Fiona Hill wasn't shy about speaking the truth about the biggest threat to our national security: Donald Trump. The impeachment process and the 2020 campaign need to embrace this reality, too.

Our national political crisis crystalized on Thursday when Fiona Hill pointed out—to their faces—that the White Supremacist Party members of the House Intelligence Committee were willfully promoting a disinformation campaign led by Vladimir Putin. The White Supremacists showed a rare moment of fear and squealed their denials, but Hill’s point was unassailable. Donald Trump—not Russia, not Iran, not North Korea—is the greatest threat to our national security, and this has been evident since Helsinki. This core reality needs to be front and center in the impeachment process and the 2020 election campaign.

Just as there will likely be a broad article of impeachment detailing Trump’s obstruction of justice, there should be a broad article of impeachment declared Trump a threat to national security. No further hearings or documentation would be needed, as the entire case is already in the public domain. The article could reference:

·         Trump’s refusal to accept the reality of climate change, the biggest threat to our national security, and his decision to pull out of the Paris Climate Agreement.

·         Trump’s refusal to read his daily intelligence brief.

·         Trump’s persistent and public refusal to accept the fact that Russia interfered in the 2020 election and his public siding in Helsinki with Vladimir Putin over the entire U.S. intelligence community.

·         Trump’s refusal to spend money allocated by Congress to protect our elections from foreign interference or to put in place a plan for protecting the 2020 elections, despite constant warnings from the intelligence community and bipartisan Congressional committees that this is already happening.

·         Trump’s persistent and public effort to impugn the reputation of U.S. intelligence agencies, including accusing them, with no evidence, of spying on his 2016 campaign.

·         Trump’s refusal to keep records of his private, closed-door and telephone conversations with Vladimir Putin.

·         Trump’s decisions to pull the U.S. out of preexisting treaties and agreements, such as the Iran Deal, the INF treaty with Russia, our support of the expulsion of Russia from the G8, and our longstanding refusal to recognize Israeli sovereignty over the Golan Heights, that enhanced our national security.

·         Trump’s refusal to abide by basic security procedures, including ensuring that security clearances are not granted to people who may be security risks, revoking the security clearances of people who disagree with him, the use of personal cell phones for highly sensitive conversations that has certainly resulted in their interception by foreign adversaries, and his sharing of classified information with Russian officials in the Oval Office.

·         Trump’s conscious strategy to not fill key national security positions, including that of the National Security Advisor and the Secretary of Homeland Security.

·         Trump’s decision to reallocate money budgeted for troop pay and pensions to pay, which are vital to troop morale, for his border wall.

·         Trump’s declaration of a phony national emergency at the southern border to justify the building of his wall.

·         Trump’s plans to transfer nuclear technology to Saudi Arabia in violation of federal law.

·         Trump’s persistent efforts to enhance the international reputations of some of the world’s most odious dictators, including Vladimir Putin, Kim Jong Un, President Xi of China, and the Crown Prince of Saudi Arabia.

·         Trump’s persistent and unjustified criticism of U.S. allies, especially our NATO partners in Europe, and his decisions to withhold military funding approved by Congress from allies unless they interfere in U.S. elections on his behalf.

·         Trump’s decision to renege on our promises to the Kurds and his approval of a campaign of genocide against them.

·         Trump’s promotion of racism within the U.S. and in Europe by mischaracterizing refugees as security threats and criminals, and prohibiting Muslims from traveling to the United States.

·         Trump’s persistent efforts to purge the intelligence agencies, the State Department, and the Justice Department of people he deems are not politically loyal to him.

·         The refusal of Trump and his family members to stop conducting personal business dealings with foreign governments.

·         Trump’s public endorsement of torture and his decision to not charge or try the prisoners at Guantanomo are both top recruitment tools for terrorist groups.

·         Trump’s decision to ban transgender people from serving in the military, which harms national security by creating unnecessary vacancies and damaging morale.

Likewise, the Democrats need to openly campaign in 2020 against the effort by Trump and the White Supremacist Party to destroy our national security along with our institutions and the rule of law. This is not a Republican versus Democrat election. This is an existential political contest and the security of the United States is at stake. Trump and the White Supremacist Party members in Congress are not acting for political gain and not for anyone’s definition of the best interests of the United States. We must take a cue from Fiona Hill and confront their treason head on.

Robert Mueller's Big Surprise

One big surprise came out of Robert Mueller’s testimony in front of the House Judiciary Committee today—Robert Mueller’s disastrous performance as a witness, a prosecutor, and a patriot.

Both the Republicans and the Democrats came to the sessions with predictable and predetermined lines of questioning designed to further their narratives.

The Democrats patiently led Mueller through the segments of his report that are the most damaging to Trump. They succeeded in getting Mueller to validate those quotes on national television, but this accomplishment was muted by their inability to get Mueller to repeat those words in his own voice. Nadler established a key clarification at the outset: that Mueller and his team decided at the beginning of their investigation that indicting Trump was unconstitutional according to DOJ. But the Democrats were unable to get Mueller to even entertain the notion that Trump would have been indicted had he not been a sitting President. They focused on several specific instances of obstruction in his report and demonstrated that they met the three criteria for obstruction, but they never got him to say that they legally amounted to obstruction. “I do not agree to your characterization” was his response to this line of questioning, and he refused to say why.

The Republicans, who were just as focused and disciplined, not surprisingly spent more time asking about the maddening inconsistencies in the Mueller report to which the American people deserve answers. They spent most of their time repeatedly—and falsely—attacked Mueller, his team, and his report as being “one-sided,” “biased,” purposely misleading, unlawful, unfair, and “un-American.”

When someone calls your work “un-American” on national television, you respond, firmly and aggressively.

The Robert Mueller of legend, described by all who knew him or worked with him as a strong administrator with unwavering focus and unquestioned impartiality, and deep patriotism was not the Mueller who testified today.

Mueller appeared old, exhausted, weak, hard of hearing, unprepared for even the most obvious questions, unfamiliar with his own report, and uncaring about the significance of the occasion to the future of his country. He constantly thumbed through copies of his report and in the process forgot the preceding question, which would then have to be repeated to him. He fumbled his responses. Mueller couldn’t even remember that Ronald Reagan appointed him as U.S. Attorney to the district of Massachusetts. If you were prone to believe that Mueller was a decent guy who let the investigation get away from him and who was misled by a team made up of partisan Democrats who wrote a completely biased report, his flaccid, dottering performance this morning would make you more convinced of that narrative.

Until the very end of the hearing Mueller made no attempt to defend himself, his team, and his report against vicious attacks by Republicans. Mueller made a few half-hearted attempts to answer more fully, but he meekly wilted under the Republicans’ repeated interruptions, and the Democrats didn’t help him by telling him that he could take time to respond. Finally, just before the end of hearing, Mueller offered up a brief defense of his hiring processes.

Most incredible of all, Mueller’s flaccid performance somehow managed to make dramatic evidence of Presidential crimes utterly boring. We can only expect that he will do the same this afternoon for the “expansive” Russian interference in our election. Mueller’s performance was so passionless and dull that the “movie” version of his written report was even less engaging than a sex-education video produced by the Catholic Church for schoolchildren.

Mueller’s feebleness was not the only disaster about this morning’s hearing. Just as harmful was his refusal to answer 123 questions this morning. Some were spurious, but most were important queries about whether Trump’s actions met the legal bar for obstruction of justice, and they were asked because Congress is inheriting Mueller’s confusing and inconclusive report. Much of Mueller’s speechlessness was mostly due to his meek acceptance of William Barr’s warnings not to go anywhere near disagreements within the DOJ, even though Mueller is now a private citizen and Barr has provided his own totally distorted version of them.

Mueller was obstinately insistent that his report and his letter to Barr “spoke for themselves” when in fact they are fundamentally inconclusive and extremely confusing when it comes to issues that Americans care about. If he couldn’t indict Trump, why did he detail a dozen examples of obstruction of justice. Don’t ask Bob—he won’t tell you. What, exactly, was Mueller referring to when he accused the Attorney General of the United States of acting to steer the American public to misleading conclusions about what was in his report? Bob wouldn’t go there. Why didn’t Mueller subpoena Trump or Donald Trump Jr.? Bob won’t say. Mueller was so phobic about impeachment that he refused to even admit that it was the constitutional remedy for Presidential misconduct.

Texas Rep. John Ratciffe was effective in challenging the report’s frustrating refusal to reach any conclusions about obstruction in this exchange:

Ratcliffe: “Which DOJ policy or principal sets forth a standard that an investigated person is not exonerated if their innocence from criminal conduct is not conclusively determined? Can you give me an example other than Donald Trump when the Justice Department determined that an investigated person was not exonerated because their innocence was not conclusively determined?”

Mueller: “This is a unique situation. I cannot.”

Weirdly, Mueller’s contention that his situation was absolutely unique obstinately ignored the precedent of Leon Jaworski, who served as the second Watergate special prosecutor. The DOJ guidance that a sitting President cannot be indicted was developed for Jaworski in 1972. Jaworski, unlike Mueller, understood the momentousness of the issue of a criminal President. He followed the guidance and did not indict Nixon, but he didn’t stop there. He worked with his grand jury and allowed them to name Nixon as an unindicted co-conspirator. Jaworski allowed the grand jury to detail their findings and made sure that the House Judiciary Committee had those findings and could use them as a basis for impeachment, which they did.

Our country would have benefitted from having a skilled prosecutor and a savvy patriot who understood both the law and the current constitutional crisis represented by Trump’s lawless regime to head up the Russian investigation.

What we got was a man with an incredible resume and history of stellar service who, in his most important role as the prosecutor of one of the most important investigations in our nation’s history, behaved more like a low-level Forest Service researcher so obsessed with the proper classification of trees that he couldn’t see that the forest was on fire. Mueller’s warped focus on the letter of the law to the exclusion of all else makes him a failed prosecutor in this critical case, because in the end, he has enabled the suppression of the truth by his superiors who constantly flaunt the law that Mueller says he cares so much about.

How To Get Your Impeachment Ticket Punched and Get a 2020 Win, Too

Even though Trump has clearly committed dozens of impeachable offenses, I have argued for months against impeachment because of five undeniable realities:

·        It will never succeed in this Congress

·        It will give him yet another huge political victory just before the election

·        It will only succeed in inflaming his base and increasing his fundraising

·        It will suck up all the Democratic House’s energy and resources

·        Impeachment without the support of the vast majority of Americans is a really, really lousy idea

·        Elections have consequences and Trumpism is best removed by the ballot box and not through impeachment

·        It encourages dangerously delusional political thinking by catereing to the most absurd and impossible fantasies of the resistance (e.g., impeachment has a chance of succeeding, Republicans will turn against Trump, impeachment hearings will change voters’ minds about Trump, impeachment will force Trump to resign) when we should be focusing on the election.

The argument in favor of impeachment that totally resonates with me, however, is another undeniable reality: that if Congress does not impeach Trump after his multiple impeachable offenses, it will not have upheld its Constitutional responsibility. In other words, if Congress and the Democratic Party won’t impeach someone like Trump, why do we even have a Congress or a Democratic Party?

Until this week I felt strongly that the realpolitik realities listed above outweighed this argument. But now we have Bill Barr.

I’m ashamed (heartily) to admit that I actually stated last month that the country was lucky to have Bill Barr in place as Attorney General before Mueller completed his investigation and submitted his report. I thought that because Matt Whitaker was a dangerous moron who would torpedo the Mueller finale; Barr was not stupid enough to commit a crime under Trump’s spell; Democrats and former Justice Department colleagues swore that Barr, although a conservative, was a staunch institutionalist; and Barr had a thirty-year personal relationship with Robert Mueller.

I couldn’t have been more catastrophically wrong. We now know that what we have in Barr is an Attorney General who is smart and politically savvy (he may be the only person in Trump’s administration who fits that description), completely dedicated to protecting any President from the law in any situation, thoroughly comfortable with a perpetual war with Congressional Democrats, and an aggressive advocate for the legality of Trump’s savage agenda (demolishing the Affordable Care Act, putting immigrants in concentration camps, suppressing the Democratic vote, etc., etc.). Barr is quickly usurping Trump’s standing as the most dangerous force for evil in the country.

Trumpland has no bottom, and this latest horror has got me thinking again about the how fundamental the rule of law is to any kind of civilized society. But it hasn’t led me to believe that any of my arguments against impeachment were invalid or mistaken, or that the 2020 election is the existential political event in the history of the United States. Millions of us share this feeling. We must have room for both. Doing the right thing—impeaching Trump—cannot mean that we fall into another GOP political trap.

Holding months of impeachment hearings would certainly give vast media coverage of Trump’s crimes, coverage that could be very powerful if it came in the form of public testimony from Trump insiders like former White House counsel Don McGahn. But we’ve had two years of this coverage. At this point, in this polarized country, very few votes would be changed. The Mueller report was a pretty savage indictment of Trump’s behavior, and it hardly registered in the poll. And months of hearings would consume vast reservoirs of Democratic and resistance focus and energy that should be spent on recruiting great candidates, executing on voter-registration efforts, and passing legislation in the House on nonpartisan issues that voters really care about and where Trump and the GOP are literally nowhere: health care, the environment, immigration, common-sense gun control, and infrastructure. Such legislation would be just as doomed in the Senate as impeachment, but it would force the Republicans to vote against these bills and allow the Democrats to use those votes against them in 2020.

There is a viable middle ground between a doomed impeachment and a collision with the 2020 election: a fast-tracked impeachment of Trump.

The Democrats should move heaven and earth to get Robert Mueller to testify in front of the House Judiciary Committee—soon. Given the contents of Mueller’s report, and his anger with how Barr has torpedoed it, it’s certainly possible that Mueller will testify that he didn’t indict Trump because of DOJ restrictions, that he wasn’t asking Barr to make the call he could make, that he instead prepared a report that he expected Congress to act upon, that Barr misrepresented his report in his four-page summary, and that Barr’s testimony about the conversations he and Mueller had about the report were untrue or misleading.

That’s as lethal an impeachment bludgeon as the Democrats are going to get this year. Instead of holding months of hearings and colliding with the 2020 elections, the House Judiciary Committee could draw up compelling, legitimate and detailed articles of impeachment based solidly on Mueller’s findings on Trump’s clear obstruction of justice in a couple of weeks. The Judiciary Committee could then hold a series of hearings over the next month to explain those articles to the media and the voters. Following those hearings, the Judiciary Committee could quickly vote to send impeachment to the floor for a vote. This would require another month of hearings, but the next step would be a vote by the full House, given the Democratic majority, to approve Trump’s impeachment and send it to the Senate for a decisive trial there. This results in a five- or six-month process by which impeachment would be handed over to Mitch McConnell’s Senate in late September or early October.

If you think Mitch McConnell will allow an impeachment trial to be held in the Senate, you don’t know Mitch McConnell or the Senate. He has the power to change Senate rules to ensure that a trial never even happens.

So the entire impeachment debate could be completed more than a year before the 2020 election, giving the Democrats the opportunity to:

·        Truthfully state that they fulfilled their Constitutional responsibility to hold Trump accountable for his crimes

·        Avoid a split between Pelosi and pro-impeachment Democrats

·        Continue their other investigations of Trump, including those regarding his finances and tax returns

·        Pursue their subpoena requests in the courts

·        Force House Republicans to vote against their proposals on the issues most important to all Americans

·        Most importantly of all, enable them to totally focus on campaigning against Trump and the GOP in every state in 2020 and defeat them at the polls.

Pelosi, Nadler, and the Democratic Party been struggling with impeachment for all the reasons I outlined in my first paragraph. But there is no doubt that they have the political skills and power to ram a Trump impeachment through the House well before the 2020 elections.

It’s the best impeachment hand the Democrats will ever hold between now and then.

Mueller Speaks

The reports of an imminent end to the Mueller investigation seem more substantial than the rumors we’ve heard every day for a year and a half. It will be an experience to live without the mystery and anticipation surrounding it.

None of us know what Mueller will tell us. We don’t even know whether he will be allowed to tell us anything.

It is possible that Mueller’s report will document treason and obstruction of justice by the President of the United States and that it will be accompanied by one or several additional indictments that had been previously sealed.

It is also possible that Mueller will find no evidence linking Trump directly to either the Russians or obstruction of justice and that Roger Stone will turn out to be Mueller’s last indictment.

It was never smart to think that we could outsource our responsibility to fix our monstrous 2016 mistake to Mueller or to bet that he would provide the ironclad case for impeachment that we’ve dreamed about. It’s more likely that nightmare elections can only be cured by another election, and that Mueller’s findings will not be the end of Trump.

We have three things to be thankful for—the 2016 midterms, the arrival of Bill Barr, and Robert Mueller.

If the Democrats hadn’t won by a sizeable margin last year, the Republicans would have had a relatively easy time burying or lying about Mueller’s report in advance of the 2020 election. But things are different with Sheriff Pelosi in town. If Barr quashes or selectively edits the report, the Democrats can subpoena it and/or have Mueller testify about it public. If the report turns out to be too narrow, the Democrats can launch their own investigations. If the report lays out a strong case for impeachment, that process starts with Pelosi and Nadler..

If Matt Whitaker were still acting Attorney General, we would soon learn exactly what he meant when he told friends that his job description was to “jump on a hand grenade” for Donald Trump. We know from Whitaker’s recent performance on the Hill that he is dumb enough and partisan enough to attempt to completely quash Mueller’s report. Barr is definitely partisan, but he is not stupid enough to put himself in legal jeopardy, and with him in as Attorney General we at least have a chance of seeing most of Mueller’s report. Many Democrats in D.C. vouch for Barr’s integrity, he is not an enemy of the DOJ or the FBI, and he’s known Robert Mueller fir decades. Hopefully we will find that Trump has woefully misjudged Barr. It may be that Mueller waited to release his report until Barr was in place.

It’s hard to imagine a better person for the impossible role of special prosecutor than Robert Mueller, and he has certainly lived up to his reviews when it comes to running this investigation. Nearly two years without a leak from his team. That’s unreal. Just imagine the legions of aggressive, brilliant reporters who have trued to crack that cone of silence. Mueller is also a patriot who cares deeply about the rule of law, the FBI and the DOJ. If Mueller thinks that Trump is a traitor or has obstructed justice, Trump is in big trouble.

There is a contradiction built into Mueller’s investigation that will be key to how this all plays out.

Mueller is a prosecutor conducting a legal investigation and bringing indictments when justified. He is a Department of Justice employee and a known stickler for following the rules and precedents. He will likely follow the DOJ guidelines that hold that a sitting President cannot be indicted. Another standard DOJ practice is to not report on evidence gathered during an investigation that does not lead to a criminal indictment, which makes sense from a strictly legal perspective. If Mueller follows that standard, his report will not include evidence that could be damaging politically but doesn’t meet the threshold of indictment. Mueller and Barr will probably follow the legal requirement to not share information that comes from secret grand jury proceedings, that compromises national security, or that might compromise future prosecutions. Adhering to these standards would narrow Mueller’s report substantially.

But Mueller’s investigation is also political. If Trump can’t be indicted while President and Mueller’s report contains evidence that Trump broke the law, the audience for the report is not just the Attorney General but Congress and the American people. We don’t know if Mueller will name Trump as an unindicted co-conspirator, like Leon Jaworski did with Richard Nixon, or let him off completely. Mueller understands that there is a political dimension to his investgation. How he decides to handle it will impact the history of this country.

We may be disappointed by Mueller’s findings on a criminal conspiracy (remember that collusion is not a crime and that Mueller is a prosecutor) between Trump and the Russians to influence the 2016 elections, in the sense that the trail will not lead to Trump himself. Mueller did not break Paul Manafort, who is clearly risking the rest if his life in prison to angle for a pardon, and Manafort is the one who can tie Trump directly to an election conspiracy involving the Russians. Mueller will show that many of Trump’s people worked with the Russians, but he may not be able to prove that Trump had personal role in those dirty tricks

I’m more hopeful about the obstruction of justice case, given Mueller’s background and the fact that Trump has obstructed justice on many occasions right out in the open and has no doubt made other attempts behind the scenes that Mueller knows about. I cannot imagine how someone like Robert Mueller could not find that Trump has obstructed justice.

Obstruction of justice, specially by a President who technically runs most of the government, is all about proving intent. Why, then, didn’t Mueller subpoena Trump and force him to testify? Without that testimony, how does Mueller prove intent?

People tend to forget that Nixon would never have faced the prospect of impeachment had it not been for the tapes. Without them, it was Nixon’s word against John Dean’s, and we know who would have won that fight. Does Mueller have the luxury of not asking for Trump’s testimony to prove intent because he has tapes or phone taps of Trump?

In the end I think we will learn that this was all about a real estate developer and media star whose biggest dream was not to be President but to have his name on an apartment tower in Moscow that would net him $500 million. He starts pursuing this goal in the 1990s, around the time he begins borrowing millions from Russian banks. He runs for President in 2015 after his television show is cancelled, not to actually win—even he doesn’t believe that will happen—but to reenergize his brand. He continues to pursue the Trump Tower Moscow deal because he doesn’t think he will win. But he DOES win, and he continues to pursue the deal because that’s still what’s most important to him. He first step as President is to make sure that the Trump business cashes in on him being President. He makes it clear even before the inauguration that the entire U.S. government is for sale. He licks Putin’s boots because he needs Putin to get his stupid tower built in Moscow and because, like most weak bullies, he has a thing for real tyrants. The Russians get their patsy in the White House. The government gets sold off. Trump makes war on the press, the FBI, the CIA, and the DOJ because he fears that they have the goods on him, and forty percent of Americans support him in this. The Republican Party’s transformation into a white supremacist party is completed during the first year of Trump’s term. America, seemingly, hits rock bottom.

It could actually get worse. If Mueller makes a case for Trump conspiring with the Russians or obstructing justice, or both, the Democratic House will vote to approve articles of impeachment and Trump will be tried in the Senate. That could lead to a truly rock-bottom, we-can’t-sink-any-lower-as-a-country moment in which the Republicans in the Senate officially vote to acquit a treasonous and criminal President.