Every day brings new evidence of Donald Trump’s crimes, or his commiting a new one in front of the television cameras. The scene changes rapidly, but the House Democrats are starting to focus on how to impeach Trump.
Although it is not official, the strategy that has been mentioned is to concentrate on Trump’s abuses of power in his attempts to force the President of Ukraine to comply with his desires to absolve Russia of interference in the 2016 election and to manufacture a scandal against the Bidens that would serve the same purpose as Hillary’s emails. The investigation and current depositions are consistent with this strategy.
It’s a good strategy because an airtight case is necessary, and only one or a few of Trump’s high crimes and misdemeanors can be investigated to that point, because of the limitations of time. Impeachment does not require that all crimes be addressed in this way, just enough to make a persuasive case. Presumably a list of uninvestigated probable high crimes and misdemeanors could be part of the bill of impeachment.
It also helps to focus the public’s attention and make credible Trump’s lawlessness. After the closed-door depositions now taking place, the House committees intend to hold open hearings. The purpose of the depositions is to learn the extent of this set of crimes, gather evidence, and focus the open hearings.
The attempts at influencing President Volodymyr Zelensky contain multiple probable high crimes and misdemeanors. Some may be statutory crimes. Others may amount to abuse of power or obstruction of justice. All seem to be against the interests of the United States. Here’s a list:
- Obstructing the distribution of funds as Congress has voted
- Asking non-US persons for help in an election campaign
- Using government funds to acquire personal benefits
- Using a personal attorney to perform governmental functions (This probably contains multiple other crimes, like communicating classified information over insecure channels to people not cleared to receive it.)
- Lying to Congress (This would include people working for Trump. If he instructed them to, he is culpable too.)
- Abuse of power in firing an ambassador
- Accepting non-US funds for an election campaign (Parnas and Fruman?)
Lev Parnas and Igor Fruman are connected to both Rudy Giuliani and Ukrainian oligarch Dmytro Firtash and seem to have been passing money through to Republican campaigns, although it is not clear whether they are connected with the scheme to influence Zelensky. Beyond this immediate crime cluster, other crimes associated with Ukraine may become apparent.
Michael Cohen, Trump’s attorney now in prison, was a connection to Ukrainian organized crime in the United States. Secretary of Energy Rick Perry tried to influence Ukrainian officials to put people of his choosing on the board of Naftogaz, a Ukrainian natural gas company. Kashyap Patel, a congressional aide, supplied President Trump with information on Ukraine.
Update: Adam suggests that John Solomon is another backchannel. He is being represented by Joe diGenova and Victoria Toensing, who keep popping up in this drama. I’m not including all Adam’s suspicious because I am more cautious about that, but Solomon is worth noting. Potentially diGenova and Toensing connect several of the players, but I have run out of yarn to connect all the stickies on the wall. Adam’s suggestion reminded me of another aspect to the attempts to influence Zelensky. It’s possible that once Trump had Zelensky “in a box,” he would put pressure on him in other ways. In other words, he would be able to direct Ukrainian national policy.
Further back, Paul Manafort and others in Trump’s campaign tried to exert influence relative to Ukraine in multiple ways.
Recent depositions implicate Ambassador to the EU Gordon Sondland and Special Representative Kurt Volker. Secretary of State Mike Pompeo and Attorney General Bill Barr have been mentioned in the depositions.
There is much more to come.
Cross-posted at Nuclear Diner
Barbara
Okay, we definitely need a more colorful way to describe the wrongdoing:
Obstructing the distribution of funds as Congress has voted = Threatening the security of an ally by refusing to release funds appropriated by Congress.
Asking non-US persons for help in an election campaign = Using the foreign policy of the United States as a way to leverage election help from foreign allies.
Using government funds to acquire personal benefits = Tying the release of federal security assistance to allies to the ally’s willingness to provide assistance to his 2020 campaign.
I think the other two are more debatable, especially lying to Congress, when he has not appeared in front of Congress.
hells littlest angel
Sometimes I feel that, in the face of clear evidence of serious crimes against the people of the United States, impeachment and removal are inevitable. Then I look at irredeemable jerkoffs like Matt Gaetz and Kevin McCarthy — to name only two! — and I’m not so sure.
Cacti
Regardless of what Senate Rs choose to do, the evidence of criminality in the articles of impeachment needs to be so plain, that any Senator willing to acquit will be outing themselves as an accessory to Executive branch malfeasance.
Cheryl Rofer
@Barbara: I am trying to separate the various offenses. You have mixed them together, which is fine for a particular kind of talk about them, but I am trying to logic out what the charges in an impeachment might be.
Ceci n est pas mon nym
After pretending to have a problem with closed hearings (Soviet-style, McCarthyism, Captain Kangaroo Court, etc), it will be interesting to see why the usual gang of idiots claim to be upset with open hearings and what starts coming out there.
And by “interesting” I mean “entirely predictable hypocritical calls to close the hearings”.
rikyrah
@hells littlest angel:
Removal?
90-10 against that happening.
rikyrah
@Cacti:
ICAM
Mike in DC
I think we should kick it to the Senate(i.e., vote to impeach) by no later than early to mid January, so that the Republican primary votes in February become a de facto poll of how they feel about removal–if the other candidates get any meaningful share of the vote, that indicates that Trump will lose some supporters in November, at minimum. Another month or two may be enough time to drive public support for removal into the “danger zone”(55+ %) for Trump and the Senate Republicans.
The Moar You Know
@Cacti: 100% of the country already accepts and believes this. The problem is that half of them think it’s fucking awesome and wish they’d do even more crimes.
SiubhanDuinne
Cheryl @ top:
Wouldn’t the reverse (a government lawyer working on behalf of the President’s personal interests, e.g. Don McGahn or Bill Barr) also be impeachable?
Mike in DC
@Cheryl Rofer: In a non-legal sense, most likely there will be charges of
1) Abuse of power(which includes the pressure, quid pro quo, shadow “diplomacy”, using the power of the presidency for personal political gain)
2) Obstruction of justice
3) Contempt of Congress
There may be additional charges along the lines you suggest, or they may be “folded in” to more general articles like the ones I suggested above. Every impeachment ever has included abuse of power, and both Nixon’s and Clinton’s included all three of the above, as I recall.
Butch
I’m still thinking it’s a mistake not to at least include, even if it isn’t the focus, his self-dealing and the bribery involved, since “bribery” along with “treason” are the only specific high crimes mentioned in the Constitution.
topclimber
@Ceci n est pas mon nym: Oh that’s easy. “All the so-called evidence was developed in an illegitimate process. Now we are just getting open hearings on bogus info.” Think “fruit of the poison tree” in a Law and Order episode.
Cacti
@The Moar You Know:
Disagree. His support ceiling is about 46% of the vote.
feebog
I love the fact we now have a couple of Russian linked goons named Lev and Igor up to their necks in this. It’s as if Elmore Leonard was still with us and writing the script.
Stephen
What, no love for the Muller report? ?
Yes, I understand that obstruction of justice isn’t as… colorfull, shall we say, as his Ukrainian malfeasance, but to me they are just as serious. The current congress really need to make it clear to future presidents that Obstruction will get you impeached.
Cheryl Rofer
@SiubhanDuinne: Good one! I knew there would be more.
@Mike in DC: Yes. I suspect that what I’m delineating will be folded into something like what you list for the articles of impeachment. For now, I’m trying to break it down into the smallest elements.
@Butch: I have used different words, but those actions are in my list.
patrick II
@SiubhanDuinne:
I think that’s rhetorical, but of course, and Bill Barr has been doing just that. He is a serious danger to the rule of law, and in my imaginary sentencing hearing receives more time than anyone except Trump.
suffragettecity
And now it turns out John Solomon is linked to Toensing and Degenova as is Barr. The creep factor continues to rise…like
scum
rikyrah
@feebog:
If in a script, would be returned with ‘ too cliche’.
Cheryl Rofer
I’ve added more to the top post. I’ve kind of decided that SiubhanDunne’s suggestion is already included, but I could be persuaded it needs to be separate.
jimmiraybob
I vote for spreading it out to multiple sequential articles of impeachment filed on a monthly basis from now till November 2020 or until convicted in the Senate.
Quaker in a Basement
Solomon has certainly been active in catapulting the propaganda.
rikyrah
House Republicans try and fail to prevent deposition to impeachment committees
Republicans tried to interrupt the deposition of Pentagon official Laura Cooper, potentially comprising the secure room in which the testimony was being held. They did not succeed in stopping it from going forward.
Oct. 23, 2019
cynthia ackerman
Is it too much to ask that Talking Points Memo (TPM) enumerate the lies and distortions in their primary reporting?
Of all news sites, this one was founded on candid admission of bias, let alone objectivity.
Too often, they simply mouth the BS without comment.
mrmoshpotato
@hells littlest angel:
Don’t leave out McTurtle, the Supreme Court seat-stealing, fascist MFer who wipes his ass with the Constitution.
HumboldtBlue
Off-topic but criminally related, a South Carolina judge has ruled asset forfeiture to be unconstitutional.
Mary G
I always go back to the convention, when the plank in the platform supporting arming Ukraine mysteriously disappeared. Not that I expect to see it in the impeachment, but all this goes way back.
Cheryl Rofer
@Mary G: That one continues to bother me too. I’ve (mentally) filed it with Manafort’s doings.
mrmoshpotato
@The Moar You Know: “Alexa! Do even more than all the crimes!”
“You dumbfuck, traitorous Trump trash crime family, that’s mathematically impossible.”
Eric: “Nuhuh! Dad lost the popular vote but still won the election.”
Alexa: *sighs*
LuciaMia
Duck Soup was on last night. Chico and Harpo played bufoonish spies Chicolini and Pinky and I kept thinking of these two guys.
Mandalay
I smell blood. A whole lot of blood. It’s time for a new whistle blower to step up and do the right thing…..
Navarro needs to get a personal lawyer yesterday. He’s going to need one.
MattF
Ah, speaking of impeachment… there’s a Slate article noting that firing Marie Yovanovitch could fall under abuse of power. The article includes some interesting constitutional history about a president’s power to fire people.
Yutsano
The Question would be quite disappoint in you.
Seriously though, we’re gonna be needing bigger flow charts just to keep track of all the players and the arrows. I shudder to think of the rat’s nest around Giuliani as it is.
mrmoshpotato
@Mandalay:
?
Cheryl Rofer
@MattF: Added up top.
chris
I don’t have a WSJ account but this can be added to the articles of impeachment. Downright disgusting.
lgerard
This, to me, is the most interesting aspect of this whole clusterfuck. Lev Parnas, former boiler room salesman and small time con man, is the obvious front man. Igor Fruman, minor mafioso, is his minder and handles the money. Some reports indicate that their association with Firtash is relatively recent, if that is the case who else bankrolled them? Where on earth did Parnas get $500,000 to give to Rudy?
It is also interesting that as soon as they ingratiated themselves into trumpworld they immediately began to try to weasel their way into the Ukrainian national sport, ripping off the national gas industry. It is a testimony to the astonishing gullibility of the trump circus that they somehow managed to rope Rick Perry into this effort. It is another example of the type of affinity fraud so common in right wing circles where the easiest marks are those supposedly on your team.
mrmoshpotato
@Yutsano: “Alexa! Order all of the push pins and red string in stock!”
trollhattan
@rikyrah: @feebog:
Just wait until Moose and Skvirrel is entering plot!
Mart
Lindsey Graham suckling on Trumps testicles just now. What have they got on him? I am now hoping for a Hannity arrest. Clearly he has close ties to crack Trump personal lawyers Cohen and Rudy 911, so you know he has done some things that are really stupid.
germy
KellyAnne is pissed that a reporter asked about her husband:
https://www.washingtonexaminer.com/news/transcript-of-telephone-call-between-kellyanne-conway-and-caitlin-yilek
trollhattan
@Mandalay:
Navarro’s the prick who triggered Trump into doing all the China tariffs. Keep asking him questions he thinks are beneath him. And answer “I’ll put you down as a ‘yes'” when he tells you “If I answer that question then you’ll ask me another question,”
WTF does Navarro think an “interview” is other than a series of “another questions”? Did he say “steely spine” at any point? He’s very fond of saying that.
trollhattan
@germy:
To be fair, Kellyanne is pissed about pretty much everything, including the Roomba that’s banging its head against her wall at home.
rikyrah
@lgerard:
uh huh
like I say…
NOT.ENOUGH.COINCIDENCE.IN.THE.WESTERN.WORLD
trollhattan
@Mart:
Seems like years ago we learned Hannity is Cohen’s “Client 3.” I hope he’s sleeping poorly.
PeakVT
Whatever the articles of impeachment ultimately are, they need to cover clear and obvious malfeasance so they can be used to club Trumpolini and the Repukes in 2020. They should not attempt to be comprehensive or detail important but subtle crimes, because complex and thus more easily defended charges will cause most low-info swing voters to lose interest in the topic and base their decisions on something else.
Impeachment in an era is even more of a political act than it would be if there was some kind of baseline consensus on the rule of law in this country, which there does not appear to be at this moment in history.
Jeffro
@Yutsano: @mrmoshpotato: I’m going to hold onto Cheryl’s “I have run out of yarn” and use that in the future when things get confusing. Who knows, it might take off.
(“Stop trying to make ‘I have run out of yarn’ a thing, Jeffro! “ – Mean Girls FTW )
Seriously…it’s a good turn of phrase, Cheryl! =)
rikyrah
I appreciate you and Silverman trying to keep up with all of this.
Marcopolo
I’m only here to say I’m doing my part regarding impeachment: I called both my R Senators & did 25 push ups & 50 sit ups.
No immediate results but I hear shaping up takes time. I will now show myself out.
Gravenstone
@Jeffro: Not just yarn, we’re running out of dimensions. I’m not convinced three dimensions will be sufficient to track all this shit.
germy
@trollhattan:
She rides it around the house like a cat, while George watches.
Mandalay
@trollhattan:
Fortunately, they do. This is from an interview with Navarro a couple of weeks ago by the same reporter (Jim Sciutto):
The Democrats are surely going to summon Navarro and grill him in a public hearing. Let’s see how his refusal to answer basic simple questions works out for him then.
Ella in New Mexico
@germy: OMG-she tells the reporter:
and now this from George Conway
It’s not a show for the TV–This is how she talks to EVERYONE–we’ve seen it. She’s just an abusive, petty, vengeful little bitch. She’s a female Donald Trump-style malignant narcissist.
I’ve long wondered what the deal was with these two staying together, and proposed it’s because she’s threatened to ruin him financially and take his four kids. Now I’m thinking it could be true.
rikyrah
I wish one of the MSNBC hosts would attempt the White board with the red string. It would be quite amusing.
Jeffro
@PeakVT: I hope they spell it out even more plainly when talking about the charges.
You can’t
– use public money
– already appropriated by Congress
– to bribe/extort
– a foreign entity to do anything
– much less create fake scandals/charges
– to help you win an election of any kind
– much less president* of the United States
That’s it. Well, that’s all they should need for impeachment and removal. The rest of the charges that should come down on all these crooks’ heads should number in the hundreds.
And I want every last GOP elected official who took this dirty Russian laundered mob money THOROUGHLY investigated, every last one.
randy khan
@germy:
That’s something. I’m impressed at how Conway asked questions, kept talking so that the reporter couldn’t answer, and then complained that she hadn’t answered. And the Examiner is pretty Trump-friendly, overall, so calling out an Examiner reporter wouldn’t seem like something you’d want to do if you’re her. Things must be pretty tense in Conway’s world.
germy
@randy khan: Implying she’s good friends with the reporter’s boss. Implying she’ll spill details of the reporter’s personal life.
Reporter must have struck a nerve…
Ksmiami
@germy: Be kind – it’s probably the most intimate action she’s had in years….
germy
@Ksmiami: You underestimate the president.
Patricia Kayden
@hells littlest angel: Impeachment in the House is a given. Will any Republican Senators vote to convict him? That’s the only question. I’m hoping that a few will step up and do the right thing.
Looking at you, Romney,
geg6
@cynthia ackerman:
Hmmm, I guess I don’t read the same TPM that you do. Because it has been very clear about pretty much everything about this very special episode of the horrific reality show we’re living in now. Maybe you need a Prime membership?
trollhattan
@germy: @Ksmiami:
“You’ve been a naughty, naughty little Roomba, haven’t you? And you know what happens to naughty, little Roombas now, don’t you?”
[Enter, pizza delivery boy from stage left]
Matt
@Cacti: The evidence of criminality in the PUBLIC RECORD is already that plain. The only question is whether the Republicans in the Senate are Americans first or criminals first.
My money’s on “criminals”.
PJ
@LuciaMia: Except Chico and Harpo would never threaten to have anyone murdered (and also never actually murdered anyone as Parnas and Fruman probably have): https://www.rawstory.com/2019/10/giulianis-ukraine-henchman-once-held-a-gun-to-mans-head-and-threatened-to-kill-him-if-he-told-police-report/
germy
@trollhattan:
MJS
@randy khan: I liked, “I’ve known your editor since before you were born” followed shortly by, “Who is your editor?” And Kellyanne’s pride in not being the leaker.
Yep, George definitely signaled that when he’s talking about narcissistic personality disorder, he’s not just talking about Trump.
Martin
@germy:
Whoa. That sends up some alarms, let me tell you. A common theme through the few times I’ve given best man speeches is that a marriage should always be greater than the sum of its parts. You get power from each other. It’s not one at the expense of the other.
Steve in the ATL
@Marcopolo: is it 1980 and are you wearing a leotard and leg warmers? We do crunches now, mate, not sit ups.
That said, keep up the good work!
namekarB
@Cheryl Rofer: “but I am trying to logic out what the charges in an impeachment might be.”
Pretty simple really. Bribery is an impeachable offense. In this case, Trump was offering a bribe (Ukraine Funding) in return for a favor.
mrmoshpotato
@trollhattan: “Hokey smoke Boris! Moose and Skvirrel are Pottsylvanian spies!”
Has Ghouliani tried to throw Gidney and Cloyd under the bus yet? (Speaking of someone who Dump should scrooch…)
?BillinGlendaleCA
@Steve in the ATL:
Don’t ya know they’re coming back into style?
West of the Rockies
What has become most disturbing to me through the last 3+ years is the incontrovertible fact that 60,000,000 people in our country of 300,000,000 are utterly bigoted, racist, misogynistic, science-denying creeps. Add another maybe 20 million who didn’t vote (but would have voted Trump), and we must acknowledge that one in four of our countrymen are vile.
We see xenophobia sweeping across a number of countries. We see the hatred people all over the world have for those who are slightly different from them (based on religion, tribe, ethnicity, race)… And it is disheartening.
Hindu vs Muslim, Tutsi vs Hutu, Catholic vs Protestant… On and on and on.
I wish Carl Sagan’s pale blue dot speech resonated more powerfully for more people.
Steve in the ATL
@?BillinGlendaleCA: ah, someone follows me on Instagram!
Ksmiami
@trollhattan: ok I hope she has a large supply of Clorox wipes and poor roomba
mrmoshpotato
@Jeffro: “My walls, ceiling and floor look like a yarny slaughterhouse!”
West of the Rockies
@Patricia Kayden:
Will there be enough to convict? If not, will voters punish Republicans and turn the Senate blue? I hope so.
Marcopolo
@Steve in the ATL: Dude, you’re projecting again. I know you wanted to be just like Olivia Newton John growing up but it’s time to let that dream go. Xanadu was not a great movie, even Gene Kelly couldn’t pull that off.
mrmoshpotato
@rikyrah:
I nominate Steve Kornacki.
mrmoshpotato
@Martin: Past…it sounds like one of them is a witch. :)
?BillinGlendaleCA
@Martin:
They’re Republicans, life is a zero sum game.
Cheryl Rofer
Lawrence Tribe says here a lot of what I have in the top post.
For those of you who want to emphasize bribery, he points out that what Trump did is more than bribery. He does it in a more colorful way than my usual low-key.
The whole thing is worth listening to.
mrmoshpotato
@mrmoshpotato: Oh autoincorrect! Psst to you!
Spanky
@Matt:
Per the WaPo, Lindsey sez “Hold my scotch …”
mrmoshpotato
@Spanky: Hot. Damn.
“How do we Russthuglicans show we don’t care about the Constitution anymore?”
“I have an idea!” shouted Lindsay.
PPCLI
@Spanky:
It is malpractice for any journalist to interview Lindsey Graham without asking him about the things he said as House floor manager of the Clinton impeachment. For instance:
“Article III of impeachment against Richard Nixon, the article was based on the idea that Richard Nixon, as president, failed to comply with subpoenas of Congress” as it was “going through its oversight function,” Graham said back in 1998. “The day Richard Nixon failed to answer that subpoena is the day he was subject to impeachment because he took the power from Congress over the impeachment process away from Congress, and he became the judge and jury.”
Well, Lindsey: shouldn’t Trump already be impeached? He’s obstructing the Congressional investigation to a degree Clinton wouldn’t have dreamed of.
Redshift
@mrmoshpotato:
Definitely. And make him stay up all night crunching data beforehand.
trollhattan
@Spanky:
So Lindsey insists there’s a “script”? That’s interesting.
Redshift
@Spanky: Since Lindsay happily serves under a Senate Majority Leader who proudly flaunts the fact that he’s stopping the Senate from doing its job at all, I doubt anyone will buy his protestations that there is any “principle” involved here.
Another Scott
I haven’t read your links, or the comments, but remember Pelosi’s “Truth Exposed” Fact Sheet (4 page .pdf), from Monday, also too.
Cheers,
Scott.
J R in WV
Cheryl,
Thanks for the great update on the House investigations. It is so complex that it is really hard to keep track of the details!
J R
randy khan
@Spanky:
I would be surprised if McConnell actually brought Graham’s resolution to the floor of the Senate unless he was convinced there would be no sufficiently smoking gun to turn public opinion hard against Trump. He sees the same polling as everyone else (probably actually better polling) and right now it’s not just tilting towards impeachment and removal, but also seems to have a chunk of soft support for Trump that might be vulnerable. It potentially is a big problem to put Senate Republicans on record as saying “nothing to see here” before they know whether enough of the public agrees.
Also, although I never feel like I should count on Romney, Collins, et al., he might not have the votes to pass it, which means that bringing it to the floor would make Trump look weaker and might actually make things worse. (Unless, of course, that’s the message that McConnell wants to send. He’s devious enough to do that.)
FelonyGovt
Somewhat related, the Los Angeles Times is really taking on Trump. Here’s a good opinion piece on emoluments.
?BillinGlendaleCA
@FelonyGovt: I see it’s by “Norm is the USA, Norm in the USA…” Ornstein.
Procopius
As to whether the firing of Ambassador Yovanovitch is an abuse of power, I refer back to the (indirectly) linked Slate article:
Emphasis added.
Procopius
Off Topic (I think): I don’t know what benefits stackpath cdn is supposed to give Balloon Juice, but it sure is slow. Does it only affect overseas users like me? Is it going to be built into the “new” BJ? It takes over a minute to do whatever it does, while the screen is blank except for the little notice Chrome puts down at the lower left corner, “Waiting for …”
Procopius
@feebog: Ukrainian, not Russian.
smintheus
Bad strategy to focus exclusively on Ukraine. Trump’s abuse of power with regard to Ukraine is broadly parallel to his abuse of power with regard to Russia. The narrow strategy makes sense only if you think Dems need to give precedence not to exposing Trump’s worst criminal activities, but instead to protecting themselves politically against the charge that they’re being hypocritical over allegations that they earlier denigrated as no big deal. Going narrow out of timidity is the best way to blow the impeachment investigation.