Republicans’ Moral Rot is All Out in the Open

Smirking GOP Rep. Jm Jordan - who is also accused of
ignoring sexual abuse of student athletes. 

This week's impeachment inquiry hearings, especially the testimony of Trump appointee Gordon Sondland has not been good news for Der Trumpenführer, who has increasingly been revealed to operate no differently than crime boss.  But Trump is not the one to have been exposed as morally deficit. The revelations have involved Mike Pence, Rick Perry, Mike Pompeo, John Bolton, Mick Mulvaney and others in the bribery scheme hatched to advance Trump's re-election campaign by slandering a potential political rival. Even further, based on their behavior to date, Congressional Republicans have been exposed to care more about power and tribal loyalty than they care about the rule of law, the U.S. Constitution and ethical behavior.  Michael Gerson, a former Republican like myself - I left the GOP far earlier having sense the growing moral rot - has a column in the Washington Post that looks at the moral degradation of the GOP that is now on open display.  One can only hope that the majority of the public is watching and will savage GOP candidates in 2020. Here are column highlights:

“Secretary [Rick] Perry, Ambassador [Kurt] Volker and I worked with Mr. Rudy Giuliani on Ukraine matters at the express direction of the president of the United States. . . . We followed the president’s orders. . . . Everyone was in the loop.”

With these words, Gordon Sondland, ambassador to the European Union, did his country the favor of candor and clarity. This does not mean that elected Republicans will yield to reason and evidence. But it does change conditions on the ground in significant ways.

First, President Trump can no longer employ his go-to method of damage control — throwing subordinates beneath the presidential limousine. Trump, according to Sondland’s testimony, personally directed the Ukraine squeeze. And if underlings are to be sacrificed, they would have to be underlings of the highest order. According to Sondland, Vice President Pence was informed of the extortion attempt and said nothing.

Both acting chief of staff Mick Mulvaney and Secretary of State Mike Pompeo were closely involved in the effort. Trump would not hesitate to fire all three men if it would put him one point higher in the polls. But shedding your vice president, your chief of staff and your secretary of state is not a strategy of containment; it would be the complete collapse of the executive branch into recrimination and chaos.

The impeachment investigation has gained additional fuel by uncovering broad complicity at the highest levels of government. Some stories, such as the involvement of Attorney General William P. Barr, are yet to be fully told. . . . Is it really plausible that the most politicized attorney general of recent memory was an innocent bystander in these events?

Congress now has every reason and right to hear directly from Barr, Pence, Mulvaney and Pompeo, given their implication in public corruption. And their refusal to testify compounds their apparent corruption with cowardice.

Second, we have once again seen evidence of Trump’s mobster mentality. The president surrounds himself with a bodyguard of rotters — fixers who are willing to do his dirty work based on hints delivered with all the subtlety of a silent film actor. Any leader who would depend on Rudy Giuliani, Michael Cohen, Paul Manafort and Roger Stone for service and counsel is not a bad judge of character; he is a good judge of useful knaves. . . . But at the top of those lines Trump has placed people such as Mulvaney, Barr, Pence and Pompeo, who are morally neutered. In a perverse form of political Darwinism, leaders in the executive branch have been selected for traits of turpitude and tractability. It is the survival of the unscrupulous.

Third, the Sondland testimony — along with the testimony of other witnesses — has stripped away the last, semi-rational arguments advanced by Republican defenders of [Trump] the president. No quid pro quo? No longer tenable. Secondhand hearsay? Not anymore. A “deep-state” plot? Tell that to Vindman and Taylor. The president as anti-corruption crusader? Give me a break.

None of this is likely to change the minds of most elected Republicans on impeachment itself. It does, however, place their motivations out in the open. In the face of serious charges against [Trump] the president, Republicans have no exculpatory evidence to offer. Their true appeal — their only appeal — is tribal. . . . . Republicans would certainly support impeachment for a Democratic president who sought foreign help in rigging an American presidential election, particularly in a manner that strengthened an international rival. But no matter. . . . . The only thing that matters in the end? Using power to keep power.

Some, such as Rep. Jim Jordan (R-Ohio) and Sen. Ron Johnson (R-Wis.), are surrendering their integrity eagerly, almost happily. Other Republicans will want to appear more reluctant. But anyone who puts power above truth and character is doing a nasty disservice to their country. And it won’t be forgotten.

Vote Democrat in 2020.

Sondland Leaves No Other Option Than Impeachment

Yesterday's testimony of Gordon Sondland, a Trump $1 million contributor and hardly one to be labeled a Never Trumper, has set the stage for a moment of truth for the Republican Party as a whole and Congressional Republicans in particular.  Either they support the U.S. Constitution and the concept that no one is above the law or they don't.  Indeed, if they do not impeach and vote to convict Trump, they will be violating the oaths of office that each one of them took and will be confirming that the GOP is now the party of corruption and lawlessness.  If the GOP still was the party that I had once belonged to, a delegation would be preparing to visit the White House and tell Trump that he needs to resign - the same may end up applying to Mike Pence as well who seems to have been a co-conspirator despite his game of amnesia and denial. Sadly, today's GOP is no longer that party and its base is controlled by racists, white supremacists, religious extremist and greed driven multi-millionaires and billionaires. If Republicans refuse to do their constitutional duty, they need to be voted out of office  at every level by the public who must now demonstrate that the rule of law still matters.  A column in the New York Times neatly lays out why their is no option but impeachment and removal of Trump from office.  Here are highlights:

History will remember Wednesday as the day a United States ambassador testified under oath before Congress and laid out a clear, simple and damning case that President Trump abused the power of his office and committed bribery, an act for which the Constitution leaves but one outcome.

The evidence was already overwhelming, but now there can be no question about it: Ambassador Gordon Sondland’s testimony was the smoking gun.

This is largely because the facts presented are simple. At the direction of Mr. Trump and Rudy Giuliani, his personal lawyer, United States officials communicated to the government of Ukraine that a White House visit for the new Ukrainian president was contingent on the Ukrainian president publicly announcing investigations into the dealings of former Vice President Joe Biden and a conspiracy theory about the 2016 elections. Later, a congressionally appropriated $391 million military aid package was added to the leverage.

Mr. Sondland, a Trump appointee and million-dollar Trump inauguration donor, testified under oath that there was an explicit quid pro quo at the direction of President Trump, through Mr. Giuliani. The facts are not meaningfully in dispute, because Mr. Sondland’s testimony corroborates the accounts of multiple strong and reliable witnesses. Mr. Sondland made clear that there are even more people and additional documents that could corroborate his testimony, but the White House is blocking their release. The absence of these additional documents and witnesses makes it abundantly clear that the administration is obstructing Congress. In a few bombshell exchanges, Adam Schiff, chairman of the House Intelligence Committee, and the committee’s Democratic counsel, Daniel Goldman, had Mr. Sondland walk the public through each element of the federal bribery statute. Mr. Trump corruptly demanded something of value — the announcement of investigations into his political rivals — for his personal benefit, in exchange for President Trump’s performance of official acts: both hosting a White House meeting and, as Mr. Sondland came to believe, releasing the security aid. Mr. Sondland noted, “We worked with Mr. Giuliani because the president directed us to do so” and “Mr. Giuliani was expressing the desires of the president of the United States.” In fact, Mr. Trump’s insistence on using his lawyer to obtain a personal benefit at the expense of official United States policy is powerful evidence of the president’s corrupt intent. Bribery is one of the Constitution’s specific prohibitions on executive conduct, second only to treason as a reason for impeaching a president. And constitutional bribery is defined more broadly than the statute — the Constitution was written well before the federal bribery statute and was meant to capture a host of executive malfeasance that might not be captured within the narrow confines of our specific federal laws.

If we are to be, in the words of John Adams, “a government of laws, not of men,” then there is no other option after today’s testimony than the impeachment, conviction and removal from office of President Trump.

It really is that simple and my Republican "friends" have no maneuvering room around it if they are honest and moral people. Trump must go.

Republicans Try to Ignore Sondland's Devastating Testimony

As The Hill notes, Kenneth Starr of Bill Clinton impeachment fame - or infamy depending on one's views - said that Ambassador Sondland's testimony today confirmed that (i) there was a quid pro quo between Trump's administration and the Ukrainian government — which would be "bribery," in the jargon of impeachment, and (ii) the orders to push Kyiv to open an investigation into Trump's political rivals had come directly from the Oval Office.  In the Watergate era, that would likely have been enough for Senate Republicans  of yesteryear to make a trip up Pennsylvania Avenue and tell Trump that it is time to resign.  Sadly, that was then and we are living in the now where the Republican Party of today is willing to run cover for and protect an occupant of the White House who operates as a crime boss and is only too willing to use bribery of a foreign power for his political gain.  A column in the Washington Post looks at the moral bankruptcy and willful blindness of Congressional Republicans.  Here are column excerpts:

Former White House counsel John Dean’s testimony before the Senate Watergate Committee beginning in June 1973 is widely seen as the beginning of the end of the Nixon presidency. Dean testified that he had told President Richard M. Nixon that Watergate was a “cancer growing on the presidency” and that the president had proceeded with the coverup nevertheless. Ambassador Gordon Sondland’s testimony on Wednesday before the House Intelligence Committee has been likened to Dean’s — and there is even a closer comparison, for good and ill, than most of those offering the analogy realize.

“Was there a ‘quid pro quo’?” Sondland said under oath. “With regard to the requested White House call and White House meeting, the answer is yes.” The sound you hear is Republican denials of a quid pro quo exploding. Sondland went on to say he was acting on “the president’s orders” in demanding that Ukraine announce an investigation of the company that employed Hunter Biden — although not to actually carry out the investigation. The distinction is significant because it undercuts the Republican conceit that Trump was genuinely interested in fighting corruption. In fact, he was only interested in damaging a potential political foe.

Sondland also destroyed the Republican cover story that he, former special envoy to Ukraine Kurt Volker and Energy Secretary Rick Perry (the so-called three amigos), were acting on their own to blackmail Ukraine. “Everyone was in the loop,” Sondland said, and he made clear that by “everyone” he meant not only the president but also Vice President Pence, Secretary of State Mike Pompeo, acting White House chief of staff Mick Mulvaney and former national security adviser John Bolton.
 If this were a movie, the next scene would be Trump resigning the presidency in disgrace. But real life doesn’t work like reel life. There was no sign of Republicans abandoning the president after Sondland’s blockbuster revelations. Republicans took great comfort in Sondland’s admission that “Trump never told me directly that the aid was conditioned on meetings,” even though he also said “it was abundantly clear there was a link” and no other credible explanation for the aid holdup has ever emerged. Republicans also continued to pretend that Trump did nothing wrong because, after the whistleblower came forward, Trump said, “I want nothing” and the aid to Ukraine — though not a White House meeting — was finally delivered. Republicans are convinced that 2+2=22. It was as though Republicans had demanded of Dean: Did you hear Nixon order the Watergate break-in? Did Nixon ever explicitly say that he wanted you to commit “obstruction of justice”? Did Nixon succeed in stopping the investigation? And then used Dean’s negative answers to exonerate Nixon. What we are learning is that it’s much easier to document a president’s crimes than to get his party to give a damn. Republican leaders finally told Nixon to resign in August 1974 only after the release of the “smoking gun” tape on which Nixon could be heard directing the coverup. This was an indirect result of Dean’s testimony: Dean had told lawmakers that Nixon might have tapes of his conversations and White House aide Alexander Butterfield had subsequently confirmed the existence of the taping system. Trump is almost entirely ignorant of history but knows enough not to tape his incriminating conversations — and he is wily enough not to flat-out tell his aides “I want you to break the law.” As Trump’s former lawyer Michael Cohen told Congress, Trump communicates in “code” like a mob boss to make his criminal intent clear.

In a sane world, Sondland’s testimony would have ended the Trump presidency. But Republicans have made clear that their devotion to Trump is irrational and, like other religious faiths, not subject to rational refutation.