By David Welch, Hamilton
First they denied it; then they admitted it; and now they say it’s OK. They are wrong. It is not OK.
Trump asking Ukrainian president Zelensky to manufacture dirt on Hunter Biden was a crime. A request for political assistance from a foreign country is a crime, pure and simple. No quid pro quo is required. The request itself is the crime.
Withholding any Congressionally authorized funding (such as withholding military assistance to Ukraine which the White House now admits was done) is also a crime. No one in the executive branch – including the president – can interfere with the dissemination of funds authorized by Congress in direct opposition to the will of Congress.
If we had a properly functioning judiciary in this country, Trump and his associates would be prosecuted immediately for these criminal offenses.
Put the two crimes together, however, and what you have is a gross abuse of power. We have witnessed a president who took the power we loaned to him and selfishly used it for his own personal gain with no regard for the lasting damage his actions would have on our country. It is precisely this kind of abuse (“high crime”) the founders had in mind when they gave Congress the power to impeach as outlined in our Constitution.
Now that the criminal has admitted to the crimes, Congress has no choice but to impeach and remove Trump from office. Any person in Congress – whether in the House or the Senate – has no choice but to follow the Constitution, which can only mean impeachment in the House and conviction and removal in the Senate.
But will our own Senators and Representative do the right thing? In the case of Daines and Gianforte, they only will if we give them permission to do so. If you actually care about the Constitution and the longterm health of this country, you will tell them it is OK to do what is right.
I would much prefer to see Trump removed from office via a free and fair election in 2020 rather than through impeachment in 2019. But from what we have witnessed this week in Syria, I do not think we can wait for another major foreign policy blunder by Trump. Because the next time it may be our kids and grandkids – not the Kurds – dying on a battlefield because of the poor decisions of a woefully incompetent president.