Impeachment Defenses

I've been watching some of the impeachment news. It looks like opinions are extremely divided on partisan lines: ~80% of Democrats think the President should be impeached, while ~80% of Republicans think he shouldn't. (https://projects.fivethirtyeight.com/impeachment-polls/) Politicians are even more partisan: not one Republican voted in support of an impeachment inquiry.

Who is being unreasonable here? The Republicans are. Here, I'm going to discuss the defenses of the President that I have seen. I don't know if the politicians and Fox contributors who say these things believe them, but in case someone does, here is what is wrong with them:

Trump Defenses

1. Trump was duly elected. The Democrats are trying to overturn the election results.

   • Comment: This complaint would make sense if the impeachment was taken up right after the election, before Trump did anything. But it does not make sense if, after Trump was elected, he went on to abuse his powers in specific ways, and that is what prompted the impeachment inquiry. That is exactly what impeachment is for. Presumably it is not the case that no elected official should ever be impeached; yet any such case would "overturn an election result".

2. The Democrats have been wanting to impeach Trump from the beginning.

   • Some were, some were not. Notably, Pelosi was against impeachment until the Ukraine information came out, and no impeachment inquiry started until then. So the Democrats did not in fact consider the President to be sufficiently impeachable until this story happened.

   • The fact that some wanted to impeach for bad reasons, before the Ukraine story came out, does not show that the Ukraine deal isn't impeachable. This complaint is irrelevant.

3. We should wait for the 2020 election.

   • No, we shouldn't. This amounts to saying that there should be no cost for Trump's actions. He was already going to face an election in 2020, which he might have lost even if he hadn't committed this abuse, so having to face an election in 2020 imposes no clear cost for the abuse of power. (Maybe he'll lose some votes because of it, but no one will ever be sure of that.)

   • It is in fact Congress' job, under the Constitution, to assess whether the President committed high crimes. This is pretty much the only legal mechanism for enforcing the law against the President. If Congress declines to impeach, they are in effect saying that the President did nothing very wrong. That will be noted, both by voters and by future Presidents.

4. Impeachment is divisive.

   • True. But voting against it on purely party lines, and making up rationalizations like this, does not reduce the divisiveness. It's not as though if everyone in Congress votes in support of Trump, then the country will suddenly join together and sing Kumbaya. In general, "Let's end these divisions by everyone coming over to my side" is not a persuasive proposal.

   • What would actually reduce the divisiveness would be if some people were to vote based on the facts of the case and general principles, rather than based on party affiliation.

   • Pretty much any impeachment would be divisive. It does not follow that we shouldn't have such a process. A President should not be allowed to commit abuses with impunity just because he has some supporters.

5. The Bidens were corrupt.

   • Hunter Biden's taking that job at Burisma was inappropriate and a conflict of interests. And if he or his dad were in office, then maybe we'd be talking about his impeachment. But he's not, so we're not. Trump is the one in office now, and we're talking about him. So this complaint is irrelevant.

6. What about Hilary Clinton’s email?!

   • Irrelevant.

7. The whistleblower is untrustworthy, possibly a Democrat, a never-Trumper, or a Deep State operative.

   • Everything said by the whistleblower has been independently corroborated, so, again, this is irrelevant.

8. Trump said there was no quid pro quo.

   • This does not show there was no quid pro quo. It more likely just indicates that Trump knew that what he was doing was wrong. People who know that they are committing a crime very often deny that they are doing so.

   • There is plenty of independent evidence (other than Trump's explicitly saying it) that there was a quid pro quo.

   • If you shoot someone while saying, "This is not a murder," that won't insulate you from murder charges.

9. A lot of the testimony is second-hand.

   • Trump's efforts to prevent first-hand testimony from being given (ordering his people not to testify) suggests that he thinks the first-hand testimony would worsen his case. So the first-hand information is probably even more damning.

   • We now have more first-hand testimony (David Holmes, Gordon Sondland) about Trump's scheme. The only more direct evidence would be Trump himself testifying, but I don't think that's reasonable to expect.

   • Trump already released a call transcript in which he tries pressuring Zelensky, and Mick Mulvaney already admitted that Trump was doing it.

   • Hearsay is bad when it is unreliable, but you can hardly complain about hearsay when you have already admitted to the main substance of what the hearsay supports, nor when you yourself are trying to stop the firsthand information from being used.

10. Trump was just trying to fight crime, which is good.

    • If you think that Trump was just concerned about upholding the law, and it is just a coincidence that the only alleged crimes he knew of happened to involve (i) a conspiracy theory about someone helping his political opponent in the 2016 election, and (ii) alleged corruption by his leading political rival for the 2020 election, I have some bridges to sell you.

    • The President does not have the legal authority to, for his own reasons, withhold military aid that Congress has appropriated. He could not legally do this, even if he had a good reason for it.

    • He did not have a good reason. We heard testimony that, according to Trump ally Gordon Sondland, Trump did not care about Ukraine and only cared about "big stuff" that benefits himself. By the way, if you didn't know that Trump was like this, then I would like to talk to you, again, about some very nice bridges that I can get you a great deal on.

    • Trump was in fact putting the security of a U.S. ally in jeopardy, to the benefit of an American enemy, Russia.

11. We do this all the time (says Mick Mulvaney).

    • I don't think so. No doubt, the U.S. frequently attaches conditions to the receipt of foreign aid. What does not happen all the time is that the President decides to refuse to implement the policy legally established by Congress, as part of a ploy for harming his political opponents. Nor do Presidents commonly side with a U.S. enemy that is invading a U.S. ally.

    • I know that this is not a routine thing, because of the reactions of career officials in the U.S. government -- state department officials and intelligence officials who have worked in the government for many years, and have worked for other Presidents from both parties, found the incident disturbing, inappropriate, and "crazy". That's why Trump had to replace the ambassador to Ukraine with a yes-man; that's why there was this whistleblower report, etc.

12. Zelensky said he wasn’t being pressured.

    • Trump was sitting right next to Zelensky. A reporter asked Zelensky if he felt pressured by Trump to investigate Biden. Zelensky says, hesitantly: "I think you read everything. So, I think you read text. I'm sorry, but I don't want to be involved to democratic open, uh, elections, elections of USA. No, you heard that we had, uh, I think good, uh, phone call. It was normal, we spoke about many things, and I, so . . . I think, and you read it, that nobody pushed me." Trump interjects, "In other words, no pressure." (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SSMmZLud3I4) Frankly, this really did not come across like a person feeling no pressure. He looked about as comfortable as Lando in this clip: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OXyH1XkQo44 ("Perhaps you feel you are being treated unfairly?")

    • Trump was withholding $400 million in military aid, while Zelensky's country was under Russian invasion. That seems like pressure to me.

13. It was wrong but does not rise to the level of impeachment; impeachment is very serious.

    • No, giving someone the powers of the Presidency is very serious. We don't need incredibly high standards for impeaching a President. We need very high standards of conduct for the President. The correct thinking is not that we can't afford to mistakenly remove a President; the correct judgment is that we can't afford to have a criminal President. The President losing his job isn't a terrible thing; entrusting vast power to a corrupt leader is the terrible thing.

    • If he's not impeached, there is no cost for his violating the law, abusing his powers, etc. If there is no cost, he will of course continue doing it. And so will other Presidents. This case is going to establish the precedent -- either that Presidents can be held accountable, or that they are unaccountable as long as their party holds one house of Congress. Next time there is a Democrat in office, don't be surprised if they violate the law and abuse their powers in order to harm Republican rivals and hold on to power.

    • Again, what Trump did was selling out a U.S. ally, in favor of a U.S. enemy. (Much as he just did with the Kurds.) This might not be impeachable if it were done legally. But if he violates a Congressional mandate to do this, while also using the powers of the government to harm a political rival, I should think that is very serious. And I really don't think Republicans would have trouble seeing this, if the President in office were a Democrat. If Obama had refused to implement a law passed by Congress, so that he could somehow harm Mitt Romney in 2012, and if in the process he was betraying a U.S. ally that was then being invaded by the Russians, I think Republicans would have voted for impeachment in a New York second.

14. There has been no due process.

    • An impeachment by Congress is not subject to the legal process requirements of a courtroom trial. That's partly because it's just a procedure to fire someone from his job, not a procedure to send someone to jail. In fact, Trump is getting much more process than you normally get when you're being fired.

    • It's also partly because, again, we can't afford to have a corrupt leader in office.

    • Congress, again, is carrying out its Constitutionally prescribed function, exactly as it is legally supposed to do, and with the normal process.

15. Zelensky never started the Biden investigation, yet he did get the military aid. Therefore, there really was no quid pro quo.

    • What this shows is that Trump's attempted blackmail/bribery/extortion did not succeed (because it was exposed by the whistleblower). Attempts, however, are typically punishable.

    • If Trump had succeeded, we would probably never have known about his crime. Zelensky would have made the announcement, Trump would have released the aid, and no one would have said anything. Surely the rule can't be that we don't punish you in the case where we actually find out about your crime.

16. We hate the Democrats.

    • Okay, that's a good point. I have no answer to that.

The way it looks now is that the lesson we will be teaching, for all future politicians, is that a President can do whatever he likes, legal or illegal, as long as his party controls one house of Congress. 30 years from now, we're not going to be happy that we established that principle. 30 years from now, it's still going to be Republicans and Democrats vying for power, probably still about evenly matched. Only both will be quicker to abuse their powers for corrupt purposes. We're selling out the future for ephemeral and doubtful political gains.

The only realistic way this doesn't happen is if public opinion turns strongly against Trump, at which point Republican senators will switch sides as well.

Addendum

More on the confusion that it's all about whether Biden should be investigated:

No, the question is not whether Biden is bad. Maybe Biden should be investigated, but:

a. In the American system, the President does not order up investigations of individuals. That's not how it works. We have law enforcement people who are responsible for starting and running investigations.

b. Having politicians directing investigations of their political opponents is an obvious conflict of interests. I didn’t think that had to be explicitly pointed out, but apparently Trump Derangement Syndrome is now preventing people from seeing the most obvious, standard principles of justice, when applied to Trump.

c. In the context, Trump was obviously pressuring the Ukrainians to say something bad about Biden, whether it was true or not. If you’re sitting in Zelensky’s chair, and you’re not a complete moron, it’s going to be obvious to you that that’s what Trump wants. That’s part of the conflict of interests problem.

d. Anyway, why was Trump insisting on a public announcement? That is not generally how law enforcement works – they don’t publicly announce that they’re investigating someone at the start. The answer is, again, completely obvious: Trump’s purpose was obviously to cause political harm to Joe Biden, his leading rival for the next election, not to get justice.

e. Apart from the problem of potential injustice to the individual, the practice of having the current rulers use the power of the state to suppress their political opponents is a threat to the democratic system generally. This is the sort of thing that happens in dictatorships, not in free countries, the sort of thing that turns a country into a dictatorship. If you like this practice, imagine how you're going to feel when a Democrat takes office, and suddenly Republicans are all getting their tax returns audited by the IRS. See if then you feel like saying, "Well, the President is just doing his job, enforcing the law."

f. Even leaving aside all of the above, the President still cannot legally violate a policy passed by Congress. If Congress has appropriated funds to some purpose, the President does not have the legal, Constitutional authority to stop the funds from going through.

None of these are difficult points to see, if one isn’t suffering from TDS. Republicans would have no trouble grasping these points if we were talking about a Democratic politician. And my evidence for this:

g. No one in government who isn’t a partisan politician performing for a public audience, thought that Trump’s behavior was okay. Multiple career officials, who had served Presidents from both parties, were shocked. Trump had to remove the ambassador to Ukraine. Then he had to conduct his Ukraine/Biden deal in secret, and with a special group led by his personal lawyer, instead of the normal diplomats. Why do you think that was? His own people, as soon as they saw his infamous phone call with Zelensky, quickly edited out parts of the transcript and then hid it. Why was that? Trump himself tried to insist that he didn’t do it (“no quid pro quo”; “no pressure”). Why was all of that the case, if Trump was just doing his job perfectly normally?

Jesus F. Christ, come on. Every damned person in the government, including Trump allies, including Trump himself, obviously knew that this was not kosher. And yet they’ve still got the Republican base convinced that it’s all perfectly fine.