December 5, 2019

Today encapsulated modern American politics, as the Democrats stood on the Constitution, the Republicans tried to turn everything into theater for their base, and Trump and Giuliani openly continued to try to corrupt the 2020 election.

This morning, House Speaker Nancy Pelosi asked the House committee chairs to begin drafting articles of impeachment. She said the president had given Congress “no choice but to act.” He has violated the Constitution. “The facts are uncontested. The president abused his power for his own personal political benefit at the expense of our national security by withholding military aid and a crucial Oval Office meeting in exchange for an announcement of an investigation into his political rival.” Her speech was measured and seemed understated.

Republican supporters of Trump immediately tried to turn this crisis into theater. James Rosen, a correspondent formerly of FNC and now with the right-wing news organization, Sinclair Broadcasting Group, had come to the conference to “make his own news,” as he told Washington Post writer Dana Milbank. As Pelosi left the room Rosen called out “Do you hate the president, Madam Speaker?”, an apparent reference to the Republican insistence that impeachment is a result of Democrats’ personal dislike of Trump.

Pelosi stopped dead and came back, pointing at Rosen, clearly furious at the word “hate,” which struck deeply at her Catholic religious convictions. Her words were now very clear as she spoke over his interruptions. “I think this president is a coward when it comes to helping our kids who are afraid of gun violence. I think he is cruel when he doesn’t deal with helping our ‘dreamers,’ of which we are very proud. I think he’s in denial about the climate crisis. However, that’s about the election.” Impeachment “is about the Constitution of the United States and the facts that lead to the president’s violation of his oath of office.”

The moment was powerful, but it did not stop the ongoing attempts of Trump loyalists to turn the day’s events into theater for their base. This morning, Trump tweeted “if you are going to impeach me, do it now, fast, so we can have a fair… trial in the Senate…. We will have Schiff, the Bidens, Pelosi and many more testify….” House Republicans jumped on this suggestion. But Senate Republicans, aware that many of them are up for reelection and eager to avoid as much attention to their own role in the defense of the president (while still planning to defend him), tried to throw cold water on those ideas today, suggesting that they did not want to call witnesses. We’ll see.

The theater was not over. Devin Nunes (R-CA), the ranking member of the House Intelligence Committee, who led the attacks on the Democrats throughout the impeachment hearings, and who we just found out is himself implicated in the Ukraine scandal, today did an interview with Fox News anchor Martha MacCalllum. He dismissed the idea that there was anything inappropriate in his newly revealed phone calls with indicted operative Lev Parnas and Trump’s lawyer Rudy Giuliani, who were trying to get rid of Marie Yovanovitch and smear Joe Biden, as well as arguing that Ukraine rather than Russia attacked our 2016 election. He claimed not to remember if he had ever spoken to Parnas (which almost certainly means he did), and insisted he had no idea who Yovanovitch was until the last couple of months. This is also either a lie or a sign he is entirely derelict in his duties, since he is the ranking member on the House Intelligence Committee and until the Democrats took control of the House was its chair. Ukraine is central to their work, and Yovanovitch, a very senior, well-regarded and powerful official, was our ambassador there. If he didn’t know who she was, he was absolutely not doing his job.

Meanwhile, as I noted last night, the president’s lawyer Rudy Giuliani is now in Ukraine where he most unwelcome as Ukraine leaders are days away from peace talks with Russia, in which their hand is weakened by a lack of support from the US government. Zelensky’s officials and William Taylor, the top US diplomat in Ukraine since Yovanovitch was recalled, did not know Giuliani was coming and are not planning to see him. He is meeting with Russia-friendly former officials eager to push the narrative that it was Ukraine, not Russia, that attacked our 2016 elections, and to continue to push the Biden story.

Once again, Giuliani couldn’t help tweeting, and once again, he gave away more of the game. Trump’s defenders—including Nunes and the minority of the House Intelligence Committee just this week—have insisted that the president withheld aid to Ukraine not to get Zelensky to smear Biden but because Trump “holds a deep-seated, genuine, and reasonable skepticism of Ukraine due to its history of pervasive corruption.” Giuliani tweeted “The conversation about corruption in Ukraine was based on compelling evidence of criminal conduct by then VP Biden, in 2016, that has not been resolved.” Ooops. There goes that argument.

And, while he is in Ukraine doing precisely what Trump tried to force Zelensky to do, an attempt that now has the House of Representatives preparing articles of impeachment, Giuliani put everything right back on the table. He tweeted: “The American people will learn that Biden & other Obama administration officials, contributed to the increased level of corruption in Ukraine between 2014 to 2016. This evidence will all be released very soon.” By continuing to publicize this false narrative right now, Giuliani and Trump are essentially trying to force the Senate to rubber stamp their efforts to rig the 2020 election. It is shocking in its brazenness.

So, too, is the news that the phone logs revealed: Trump routinely uses his unsecured phone for all sorts of calls, refusing to use the secure land line because he does not want the White House to have a log of his calls. John Sipher, the former deputy chief of Russia operations at the CIA, says that while this means Congress cannot know for sure what is on the calls, “I guarantee the Russians have the actual information.” This means that Russian intelligence knew all about Trump withholding aid and a White House visit from Ukraine president Volodymyr Zelensky, weakening Ukraine’s position and strengthening Russia. White House officials have repeatedly warned Trump that he is definitely being monitored by foreign governments, but he doesn’t seem to care… although he is adamant that he doesn’t want US officials even to know to whom he’s talking.

Finally, today, Trump’s lawyers have appealed to the Supreme Court to block the House subpoena for his financial records from his accountants. The Court is already meeting next week in private to discuss a New York subpoena for Trump’s tax returns in a case involving payments to Stormy Daniels, and the White House would like to add this financial records case to their deliberations. Trump’s lawyer, Jay Sekulow, says that the fight is over whether or not “Congress can exercise dominion and control over the Office of the President.” The White House says no. The president, Sekulow says, deserves “special solicitude.”