”

In a standard pattern for Russian intelligence, they “employed a cover story—adoptions—to make it believable to the outside world that there was nothing amiss.” They used “cutouts, nonofficial Russians, for the actual meeting, enabling the Trump team to claim—truthfully—that there were no Russian government employees at the meeting and that it was just former business contacts of the Trump empire.” Thus, “when the Trump associates failed to do the right thing by informing the FBI, the Russians … knew what bait to use and had a plan to reel in the fish once it bit.” Sipher and Hall posit that while a Russian operation to disrupt American society and politics “is certainly plausible, it is not inconsistent with a much darker Russian goal: gaining an insider ally at the highest levels of the United States government.”¹²

There are yet more new revelations in the never-ending Russia story. In July 2016, when the Russia story first heated up, Donald Trump Sr. flatly declared, “I have nothing to do with Russia—for anything.” He said this despite his business partnerships with Russia-connected interests, his lengthy quest to develop Trump-branded ventures in Russia, and the Trump trademarks in Russia, six of which the Russian government renewed in 2016 at then-candidate Trump’s request. Recently, the press discovered that Trump Sr. sought to complete a real estate deal in Moscow while campaigning for president, even signing a nonbinding letter of consent to pursue it.¹³

Trump’s lawyer, Michael Cohen, and the ubiquitous Felix Sater were the prime movers of this ultimately failed deal—two of the three men who, according to the New York Times, presented a plan to lift the Ukrainian sanctions on Russia to then–National Security Advisor Michael Flynn. In a November 2015 email to Cohen, Sater bragged about the deal and how his ties to Putin would get Trump elected: “Michael I arranged for Ivanka to sit in Putins [sic] private chair at his desk and office in the Kremlin. I will get Putin on this program and we will get Donald elected … Buddy our boy can become President of the USA and we can engineer it. I will get all of Putins [sic] team to buy in on this [emphasis added].” It’s entirely possible that Sater was exaggerating his influence in the Kremlin; then again, the New York Times did report that Ivanka had indicated it was possible she’d sat in Mr. Putin’s chair during her Moscow trip in 2006, though she couldn’t recall. The eerie similarity, too, between Sater’s message to Cohen about Russians helping to elect Trump, and the message sent by Goldstone to Trump Jr. suggests that Sater’s claim may not have been the benign “puffery” that Cohen would later purport it to be.¹⁴

We have since learned that during this transition period and his White House tenure, Kushner engaged in several other dubious activities that merit investigation. Kushner secretly met with Russian Ambassador Sergey Kislyak to explore establishing a back channel between the Trump transition team and the Kremlin using Russian facilities. He met with the head of a Russian state bank that was under U.S. sanctions. He met with the King of Jordon to promote a deal on providing nuclear reactors to Middle Eastern nations that included both American and Russian business interests. Russia’s involvement had apparently diminished over time, but was not necessarily eliminated at the time of the meeting according to news reports. And we first learned through a Politico report on September 24, 2017, that in December 2016 Kushner set up a private email account that he used for some official government business—this after Trump had spent more than a year excoriating Clinton for her use of a private email server, even encouraging chants of “lock her up!” Predictably, Kushner’s lawyer said that these email communications were few and innocuous. According to the New York Times, at least five other close Trump advisers, including Ivanka Trump and former chief strategist Steve Bannon, “occasionally used private email addresses to discuss White House matters.” Again, this is not nearly the complete story. New reporting indicates that Kushner and Ivanka Trump had another private email account that received hundreds of White House emails.¹⁵

In July 2016, Manafort, in a series of email exchanges with an intermediary in Ukraine, offered privileged access to the Trump campaign to Russian oligarch Oleg Deripaska, whom I identified in April as a former business partner of Manafort’s and one of Putin’s closest confidants. “If he needs private briefings we can accommodate,” Manafort wrote. Manafort spokesman, Jason Maloni, said that the email exchanges were “innocuous” and involved only an attempt by Manafort to collect on a debt owed to him by Deripaska. But press reports indicate it was Deripaska who believed that Manafort owed him payments from a failed business deal, which Manafort implicitly verified, saying, “How do we use to get whole?”—apparently from his obligations to Deripaska. Reporting by NBC News indicates that Deripaska transmitted some $60 million in loans to companies linked to Manafort. The Trump team has set the Guinness world record for undisclosed but allegedly “innocuous” activities involving a foreign adversary.¹⁶

Like the June 9 meeting, this incident involving Manafort and Deripaska had the signs of a “classic intelligence operation being run by the Russians,” said Glenn Carle, who worked for more than twenty years in the Clandestine Services of the CIA. “Approach someone with access and influence, propose benign-seeming justifications, offer an enticement [like forgiving a debt], get benign-seeming favors done by the target in exchange (e.g., a meeting, a briefing, information that seems non-alarming), and use the meeting to entice down the primrose path.”¹⁷