GOP Senators Face High Stakes in Impeachment

If they aren't careful in how they act, they risk going down in history and appearing as participants in a cover-up.

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President Donald J. Trump was impeached on Thursday. 

I know that he was technically impeached when the House voted to do so in December. But the truth is, as a political and historical matter, Thursday was the day. House Speaker Nancy Pelosi’s strategy—brilliant to fans, incomprehensible to foes—of sitting on the articles of impeachment left a lot of people wondering whether this show was ever going to get on the road.

Now, with the chief justice of the Supreme Court sworn in to preside over the Senate trial, and senators sworn in as jurors, there’s no mistaking that it’s about to go down. The clearest sign that the Senate is taking this at least somewhat seriously: Senators are handing over their cellphones before they enter the chamber. That’s not good news for the president.

Oh, it’s still unlikely there will be enough votes to remove Trump from office. But having talked with many GOP senators since the Ukraine story broke, I can tell you that few have paid close attention to the facts of the case. Some weren’t engaged because they wanted—or said they wanted—to avoid reaching conclusions since they would have to be impartial jurors. Others seemed to think, understandably, that the Ukraine drama was simply the latest chapter in the long-running story of the media and Democrats rushing to “get” Trump no matter what. Others appeared eager to stay in their lanes, avoid the cable-news shout shows and get on with the jobs they were sent to Washington to do. 

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  1. Avatar photo
    Ray Salemi

    Thinking about this piece I realize there are only three Senatorial responses that won't make my head explode.

    1. "I refuse to consider any of the evidence. I'm voting to acquit."
    2. "I've reviewed the evidence. He committed a crime. I am voting to acquit."
    3. "I've reviewed the evidence. He committed a crime. I am voting to remove."

    Anything like "he didn't do anything wrong" is ridiculous.

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      Greg Zorbach

      Seems to me that there is a lot of room between "He committed a Crime." and "he didn't do anything wrong".

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        Ray Salemi

        One simply cannot get there from reading all the evidence.

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    Bill Nelson

    I followed the Clinton impeachment very closely. The House sent two articles of impeachment to the Senate, and based on the Constitutional requirement of High Crimes and Misdemeanors, and the known felony perjury of the president, there was good reason to make a case that the perjury was a "high crime".
    When you read Federalist 65, the phrase that really is key is this:
    "The subjects of its jurisdiction are those offenses which proceed from the misconduct of public men, or, in other words, from the abuse or violation of some public trust."
    A Senator can bring themselves to a conclusion that the acts of the president, even including breaking a law (for which no president has ever been prosecuted or impeached) may be a lot of things, but does not rise to the level of a violation of the public trust. The abuse of power is quite clear to me; Trump asked a nation with a questionable judicial system to investigate a US citizen, where that citizen would have no rights. That is the abuse.
    All presidents, and indeed, all elected individuals use their office as a source of influence, which is why incumbents are elected at a very high rate. Through Trump is indeed a unique case.

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    Pat Riot

    I don't know why much of the Republican higher-end punditsphere has missed this, but you could argue that the *whole point* of taking an impeachment vote to a Senate they knew would never vote to impeach in a million years is to impeach *the Republican Senate* not Trump.

    I think there's a massive bet going on by Democratic leaders that Trump is going to crash, and crash hard. All you have to do is look at the ticking time bombs ready to go off in the next 12 months and you can place pretty decent bets that one of these issues could explode in a way that finally *sticks* to Trump (his tax returns come to mind). And when Trump goes down, he'll go down *hard*: that's the story of every cult leader throughout history.

    If they take their predictions on face value, the strategy for the Democrats is clear: try to chain as many Republicans politicians, media outlets, pundits and even issues to Trump. If anything Trump touches will turn into political garbage, then make sure Trump touches as many things you don't like as you can.

    In a few weeks the Democrats will have 53 indelible, irreversible loyalty oaths to Trump by Republican senators. They will all be chained to the deck of the SS Trump.

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      Kevin Durant?

      “All you have to do is look at the ticking time bombs ready to go off in the next 12 months and you can place pretty decent bets that one of these issues could explode in a way that finally *sticks* to Trump (his tax returns come to mind). And when Trump goes down, he'll go down *hard*: that's the story of every cult leader throughout history.“
      ——————————————-
      Is that comment from 2016? JK :)

      So basically if something new comes out, just pretend that the new thing is the thing Senators acquitted him of, as opposed to the actual thing they acquitted him of, and then blame them for making the wrong decision on something they didn’t decide on

      AKA lying

      House doesn’t call witnesses: Justice!!

      Senate doesn’t call same witnesses: Cover up!!

      “When the facts aren’t on your side, criticize the process.”
      -(D) 19 days ago

      “THE PROCESS THO!!!!”
      -(D) present day

      My favorite part is the idea the ‘real explosion crimes’ are all hidden in carefully prepared forms he submitted to the IRS that were then audited

      Of course what you will find on his tax returns is that he sold property to and co-invested with Russians, Chinese, Saudis, Japanese, Europeans, etc

      That’s because his business was high end real estate in New York and Florida. So it’s a pretty significant crime if you want to keep the foreigners from defiling our American buildings

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      1. Avatar photo
        Pat Riot

        Well, I guess one example is that the rumors about his "lifeline loan" at Deutche Bank being guaranteed by Putin are true. That would be something worse than anything we've seen so far by a sizable margin. John Bolton said that Trump's decision to send the Kurds to their slaughter was based on Trump's property in Istanbul. Dunno why he'd say that, but he did. There's also evidence there's suspicious stock manipulation going on before Trump's public statements that would effect securities. Could be nothing, and could be grand theft by the president and his family.

        Everybody knows Trump is a life-long grifter and absolutely none or all of these things would be the least bit surprising if you know his bio.

        I don't think the Democrats care about an impeachment conviction if they can make GOP Senators look terrible because they chained themselves to Trump's personal integrity.

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          Kevin Durant?

          He certainly is a lifelong grifter. Most NY grifters (Schumer and Hillary eg) never build anything, but still, his version of real estate etc is more grifty than most

          The stock manipulation one is my favorite because that’s basically every traders dream. Just send a tweet and the market dips 180 points. Unfortunately there is no way to hide the fact that you ‘guessed right’ multiple times in the futures market prior to a Trump tweet so there’s basically no chance that’s real

          I do remember the story about how Turkey was going to massacre Kurds. So we will see if that happens, since it didn’t.....

          Speaking of grifters, Carol Lee of NBC was the one who reported ‘four people present’ heard Bolton say the thing about Trump’s Istanbul hotel at a hedge fund event. That is almost certainly totally fabricated as are all “anonymous people familiar with the matter tell me X Republican is a traitor” stories. Hopefully Bolton will testify so we can find out

          Speaking of grifters, Bolton showing up in Qatar, talking to hedge funds, book deal, etc....I am a Bolton fan and this is standard DC grift but the ‘glass houses’ situation is being ignored by basically all of Trumps critics

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            Pat Riot

            There's no law against guessing right, even implausibly so. I know a little bit about this area of the law and you have to remember the authorities have to *prove* a crime, not just be certain it happened based on clear circumstantial evidence. In this context, it's quite a temptation, especially if you consider Trump's ties to the Russian mafia.

            Bolton hasn't denied the statement, which certainly wouldn't require congressional testimony to do so. Like so many of these things, the accusation is 100% consistent with everything else we know about Trump.

            And I don't think anybody is ignoring the idea that Bolton is holding back critical testimony about Trump so he can pump his book deal. Quite the opposite.

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    2. Avatar photo
      Ray Salemi

      I'm with you on this. I think the big value of the impeachment will be to tie the Republicans to Trump and turn the senate over.

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      1. Avatar photo
        Bill Nelson

        At the end of the day, all politics is local. Congress gets terrible approval ratings from the public, but the re-election rate for incumbents remains high.

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      Pat Riot

      Okay, so some pundits on the right have *not* missed it. I guess I am not very original.

      https://thebulwark.com/the-mcsally-maneuver/

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  4. Avatar photo
    Ray Salemi

    The dispiriting thing is how unlikely it is that senators who ignore the facts and vote to acquit will be punished by voters.

    It makes me worry about Trump losing, declaring the election to have been a fraud (as he did when he won) and having these same Republicans back him up. Once they ignore obvious facts in front of them in one case, I have no faith that they’ll revert to integrity when the stakes get higher.

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      Pat Riot

      If Trump loses he will be a "loser" and he will no longer have his magic powers over politicians. Linsey Graham will start sounding like Linsey Graham 2015 again, etc.

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      Octávio Lima

      I have the same concern about the behavior of Senators, but I do not have that concern about the election. One thing that minimizes my concern is that elections in the US are not controlled by the federal government, but rather state governments, and even more, county level. If Senators go along with that kind of behavior by the President, they will go against the states that elect them, only to satisfy one man. That is probably a bridge too far for them.

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