Last evening, Democrat Nancy Pelosi of California, the Speaker of the U.S. House of Representatives, announced in a formal address to the American people on national television, that she was officially calling for impeachment proceedings to begin in the House against President Donald Trump. She had been refusing to do this even even though in recent weeks and months an increasing number of members of her Democratic Party had been calling for impeachment.
Pelosi had been cautious about doing this, saying the time was not right. She meant that there still was not enough evidence to begin this process of impeachment. But the past week changed all of that. It was reported Sunday that back on July 25th–the day after Special Counsel Robert Mueller testified publicly before Congress–President Trump initiated a phone call to the new president of Ukraine, Volodymyr Zelensky, in which Trump supposedly and repeatedly told Zelensky that he needed to have his intelligence people investigate the past activities of Joe Biden’s son, Hunter, when he worked in Ukraine and forward the findings of their investigation to Mr. Trump.
But there is another important element to this story. One week prior to this phone call on July 25th, President Trump had his people withhold the planned giving of $400 million of U.S. foreign aid to Ukraine. So, it looks suspiciously as though Trump was doing this as pressure on President Zelensky to do Trump’s bidding about investigating Hunter Biden. Trump had made no secret about this in that he had been saying publicly in recent weeks that Ukraine needed to investigate Hunter Biden’s activities while in Ukraine.
The presidential campaign for the U.S. presidential election in November next year is now in full swing. Trump, of course, as incumbent has a lock on the Republican nomination. So far, Joe Biden, the former Vice President under former President Barak Obama, is leading contenders for the Democratic nomination. So, Trump obviously has been calling for an investigation of Hunter Biden, and perhaps his father Joe’s involvement, in Ukraine in an effort to tarnish Joe Biden’s reputation with the electorate. Thus, Trump was trying to get political dirt on Joe Biden.
The amazing thing about this is that this is what Mueller’s two-year investigation of Donald Trump was about–whether or not Trump, during the 2016 presidential campaign for president, received, or even colluded in getting, a foreign government, which was Russia, to provide political dirt on his Trump’s opponent. That opponent was Hilary Clinton, the Democratic nominee for president, former First Lady, and Secretary of State. Why would Trump go and do the same thing–get a foreign government to provide dirt on his political opponent–that Muller had investigated him about and testified to Congress about just the day prior? It obviously was because President Trump felt exonerated by Mueller’s report, and subsequent congressional testimony, and therefore believed he could get away with it some more.
But then another wrinkle happened. A so far secret “whistleblower” in our U.S. intelligence community came forward who apparently had heard the phone call on July 25th between President Trump and President Zelensky and was alarmed about it and perhaps other things. This what the media started reporting in the past week.
In Nancy Pelosi’s speech yesterday, she mentioned this episode about Ukraine and demanded that President Trump immediately turn over the transcript of the phone call to Congress. Trump had recently installed Joseph McGuire as Director of National Intelligence. McGuire was refusing to turn over the transcript, and he surely was doing this at the behest of President Trump. Right before Pelosi gave her speech yesterday, Trump announced that he would have the transcript given to Congress today.
But we’ve been down this road before. During Watergate, in 1973–when Mr. Butler accidentally divulged in his testimony before Congress that the Nixon White House had a taping system, which was unknown to the public and almost everyone else–President Nixon refused to turn over the tapes of his private conversations with certain people that proved damaging to him politically and led to his resignation. Nixon eventually first turned over only a transcript of his discussion with Haldeman. But it was soon discovered that Nixon had that transcript edited in his favor. Trump could do the same with this transcript he supposedly will turn over today.
Another element to this story is that it is being reported that the unknown whistleblower wants to testify before Congress, perhaps privately. But whistleblowers usually are concerned about their safety after divulging their identity and information. The U.S. government now has a system of protection offered to government whistleblowers. But does that keep those people safe? And anyone who does such a thing as important as this is, their life will never be the same after that.
In the 243-year history of the USA, only three presidents have had impeachment proceeding directed against them: Andrew Johnson, Bill Clinton, and Donald Trump. Nixon’s story is surprising. The House was about to begin impeachment proceedings against him. But Barry Goldwater lead Republican Senators in going to Nixon and telling him he needed to resign. Goldwater told him the reason was that not only would the impeachment investigation proceed from the House to the Senate, but there were not enough Republican senators who would vote not to impeach Nixon. The Constitution requires that the Senate must vote and there must be at least a 2/3 vote, which is 67 of the 100 senators, for the president to be impeached. Nixon then resigned before the House even had a chance to begin the its impeachment investigation.
Watergate was stupid. Five guys working for the Republican Party broke into the headquarter offices of the Democratic Party, which were in a big business complex called The Watergate, to get files that would provide political dirt on the Democratic Party. It was so stupid because Nixon didn’t know about it and he won reelection of the presidency only months later in a landslide victory. The only thing that got Nixon in trouble was that he tried to cover up this Watergate break-in by lying about it to the American people. If he just would have admitted the stupid affair, Americans would not have cared that much and it would have soon been forgotten. As Goldwater said to Nixon in that confrontation, “You lied to us.”
Bill Clinton’s situation was another similar fiasco. He had oral sex with an intern in the Oval Office and lied about it to the American people. If he just would have admitted it, he very likely would not have had impeachment proceedings against him in the House, which did survive and passed onto the Senate. But after the Senate investigated and voted, there was not the required 67 votes to impeach President Bill Clinton.
So, both the Nixon and Clinton affairs, which involved impeachment, occurred because those two presidents lied to the American people about what was at issue.
But this situation with President Donald Trump is much different in that it is much more serious. As I have posted so much on my blog since Donald Trump has been president and before, he is a threat to our democracy. Now, we will just have to wait and see what will happen.
Ad-Free & Subscriber Log-In