Trump’s Superhero

Limbo

We are in “Impeachment limbo,” caught between the House and the Senate, waiting for someone to blink.  Speaker Nancy Pelosi is holding onto the Impeachment Articles, waiting for Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell to outline the Senate’s trial procedures.  McConnell is refusing to budge, saying send the Articles, or don’t.

What the Speaker wants is a commitment from Leader McConnell to hear witnesses in the trial.  McConnell is refusing to commit to anything, standing on his power to control the majority in the Senate.  It might seem like a classic power standoff between the two Houses, but it’s really much more than that.

Here’s what’s at stake.  McConnell wants to get Impeachment over, the President acquitted, and move onto the Presidential elections of 2020.  He knows that there is no where near the sixty-seven Senators needed to remove the President, so let’s get it over with.  From a Republican standpoint, an uninspiring and dry presentation of already known information with “no new news” and a quick acquittal that would allow the President to declare “exoneration” is the goal.

Controlling the Trial

The Republican leader doesn’t want to hear witnesses, voices that could change the voting equation in the Senate, or more importantly, in the 2020 election.  So he stands firm in his “stare-down” with the Speaker.  His only problem: can he keep an “antsy” President, desperate to get the trial on and over, under control.  That isn’t easy.  The President is pressing for his counsel to be the “screamers” from the House: Jim Jordan, Doug Collins, and John Radcliffe.  Trump would like a replay of the House proceedings, with the Democrats presenting facts, and the Republicans attacking the process.  It’s not the boring, quiet, and sleep-inducing procedure McConnell wants.  Trump wants a circus; McConnell wants spiritless droning.

I anticipate that Speaker Pelosi will allow the President to build a little more pressure on McConnell, and then transmit the Articles.  Leader McConnell will then begin impeachment proceedings with no witnesses, and, after the opening presentations, the Senate will go through a series of votes on whether witnesses will be heard.  McConnell may be boring, old and seemingly lifeless.  But he knows how to count votes in the Senate, and right now, he has the fifty-one votes to control it. 

The likelihood is that President Trump will get his acquittal.  And it will be in large part because of two men:  Mitch McConnell in the Senate, and Attorney General Bill Barr.  McConnell because he is using all of his acumen to control the proceedings, and Bill Barr because he used all of the powers of the Attorney General to stifle investigations of the President.

Investigating the President

Let’s look back at the last two Presidents who faced Impeachment.  Two different Independent Prosecutors in the Department of Justice investigated Nixon for almost two years.  Every possible witness was deposed and then questioned in front of the Grand Jury.  The House Judiciary Committee was presenting with volumes of evidence, testimony, and dozens of witnesses.  Nixon was an “unindicted co-conspirator” in indictments brought by his own Department of Justice.  

In the case of Bill Clinton, another Special Prosecutor, Ken Starr, spent almost four years investigating.  It took a U-Haul truck to get all of the Starr evidence, Grand Jury testimony, and video evidence to the House Judiciary Committee, including a damning video deposition by the President himself (“…it depends what the meaning of the word is, is…”).  And even with all of that evidence already available, in the Clinton Trial the Senate still heard from witnesses, including Monica Lewinsky.

In both the Nixon and Clinton cases, the Department of Justice did their job of investigating potential crimes.  Even though the Attorney Generals, the leaders of the Department, were political appointees, they saw a higher duty as the chief law enforcement officers of the United States.  Nixon’s Attorney General Eliot Richardson, resigned rather than fire his Independent Prosecutor.  Janet Reno, Attorney General in the Clinton Administration, made it clear that the investigations were protected from Presidential interference.  

When the Congress considered impeachment in both Nixon’s and Clinton’s cases, all of the potential witnesses were already on the record.  Nixon and Clinton both allowed the subordinates to be questioned.  While Nixon tried to use executive privilege to shield some evidence, it was his own Justice Department that took him to Court to pry the White House tapes loose.

A Loyal Servant

Bill Barr seems to have chosen loyalty to the Trump over dedication to justice.  We saw it from the beginning, when the Mueller Report was held up while Barr peddled false conclusions.  In those conclusions, we saw that Barr examined at least ten indictable charges of Trump’s obstruction of justice, and waived them all.  And we now know that Barr limited the scope of the investigation.  Donald Trump was all but named in the Federal indictment of Michael Cohen (individual one) but Mueller was barred from that part of the investigation.

And when the “Whistleblower’s Report” came to the Department of Justice, it was disregarded without investigation.  There was no FBI referral, simply a Department statement clearing the behavior.  “These aren’t the droids your looking for, move along.”  It hard to imagine that Bill Barr’s hand wasn’t in that decision.

So for the President’s actions with Ukraine, there was no existing body of evidence, no volumes coming over in a U-Haul, no video depositions to see.  The House was required to do all of that investigation themselves, all under the pressure of time, and the disruption of the Republican “screamers”.  Remember young Congressman Matt Gaetz’s storming of the secure ‘SCIF’, the closed hearing room?

Obstruction

And all of Barr’s actions allowed witnesses to avoid testimony.  The key figures in the Ukraine story, Mulvaney, Bolton, Duffy and Giuliani have not been heard.  

Witnesses heard Bolton call the pressure on Ukraine a “drug deal”.  Duffy’s emails show that the funds for Ukraine were held on order from “POTUS” (President of the United States).  Mulvaney has publicly said that the funds were withheld.  And Giuliani, well, he’s still seems to be trying to get “the deal” done.

Whether the Senate would remove the President or not, it seems likely that the testimony of these witnesses would serve as damning proof of Presidential abuse of power.  And that’s something that Mitch McConnell doesn’t want.  

He, and Donald Trump, can thank Bill Barr for giving them the choice.