We all know the drill. We've all heard that pursuing Impeachment is a fool's errand because there's absolutely no chance that there will be enough votes in the Senate to convict and remove Trump from office.
There is the threat that it will put vulnerable House seats at risk if an impeachment resolution passes the House and then goes on to fail in the Senate. There is the threat that Trump will ride the coattails of "vindication" to re-election if he isn't removed by the Senate, and that it will only make the Democrats look bad as they put their partisan desires above the will of the people.
I understand these arguments. I agree that these arguments present the valid risks that a full impeachment inquiry presents. But it just might be possible that it might not turn out this way. It just might go differently, and we need to be ready to handle a wide array of possibilities.
This week we've had the revelation of the Zelensky phone call memo, which documents a call between Trump and the president of Ukraine on the day after special counsel Robert Mueller's testimony in the House, in which, just as he asks about Javelin missiles, Trump stops him and says, "We need you to do us a favor, though."
Trump then requests that Zelensky look into the cybersecurity firm CrowdStrike, which was used by the Democratic National Committee to determine that it was hacked by Russia, and suggests that there are links between that company and Ukraine and that a "DNC server" exists somewhere in that nation. This is apparently part of the totally bonkers conspiracy theory that CrowdStrike faked indications that Russian military intelligence was involved in the hack in order to cover up that the hack was really carried out by former DNC staffer Seth Rich. Never mind the outstanding Mueller indictment of dozens of Russian intelligence agents by name for that very hack. This all appears to have been part of an attempt to come up with a rationale for pardoning Paul Manafort.
Second, after he brought up Joe Biden—who had been the prearranged subject of the call — Trump went off on another conspiracy theory about Joe Biden's son Hunter, who had been the member of the board of a Ukrainian gas company called Burisma. Burisma’s owner had previously been investigated for some shady dealing. A year after that investigation was shelved by then-General Prosecutor Viktor Shokin, Vice President Biden was the point man for the U.S. government in having Shokin removed due to his history of closing and ignoring corruption cases. Shokin was ultimately removed and replaced. Trump claims, "Biden stopped the prosecution," but there was no prosecution to stop at the time, and the previous prosecution had been of Burisma’s owner, not Hunter Biden.
The entire point of the Mueller investigation was to find a "smoking gun" of Trump or one of his staff colluding by making an agreement to cooperate with a foreign national to obtain dirt to use against his opponents in the 2016 election. Arguably the investigators weren't able to find that evidence because of obstruction and witness-tampering by Roger Stone and Paul Manafort. And yet here we have two full-on cases of collusion between Trump and a foreign government, with Trump asking it to provide dirt about CrowdStrike and about Hunter Biden, which would help—only—Trump's re-election campaign. This is like the Muller jackpot. It's collusion, plus conspiracy with the involvement of Trump lawyer Rudy Giuliani, Attorney General William Barr, the State Department, and potentially Mike Pence. People don't have to say that Trump "pressured" Zelensky into anything, from all appearances he was a willful participant ready to "play ball" and collude and conspire in this effort to impact the 2020 election. We have exactly what Mueller was looking for in spades.
What is Giuliani, who is a private citizen, doing being involved in what appears to be part of U.S. foreign policy negotiations, when any of his involvement in this is a Logan Act violation? And what's the argument on the other side? Where is the national interest in gaining this information from Ukraine? Where is the corruption, particularly since the Pentagon cleared Ukraine of corruption issues when it originally okayed the sale of Javelin missiles to that country back in May? Just what was the real reason to delay the missile sale and money this time, except to use them as a bribe for Ukrainian officials?
I frankly believe that this phone call is merely the tip of a much deeper iceberg, considering the reports about the whistleblower complaint, which alleges that multiple persons were aware of Trump’s behavior, that Pence was involved in calls with Zelensky, and that State Department officials had been involved in making arrangements for Giuliani to meet with a representative of Zelensky. The redacted whistleblower report indicates that Trump personally stopped the payment of aid to Ukraine, that the Ukrainian ambassador had been removed because of Trump's plan to see if he could get Zelensky to "play ball," and that the records of the Zelensky phone call were moved to a private stand-alone NSC server that was reserved for code-word classified information to prevent the information from leaking—because there were concerns that Trump had used the call to meet his own personal goals, and that this wasn't the first time that this type of file transfer had been done to protect "politically sensitive" information. That is a cover-up, pure and simple.
This is all bad. Very bad.
Back in April of 2018, Don McGahn warned Trump that trying to twist law enforcement to his own ends would end badly, so it's not as if Trump didn't know that this could be a problem; and this isn't the only instance of Ukraine cooperating with the Trump administration in order to gain access to Javelin missiles. In 2017-2018, during the Mueller investigation, Ukraine refused to help in the investigation of Paul Manafort.
This is the tangle that Congress will be trying to unravel as it does its investigation of Trump for impeachment. The best-case scenario is that some Republicans will break away from the pack and vote for the articles of impeachment in the House. As many as 18 Republicans in the Senate would have to vote along with Democrats in order to have Trump removed from of office.
How likely is that, truly?
The first answer is that we don't know. However, even at these early stages there have been indications of movement by some Republicans on this issue, particularly after they've read the Zelensky memo and/or the whistleblower complaint. Mitt Romney on the Zelensky call: "This remains troubling." Other Republicans, besides Lindsey Graham, have been stunned by the Zelensky transcript.
There have also been grumblings from Ben Sasse and Pat Toomey. Joe Scarborough has argued that Republicans actually loathe Trump and that the apparent wall of support for him just might evaporate once they get a real chance to show how they feel with impeachment.
“Republicans on the Hill loathe, loathe — I can’t say it enough — they loathe Donald Trump personally,” Scarborough said. “They blame him for the chaos that’s going on in Washington and stopping them from getting more things done.”
He cautioned against making assumptions about impeachment, because so much could change as Trump’s wrongdoing is presented in public hearings.
“We don’t know what’s going to happen, do we?” Scarborough said. “I mean, maybe evidence comes out, we don’t know what happens when the levee breaks. But that is a possibility, and the fact that nobody on the Hill is actually personally loyal to Donald Trump means we don’t know how any of this ends up.”
And one Republican consultant says the 30 other Republicans would vote to remove Trump if the vote were secret.
It’s a classic shakedown. That’s going to be the argument,” Murphy said. “These Senate Republicans, should the Democrats vote impeachment which is far more likely than not, are going to be pinned down to a yes/no answer.”
Murphy predicted that Republicans would lose Senate seats in Colorado, Maine and Arizona if senators failed to support impeachment.
“The politics of it will get worse and worse for Trump,” he pointed out. “One Republican senator told me if it was a secret vote, 30 Republican senators would vote to impeach Trump.”
So really, anything is possible, especially if they have a secret ballot, although that's unlikely. We could have an impeachment of both Trump and Pence and end up with President Pelosi. It could happen—it really could. We could even have a scenario where Trump is removed, Pence becomes President and pardons him - because of course he would, although that wouldn't impact State charges - and then Trump keeps running for re-election on the basis that he was "robbed by the Deep State" against the will of "real America." Truly anything could happen.
But I think we need to keep our options open and recognize that, although this is a remote possibility, it's really, really, really remote.
Hoping for the best is fine, but we need to be ready and fully prepared for the worst. We have to be ready for the impeachment vote to fail in the House as it already has twice. We also have to be ready for it to succeed in the House, then get punked in the Senate.
To that end: I strongly suggest we not just push for the be-all end-all of an impeachment resolution. I suggest we also seek to pass a formal censure resolution as well.
Censure is a formal, and public, group condemnation of an individual, often a group member, whose actions run counter to the group's acceptable standards for individual behavior.[1] In the United States, governmental censure is done when a body's members wish to publicly reprimand the President of the United States, a member of Congress, a judge or a cabinet member. It is a formal statement of disapproval.[2]
The United States Constitution specifically grants impeachment and conviction powers, respectively, to the House of Representatives and Senate. It also grants both congressional bodies the power to expel their own members, though it does not mention censure. Congress adopted a resolution allowing censure, which is "stronger than a simple rebuke, but not as strong as expulsion."[1] In general, each house of Congress is responsible for invoking censure against its own members; censure against other government officials is not common. Because censure is not specifically mentioned as the accepted form of reprimand, many censure actions against members of Congress may be listed officially as rebuke, condemnation, or denouncement.[1]
Members of Congress who have been censured are required to give up any committee chairs they hold. Like a reprimand, a censure does not remove a member from their office so they retain their title, stature, and power to vote. There are also no legal consequences that come with a reprimand or censure. The main difference is that a reprimand is "considered a slap on the wrist and can be given in private and even in a letter", while a censure is "a form of public shaming in which the politician must stand before his peers to listen to the censure resolution".[3]
Like impeachment, censure is a process that expresses the strong condemnation of the House with regard to a particular issue. Pelosi has limited impeachment to the issue of Ukraine, but there is no such limit on censure. It could be brought up on a variety of issues, including the 10 outstanding cases of obstruction in the Mueller report. It could be used to condemn not just Trump, but also Trump officials such as Betsy DeVos for her various transgressions with the Education Department. it could be used against the current and past leadership of Homeland Security and Customs and Border Protection for their treatment of migrants on the border in violation of international law. It could be used to blast the Trump administration’s blocking of California’s ability to regulate emissions.
There is no downside to using this option. This doesn't mean that they don't impeach; they can impeach and censure both at the same time. President Andrew Johnson was both impeached and censured.
Regardless of what happens with the impeachment vote and the removal vote, also passing an expansive censure resolution establishes a strong condemnation by the U.S. House of Representatives of the actions and malfeasance of this person who occupies the White House.
We need to make a bold, strong statement—and this is the way to do it.
If we also want to remove Trump from office, we can try to do that too, and even if it ultimately fails and Trump can do a "victory lap" off that failure—he still will have been censured. And that can't be undone. It can't be repealed. It can't be reversed.
There's no "victory lap" after that. None.
We can hope for the best, but be ready for the worst.