If the past serves as any predictor, the Senate will not
impeach Trump for the large number of contacts his factotums had with Russian
intelligence officials before the election, even if we discover that Trump
struck a deal to have Russian hackers help him win the election.
No matter that such a deal would be treasonous and clearly
against the law. No matter that such a deal would offend our sense of fair
play. No matter that such a deal would go against the best interests of the
United States.
It’s par for the course for Republican candidates to ask
foreign powers to intervene in American presidential elections. It’s what Nixon
did in 1968, when he persuaded the South Vietnamese government not to come to
the negotiating table in Paris until after the election. In one of the closest
elections in history, it’s clear that Nixon’s Democratic opponent, Vice President
Hubert Humphrey, would have won if his boss, Lyndon Johnson, had been able to
declare that peace talks had begun. Nixon promised the South Vietnamese
government that if it refused to negotiate until after the election he would
get it a better deal. What he gave us instead was seven more years of war, illegal
bombing and the ultimate abandonment of his South Vietnamese partners.
Asking a foreign power to fix an election is also what
Ronald Reagan did in 1980. It is well documented that Reagan representatives
and the Iranian government struck a deal to postpone release of the American hostages
that Iranian radicals took a year earlier. If the Iranians had released the
hostages in October, there is no doubt that the surge of positive feeling sit
would have sent through the electorate would have turned the election in President
Carter’s favor. But Reagan offered the Iranian government something it desperately
wanted: guns to battle Iraq. So Reagan made
an illegal bargain to sell weapons to a country that at the time was officially
an enemy. And what did it do with the money? It used it to support the Contras,
a rightwing ragtag guerilla force trying to overthrow the democratically
elected government of Nicaragua. Like Nixon, Reagan piled illegality on top of
illegality by helping the Contras despite the fact that Congress had voted
specifically to ban U.S. military aid them.
During both the Nixon and the Reagan Administration, plenty
of people inside and outside of government knew about these treacheries. There were
hearings on what became known as Iran-Contragate, but Reagan got a pass, as
everything was blamed on subordinates and the Washington establishment
pretended that Reagan knew nothing about supplying the Contras. Nixon was and
remains untouched by his treasonous negotiations that went against what the
American government was trying to do and what the American people wanted it to
do. In retrospect, undermining the negotiations and policy of the sitting
American government seems like a worse offense than the third-rate Watergate
burglary, especially since both involved cover-up operations.
Thus it would be a major break in precedence for a
Republican Congress to attempt to dismiss Trump from office for committing
treason while a candidate. There may be a Congressional investigation or two about
Trump’s pre-election dealings with the Russian government. Other, lesser heads
may roll. But while treason is a cause for impeachment, treason while a
candidate evidently is not.
