The Progressive Populist Today Blog: Editorial: Let the Chips Fall

Saturday, April 27, 2019

Editorial: Let the Chips Fall

Robert Mueller finally produced his book, detailing in 448 pages the at-best skeevy behavior of Donald Trump and his apparatchiks during the 2016 campaign, followed by the outrageous conduct as Trump apparently tried to cover up the misbehavior after the election. But the findings of the special counsel won’t have maximum impact on the electorate until Democrats produce the movie, which will require public hearings in the House that lay out how Mueller reached his conclusions.

Despite warnings, mainly from conservative pundits, that impeachment hearings could blow back on the Democrats, we don’t see a downside to holding Trump to account for his misbehavior, and the bad actions of his entourage. Indeed, it is the House’s duty.

We certainly can’t count on Attorney General Bill Barr doing his duty, after his April 18 press conference before the report was released, in which Barr spouted talking points that could have been drawn up by Trump. He gave Trump a half hour to proclaim “total exoneration” before the Mueller report came out with the damning details of a 22-month investigation that produced 199 criminal charges, 37 indictments or guilty pleas and five prison sentences, as of this writing. Mueller also referred cases to US attorneys’ offices in New York, Virginia and Washington, D.C., as well as state investigators in New York and Maryland, but Mueller stopped just short of criminal indictments of the Great Misleader.

Among other things, Barr stressed that Mueller did not find evidence of collusion between the Trump campaign and the Russian government. Trump seized that point to tweet “Game Over,” despite the fact that Mueller, as Barr knew, had not considered “collusion,” since he was looking for evidence of “conspiracy,” which is the applicable criminal offense.

Barr excused Trump’s actions that might look like obstruction of justice, saying, “There is substantial evidence to show that the President was frustrated and angered by a sincere belief that the investigation was undermining his presidency, propelled by his political opponents, and fueled by illegal leaks. Nonetheless, the White House fully cooperated with the Special Counsel’s investigation.”

Barr also said Mueller was “not saying that, but for the [Office of Legal Counsel] opinion, he would have found a crime. He made it clear that he had not made the determination that there was a crime.”

The redacted report itself, however, provides an entirely different explanation of why Mueller didn’t make a prosecution decision.

Mueller concluded that he could not seek indictments in 10 cases that looked like obstruction of justice, because he was, technically, an attorney of the Justice Department, which has a policy, drawn up during the Watergate era, that a sitting president couldn’t be indicted. But Mueller also concluded he couldn’t clear Trump of obstructing justice, based on the evidence they uncovered.

“If we had confidence after a thorough investigation of the facts that the President clearly did not commit obstruction of justice, we would so state,” Mueller wrote. “Based on the facts and the applicable legal standards, we are unable to reach that judgment.”
That’s hardly a vote of confidence in Trump’s character.

Mueller also concluded that Congress’s proper function in this situation was to exercise its powers under our constitutional system of checks and balances to make sure that no person is above the law. “We concluded that Congress has authority to prohibit a President’s corrupt use of his authority in order to protect the integrity of the administration of justice,” Mueller wrote.

Mueller also explained why this is constitutionally proper. “Congress can permissibly criminalize certain obstructive conduct by the President, such as suborning perjury, intimidating witnesses, or fabricating evidence, because those prohibitions raise no separation-of-powers questions.”
That is where congressional hearings are warranted. Republicans have a considerable capacity for denial, but televised hearings on the details of Trump’s obstructive conduct should make Trump’s high crimes and misdemeanors increasingly obvious.

For example, Congress should take its own look at the meeting Donald Trump Jr., Jared Kushner and Trump’s campaign manager, Paul Manafort, held with Russians who were said to be linked to Vladimir Putin’s government — even if they weren’t technically on the payroll — after Don Jr. was promised “dirt” on Hillary Clinton, in addition to a discussion on “Russian adoptions.”

Amanda Marcotte of Salon believes “Russian adoptions,” which the Trump camp claims was the reason for the meeting, was a code phrase for sanctions relief for Russian oligarchs. Marcotte noted that Trump literally went out in public in the summer of 2016 and asked Russian hackers to attack Hillary Clinton’s email servers, which they immediately did. “We also know that Trump has routinely lied about what he knew about the extent of Russian interference, since he was briefed on it in August 2016 and has repeatedly pretended he was not,” Marcotte noted.

Another reason to hold hearings is to give Republicans a chance to defend their vote to impeach Bill Clinton in 1998 on a charge that he lied about a legal, consensual act with an adult, when they now insist that Trump shouldn’t face any repercussions for trying to stop the FBI from investigating his links to Russia and his then-national security adviser Michael Flynn’s lies to the FBI about activities during the transition period. Then, after Trump fired FBI Director James Comey, he tried to prevent Mueller’s appointment as special counsel. After that, he tried to get then-attorney general Jeff Sessions to fire Mueller, despite Sessions’ recusal. Trump continued to try to curtail the investigation; he tried to prevent public disclosure of evidence; he tried to cover up his attempts to fire Mueller; he tried to limit the cooperation of witnesses, including Flynn, Manafort and others; and he turned from praise of his former attorney, Michael Cohen, to castigation after Cohen started cooperating with prosecutors.

Some Democrats think they’d be better off running against Trump in 2020 instead of removing him from office and running against Mike Pence. Democrats probably will still get to run against the Great Misleader, because Republicans are scared witless by Trump’s base who are ready to “primary” any Republican who strays from the self-righteous path. The odds against Democrats finding 20 Republican senators who will rediscover patriotism in the next year and a half to remove Trump are pretty remote.

But Democrats should do what they can to expose the rot in the Trump Administration, which has taken over the Grand Oligarch Party. Democrats shouldn’t fear the roars from Trump, who “won” the election in the Electoral College with a minority of the popular vote and has never tried to win over those who voted against him. He’s also never had a national approval rating average higher than 47.8%, in the week after his inauguration, in polls compiled by FiveThirtyEight.com. As of April 23, his approval rating was 41.4% while 53.5% disapproved. That’s during a healthy economy and it’s not a position of strength for the GOP.

Let Republicans defend Trump’s perfidy — and thank goodness he wasn’t an effective obstructer. Democrats can promote expanding health coverage, enacting a Green New Deal to save the climate while increasing jobs in renewable energy and protecting small farms, and replacing Trump’s budget-busting tax breaks for billionaires and corporations with a return to the progressive income tax code, which carried the US through its greatest economic boom in the 1950s and ’60s, when millionaires and corporations paid their fair share of the expenses of providing for defense, promoting general welfare and securing the blessings of liberty. — JMC