On not being there
by Tom Sullivan
Still image from “Being There” (1979)
Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell said Friday afternoon that if the House impeaches President Donald Trump, the Senate would have “no choice” on holding a trial. McConnell (R-Ky.) told NPR that “if the House were to act, the Senate immediately goes into a trial.”
So he says as of Friday.
McConnell’s statement is eyebrow-raising for his suggesting this time he chooses to uphold norms rather than break them. Because the normal order of constitutional business in 2016, one would have thought, was the President of the United States (Barack Obama, you recall) had the power “by and with the Advice and Consent of the Senate” to appoint “Judges of the supreme Court.” McConnell chose not to uphold his “Advice and Consent” end of the constitutional bargain in the case of Merrick Garland. Until he did that, we all thought the Senate was obliged to exercise the power conferred by Constitution. McConnell opted out.
He can still choose to:
“Some people read the Constitution’s language that the Senate ‘shall have the sole power to try impeachments’ to be a mandate, requiring the Senate to conduct a trial based on the articles of impeachment approved in the House,” explained Michael Gerhardt, Burton Craige distinguished professor of jurisprudence at the University of North Carolina School of Law. “In practice, the Senate has always felt obliged to do something when it formally received impeachment articles from the House, including holding a streamlined process for President Clinton when it was apparent conviction and removal were highly unlikely.”
“As a practical matter,” he continued over email, “the Majority Leader will have substantial discretion on the process, if any, he fashions in response to the articles.”
Like the chief executive who believes Article II means he can do whatever he wants, McConnell can read Article I’s “The Senate shall have the sole Power to try all Impeachments” as a suggestion rather than a requirement.
My first thought was McConnell would prefer not putting his members on record condoning the actions of this president. They will own their votes for posterity. But posterity may be less of a driver for a Republican caucus filled with climate change deniers than is pissing off Donald Trump’s fanatical base. Never one to not answer a challenge, the acting president may demand McConnell deliver his acquittal. McConnell will have to decide whether bearing the judgement of history will be harsher than the wrath in 2020 of Trump and the MAGA faithful.
How McConnell chooses when the time comes will depend upon what tumbles out of the Trump White House when Speaker Nancy Pelosi’s Democratic House turns it upside down and shakes it.
The White House is by several accounts in full-blown panic. The administration’s concealment of telephone transcripts of the president’s alleged attempt to extort campaign help from Ukraine unraveled this week. The whistleblower complaint released Thursday alleged this was “not the first time” the White House had moved such records into a classified, codeword-protected computer system “solely for the purpose of protecting political sensitive — rather than national security sensitive — information.”
“Administration officials,” CNN reports, “say John Eisenberg, the White House deputy counsel for national security affairs and a national security legal adviser, directed the Ukraine transcript call be moved to the separate highly classified system.” The New York Times reports that calls between Trump and Saudi Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman and Russian leader Vladimir Putin were stored there as well after a series of embarrassing leaks about Trump’s conversations:
The practice began after details of Mr. Trump’s Oval Office discussion with the Russian foreign minister, Sergey V. Lavrov, leaked to the news media, leading to questions of whether the president had released classified information, according to multiple current and former officials. The White House was particularly upset when the news media reported that Mr. Trump had called James B. Comey, the former F.B.I. director, a “nut job” during that same meeting, according to current and former officials.
The White House had begun restricting access to information after initial leaks of Mr. Trump’s calls with the leaders of Mexico and Australia. But the conversation with Mr. Lavrov and Sergey I. Kislyak, then the Russian ambassador to the United States, prompted tighter restrictions.
Led by the whistleblower’s complaint, this week’s revelations have loosened tongues in and around the Trump White House. Democrats have not even begun shaking and look what the Washington Post found tumbling out:
President Trump told two senior Russian officials in a 2017 Oval Office meeting that he was unconcerned about Moscow’s interference in the 2016 U.S. presidential election because the United States did the same in other countries, an assertion that prompted alarmed White House officials to limit access to the remarks to an unusually small number of people, according to three former officials with knowledge of the matter.
The comments, which have not been previously reported, were part of a now-infamous meeting with Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov and Russian Ambassador Sergey Kislyak, in which Trump revealed highly classified information that exposed a source of intelligence on the Islamic State. He also said during the meeting that firing FBI Director James B. Comey the previous day had relieved “great pressure” on him.
Trump welcomed foreign meddling in the 2016 elections. His MAGA faithful will not care that he has compromised U.S. intelligence or green-lighted interference in the 2020 elections from multiple foreign actors. Whether the remaining 35-40 percent of American voters will tolerate it is another matter.
Donald walks on water, oblivious to the world the rest of us inhabit. He is like Chauncey Gardiner, only an inveterate con man, bullying, vindictive, and not as well-appointed. He doesn’t understand how the Constitution works, nor government, nor his place in it. He can no more put the country before himself than he can flap his arms and fly away. The very idea of selfless public service sounds to him like a sucker’s game.
Trump spoke briefly on the prospect of impeachment on Thursday:
“[I]t should never be allowed, what’s happened to this president…. What these guys are doing – Democrats – are doing to this country is a disgrace and it shouldn’t be allowed. There should be a way of stopping it – maybe legally, through the courts.”
He has no clue. He can’t lawyer his way out of impeachment.