Horowitz: Trump’s Actions on Ukraine Earn Him an Impeachment Inquiry

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Tuesday, October 01, 2019

Rob Horowitz, GoLocalWorcester MINDSETTER™

The one-two punch of the release of a rough transcript of President Trump’s call with President Zelensky of Ukraine, followed up by the release of a redacted version of the whistleblower’s complaint, provides a compelling and nearly unavoidable foundation for the launching of a formal impeachment inquiry.

 In the phone call, President Trump pressures the Ukrainian president to investigate Joe Biden, very possibly his general election opponent in 2020, and to work with his personal lawyer, Rudy Giuliani on it.  The whistleblower’s complain details that this call was not just a highly inappropriate one-off; it was part of a series of highly questionable activities designed to use the power of the United States to leverage Ukraine to assist the president’s personal political agenda. And hovering over these disturbing events is the undeniable fact that at the same time President Trump was sending the message that he wanted assistance in digging up dirt on Biden, he withheld $391 million dollars of duly appropriated military aid designed to help in Ukraine’s defense against a threatening Russia without ever giving any good reason for doing so.

As the whistleblower spells out in a complaint deemed credible and urgent by the Trump-appointed Inspector General of the Intelligence Community: “In the course of my official duties, I have received information from multiple U.S. Government officials that the President of the United States is using the power of his office to solicit interference from a foreign country in the 2020 U.S. election. This interference includes, among other things, pressuring a foreign country to investigate one of the President’s main domestic political rivals. The President’s personal lawyer, Mr. Rudolph Giuliani, is a central figure in this effort. Attorney General Barr appears to be involved as well.”

This is exactly the kind of abuse of power that the founders envisioned when they incorporated a mechanism for impeachment into the Constitution.  Based on the already known facts, President Trump jeopardized national security in order to advance his own personal political interests and at least violated the spirit of the law in essentially enlisting and arguably extorting a foreign power to assist in his re-election efforts. 

As someone who had argued in this space against proceeding with an impeachment inquiry, given the proximity of the election and the remote possibility of a conviction in the US Senate, these new developments have caused a reappraisal.  The seriousness of the misconduct, which demonstrates that the only lesson Trump apparently learned from the Mueller probe is that he can get away with anything, requires at least robust additional fact-finding and a searching exploration of whether or not to advance articles of impeachment.  One important question to get to get to the bottom of:  is this the only instance of Trump jeopardizing national security by advancing his own personal interests-- rather than the national interest--in his interactions with other nations?’

But, of course, my change of mind is unimportant.  For President Trump, unfortunately, his actions on Ukraine moved Speaker Pelosi from understandably reluctant to move forward with an impeachment inquiry to all-in. The subject matter has given Pelosi the ability to put the investigation mainly in the hands of  Representative Adam Schiff (D-CA), Chair of the Intelligence Committee, who is a media savvy, highly skilled former prosecutor and whose Committee contains fewer members and is far less unwieldly than the House Judiciary Committee, where too many hearings have devolved into unproductive clown shows.   Placing most of the investigative heavy lifting under Schiff’s direction obviates the need to set up a separate Select Committee, which would have been a contentious fight within the Democratic Caucus.

To maintain credibility and insulate themselves from reputational and political damage, Trump’s enablers in the media and Republican Congress-people should begin to move from “there is nothing wrong with what the president did”-still the most common refrain of his allies-to what the president did was wrong, but it doesn’t rise to the level of impeachment.  That was the refrain of Democrats during the Clinton impeachment, where his allies did not attempt to defend the indefensible.  

As Chris Wallace told fellow Fox newscaster Sandra Smith when asked whether the Ukraine revelations changed anything, “Oh, I think it’s changed quite a lot, Sandra. And the spinning that has been done by the president’s defenders over the last 24 hours since this very damaging whistleblower complaint came out, the spinning is not surprising, but it is astonishing, and I think deeply misleading.” 

Trump allies, conservatives, and Republican elected officials should heed Wallace’s words. The Ukraine developments have fundamentally changed any calculation about the political impact of impeachment. While President Trump is still unlikely to be removed from office, avoiding major political damage will require abandoning the same old it’s all a witch-hunt playbook, actually admitting some mistakes and demonstrating at least some modicum of learning behavior.

If there is anyone left in the Trump Administration willing to speak truth to power, now’s the time.

 

Rob Horowitz is a strategic and communications consultant who provides general consulting, public relations, direct mail services and polling for national and state issue organizations, various non-profits, businesses, and elected officials and candidates. He is an Adjunct Professor of Political Science at the University of Rhode Island.

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