Some thoughts on impeachment
We've had a few days of the impeachment circus so far, and I'm still trying to wrap my head around it. For sure, impeachment is always a political process, so it's divisive and disrupts the national dialog whether we like it or not. So I'm writing this piece mostly to try and wrap my head around what I've learned from the witnesses so far.
For background, I'm looking at the current proceedings in the broader historical context of impeachment. We've only done impeached 2 presidents in the last 250 years, so it's kind of a big deal. Nixon left office before Congress actually had a chance to impeach him, though they almost certainly would have. So what is the "standard" for impeachment as it has been applied in these other cases:
Vindman's testimony was supportive of what we heard from Taylor, Kent, and Yovanovitch, but not particularly interesting beyond that. Sondland took the stage this morning and lobbed a grenade into the GOP's favorite talking point: there was no quid pro quo. Yes there was, he said, and everyone including the Secretary of State knew about it. The importance of this bombshell is underscored by Devin Nunes in his questioning of Sondland. If the GOP logic is that the absence of a quid pro quo means there's nothing to see here (which is flawed logic, but let's run with it for a moment), then Nunes would've launched his questioning of Sondland with "oh my goodness, you've given us important new information this morning, can you please tell us more about this quid pro quo because we didn't think there was one." Nunes did not start with that. Instead, he started with "Mr. Sondland, are you aware that the Democrats benefited from Ukraine's support of Hillary Clinton in 2016?" Why does that matter? Is that what this hearing is about? Are we impeaching the woman who lost the election? Or her party? Nope. The fact that Nunes immediately tried to redirect the hearing away from the bombshell that Sondland dropped, tells you the magnitude of that bombshell. If the GOP cared about the truth, and they were just presented with the very scenario that they AGREED would be unacceptable behavior from the President, why didn't they jump into that?
For background, I'm looking at the current proceedings in the broader historical context of impeachment. We've only done impeached 2 presidents in the last 250 years, so it's kind of a big deal. Nixon left office before Congress actually had a chance to impeach him, though they almost certainly would have. So what is the "standard" for impeachment as it has been applied in these other cases:
- Andrew Johnson defied Congress. The "radical Republicans," as they were called at that time, wanted to punish the southern states and the Confederacy. Johnson disagreed, as he basically thought that approach was counter to re-uniting the nation after the civil war. So Congress passed an act saying he couldn't replace anyone in his Cabinet without their permission; they wanted some of their radical allies in his administration. Johnson fired one of those allies, his war secretary, believing that Congress' attempt to have oversight on his hiring/firing decisions was unconstitutional. Congress got mad, and impeached him. Of note: this is a domestic issue, at a time when the Constitution itself was arguably new AND the country was trying to settle itself from the civil war.
- Bill Clinton lied to Congress about getting having "sexual relations" with an intern. No, seriously, that's it. That's what the GOP at the time decided constituted "high crimes and misdemeanors." He wasn't impeached for his hanky panky with Monica even, he was impeached for lying about it to Ken Starr. By Republicans. This is really important, because it appears that the investigation is now looking at whether Trump lied to Bob Mueller. I can't think of a more direct parallel.
- Nixon would've been impeached for orchestrating a robbery to gain advantage in an election, and probably also for lying about his role in that crime. I think that's actually the easiest one, because I think we can all agree Presidents shouldn't do that sort of thing, and that breaking and entering, and theft, are crimes.
So Trump actually starts from a very different position, because his is the first impeachment that stems from engaging a foreign government. All the others were domestic issues. Trump wants to frame this as being about a single phone call (or maybe two), but no one with brain cells is buying that. The questions at hand are:
- Did Trump pressure a foreign government for purely personal reasons?
- Did such pressure compromise our relationship with that government?
- Did such pressure compromise our own national interests/national security?
- Did the ask to investigate the Bidens happen in isolation, or is it part of a pattern in Trump's interaction with the Ukraine and/or other foreign leaders?
The stars of day one were Kent and Taylor, two highly intelligent, dedicated members of the foreign service. Taylor graduated West Point and served in Vietnam. They've both worked for several previous Democrat and Republican presidents. These guys are not political appointees or empty suits, they're the real deal. Trump's attempt to frame them as partisan simply doesn't hold water - like so many public servants, these men worked for a mix of Democrats and Republicans and did their jobs to their best abilities regardless of who held the oval office and from what party he was. For three decades. To suggest that, suddenly, they're hyper-partisan "never-trumpers" is laughable.
The Republican counter arguments are equally laughable. Here are four of them, but expect new ones to emerge as their defense of Trump is increasingly counter to the fact pattern.
1) Sure, Trump wanted Zelensky to have a press conference announcing an investigation of the Bidens before releasing the defense aid or hosting Zelensky at the White House, but, Zelensky never had such a press conference or launched any investigation, so there's no crime. Zelensky didn't know we were witholding aid when Trump asked for the favor, so we're all good. This is fundamentally flawed logic: I got stuck with my hand in the cookie jar but I put the cookie back so we're all good. I asked a guy to kill someone for me, but he didn't do it, so we're good. It ignores the fact that Trump only released the aid when he realized he had been caught, and also that merely asking for a personal political favor before releasing aid that was approved with bipartisan support in Congress is a crime.
2) Trump was genuinely concerned about corruption, that's why he made the call and asked for the investigation. This one doesn't pass the sniff test because Trump fired the sitting US Ambassador to Ukraine who had an excellent track record of fighting corruption. She was doing a great job. And he hasn't replaced her yet. If corruption is the "real story" here, Trump's doing a shitty job of tackling it. Then there's the issue that Trump literally doesn't mention corruption in the now-famous phone call. Not once. The official transcript came out 11/15, and there was no discussion of corruption at all. Worse, it highlights some heavy poetic license that the White House took with the earlier "call summary" they had released - they made up topics of conversation that simply weren't in the full transcript, at all.
3) This is really about ensuring the validity of our elections, Trump has real concern about how Hunter Biden's job offer might have compromised our 2016 election. This is some tin-foil-hat level conspiracy theory peddled by InfoWars and Rudy Giuliani. It's baseless. It's absurd at its face. It's a red herring. The CIA, FBI, and NSA have all been unequivocally clear about precisely how foreign governments influenced 2016: through a spectacularly effective propaganda campaign to pump up Trump and bash Hillary, because they knew a Trump presidency would make America weak, which is what our enemies want.
4) We haven't heard from the whistle blower; Trump deserves to face his accuser. Bullshit - no he does not. That's explicitly why we have whistleblower laws; to protect them from retribution, which we all know is what Trump and the GOP are really after here. The whistleblower's story was vetted by the inspector general THAT TRUMP HIRED. It is also supported by other witnesses to the same events. That's the standard here - validate the claim, validate the motivations for the claim, and once those two things are done the inspector general is obligated to notify Congress, which he did, and he's also obligated to protect the whistleblower, which he's trying to do. This also ignores the fact that 7 or 8 other non-partisan career civil servants have lodged similar concerns and complaints to those of the whistle blower at this point. His/her story checks out and is also supported by the pattern of inappropriate behavior that other people documented.
5) The witnesses to "the call" had different opinions and reactions to it. Well, in once sense, that's true, but of course they did. You're basically asking a bunch of people who all eavesdropped on the same conversation what they thought about it, of course the answers aren't going to be identical. The common thread is, they all found it at least odd or strange, and several of them (plus the whistleblower) found it wrong enough to tell their bosses about it. They asked Williams if she reported it, her response was "to my boss? No, because he was on the call with me." Have you ever been in a meeting, anywhere, ever? And when you walked out of that meeting, each person heard something different in whatever "the boss" said? That's called what-happens-in-every-meeting-since-the-history-of-meetings. Fake news!
The hero of the second day of questioning is Marie Yovanovitch. She was eloquent, composed, and has a spectacular record of service. Like Kent and Taylor, she served at the pleasure of many presidents from both parties, because that's what career civil servants do.
Side note: the GOP attempts to slander these folks by referring to them as "career bureaucrats" is offensive. We all like to poke fun at our oversized government, and yes, it's not a model of efficiency, BUT, what many Americans don't appreciate is that it's the career bureaucrats, tucked away in nondescript offices or in some over-crowded foreign post, that keep our government running. You like having foreign embassies? Me too, so guess what, that means we need career bureaucrats willing to work for shit pay and in difficult conditions just because they love our country and want to serve. You like having people to investigate plane crashes? You like having a food & drug supply chain that is regularly inspected for safety and quality? You like weather reports? Congratulations, you're a fan of career bureaucrats. Nobody works at NOAA for the fame and fortune. Same is true of foreign service officers, and they get SHOT at, pretty often.
Ambassador Yovanovitch was cool, composed, and amazingly level-headed throughout some ridiculously obtuse and badgering questioning. She was even intimidated live, via tweet (because that's what cyber-bullies do) by the President himself. Wait, I thought he wasn't watching? She must really scare him. Yovanovitch, Taylor and Kent all had one, incredibly alarming thing in common - the existence of a "back channel" of diplomacy that they were not privy to. These men and women are the official US representatives abroad, and yet, actual foreign policy decisions were being conducted by a private citizen, Rudy Giuliani, a lawyer working for the president, a man NOT confirmed by the Senate to act on behalf of the United States. Taylor and Yovanovitch only became aware of this back channel by chance, when they were ambushed in meetings with their foreign counterparts about it. That's not only terrible management, it's shady as hell, and it begs the question: why was Trump using a clandestine channel at all?
3) This is really about ensuring the validity of our elections, Trump has real concern about how Hunter Biden's job offer might have compromised our 2016 election. This is some tin-foil-hat level conspiracy theory peddled by InfoWars and Rudy Giuliani. It's baseless. It's absurd at its face. It's a red herring. The CIA, FBI, and NSA have all been unequivocally clear about precisely how foreign governments influenced 2016: through a spectacularly effective propaganda campaign to pump up Trump and bash Hillary, because they knew a Trump presidency would make America weak, which is what our enemies want.
4) We haven't heard from the whistle blower; Trump deserves to face his accuser. Bullshit - no he does not. That's explicitly why we have whistleblower laws; to protect them from retribution, which we all know is what Trump and the GOP are really after here. The whistleblower's story was vetted by the inspector general THAT TRUMP HIRED. It is also supported by other witnesses to the same events. That's the standard here - validate the claim, validate the motivations for the claim, and once those two things are done the inspector general is obligated to notify Congress, which he did, and he's also obligated to protect the whistleblower, which he's trying to do. This also ignores the fact that 7 or 8 other non-partisan career civil servants have lodged similar concerns and complaints to those of the whistle blower at this point. His/her story checks out and is also supported by the pattern of inappropriate behavior that other people documented.
5) The witnesses to "the call" had different opinions and reactions to it. Well, in once sense, that's true, but of course they did. You're basically asking a bunch of people who all eavesdropped on the same conversation what they thought about it, of course the answers aren't going to be identical. The common thread is, they all found it at least odd or strange, and several of them (plus the whistleblower) found it wrong enough to tell their bosses about it. They asked Williams if she reported it, her response was "to my boss? No, because he was on the call with me." Have you ever been in a meeting, anywhere, ever? And when you walked out of that meeting, each person heard something different in whatever "the boss" said? That's called what-happens-in-every-meeting-since-the-history-of-meetings. Fake news!
The hero of the second day of questioning is Marie Yovanovitch. She was eloquent, composed, and has a spectacular record of service. Like Kent and Taylor, she served at the pleasure of many presidents from both parties, because that's what career civil servants do.
Side note: the GOP attempts to slander these folks by referring to them as "career bureaucrats" is offensive. We all like to poke fun at our oversized government, and yes, it's not a model of efficiency, BUT, what many Americans don't appreciate is that it's the career bureaucrats, tucked away in nondescript offices or in some over-crowded foreign post, that keep our government running. You like having foreign embassies? Me too, so guess what, that means we need career bureaucrats willing to work for shit pay and in difficult conditions just because they love our country and want to serve. You like having people to investigate plane crashes? You like having a food & drug supply chain that is regularly inspected for safety and quality? You like weather reports? Congratulations, you're a fan of career bureaucrats. Nobody works at NOAA for the fame and fortune. Same is true of foreign service officers, and they get SHOT at, pretty often.
Ambassador Yovanovitch was cool, composed, and amazingly level-headed throughout some ridiculously obtuse and badgering questioning. She was even intimidated live, via tweet (because that's what cyber-bullies do) by the President himself. Wait, I thought he wasn't watching? She must really scare him. Yovanovitch, Taylor and Kent all had one, incredibly alarming thing in common - the existence of a "back channel" of diplomacy that they were not privy to. These men and women are the official US representatives abroad, and yet, actual foreign policy decisions were being conducted by a private citizen, Rudy Giuliani, a lawyer working for the president, a man NOT confirmed by the Senate to act on behalf of the United States. Taylor and Yovanovitch only became aware of this back channel by chance, when they were ambushed in meetings with their foreign counterparts about it. That's not only terrible management, it's shady as hell, and it begs the question: why was Trump using a clandestine channel at all?
Vindman's testimony was supportive of what we heard from Taylor, Kent, and Yovanovitch, but not particularly interesting beyond that. Sondland took the stage this morning and lobbed a grenade into the GOP's favorite talking point: there was no quid pro quo. Yes there was, he said, and everyone including the Secretary of State knew about it. The importance of this bombshell is underscored by Devin Nunes in his questioning of Sondland. If the GOP logic is that the absence of a quid pro quo means there's nothing to see here (which is flawed logic, but let's run with it for a moment), then Nunes would've launched his questioning of Sondland with "oh my goodness, you've given us important new information this morning, can you please tell us more about this quid pro quo because we didn't think there was one." Nunes did not start with that. Instead, he started with "Mr. Sondland, are you aware that the Democrats benefited from Ukraine's support of Hillary Clinton in 2016?" Why does that matter? Is that what this hearing is about? Are we impeaching the woman who lost the election? Or her party? Nope. The fact that Nunes immediately tried to redirect the hearing away from the bombshell that Sondland dropped, tells you the magnitude of that bombshell. If the GOP cared about the truth, and they were just presented with the very scenario that they AGREED would be unacceptable behavior from the President, why didn't they jump into that?
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