The Smell of Impeachment in the Morning

There has been a steadily rising clamor to impeach Donald Trump over a number of issues.  A solid majority of Americans now support it.

What’s that I smell?  It may be the mildew of a soggy Fall in these parts or the dog’s grass pad gone too long uncleaned.  But no, I smell impeachment in the morning.  And this time it is serious.  Some folks have been muttering and calling for the impeachment of Donald Trump almost from the beginning—and he piled up many possible offences—violating the emolument clause of the Constitution, payoffs and bribes to Stormy Daniels and others, possible tax fraud, obstruction of justice in several instances most notably in trying to interfere with or squash the Mueller Report to name a few.  

Wanting to impeach a President political opponents don’t like is nothing new—some Republicans were pushing to do it to Barack Obama from practically the first moment after he completed the Oath of Office despite a complete lack of evidence that he committed any impeachable offences.  Of course in those days leaders of the Congressional lynch mob were fond of telling Fox News that “An impeachable offence is anything we say it is.”  We will note a little later in this blog post a litany of Presidents who faced similar aborted partisan attacks.  

The Cheeto-in-Charge successfully evaded any serious threat first because the Republican controlled House of Representatives would never bring a Bill of Impeachment and then after the Blue Wave election in 2018 brought Democrats into control of the House because Mitch McConnell and the Republican Senate would never vote to convict.

Although over the spring and summer of this year impeachment resolutions were filed by Congresspersons Brad Sherman of California, Rashida Tlaib of Massachusetts, Sheila Jackson Lee of Texas, and Al Green also of Texas.  But those went directly into Speaker Nancy Pelosi’s circular file.  Despite a rising chorus demanding impeachment proceedings from the activist left of the Democratic Party and restless Congresspersons responding to pressure from their home Districts, Pelosi and most of the House leadership urged caution saying matters would best be left to the next election because impeachment would suck all of the air out of Congress for anything else.  Frankly, she feared that impeachment was a trap that would rouse the Trump base to a frenzy.

All those escapes emboldened the already narcissistic and megalomaniacal to be ever more reckless confident that his supporters would stand by him even as he once claimed “I could stand in the middle of 5th Avenue and shoot somebody and I wouldn’t lose voters.”  Certainly Evangelicals who had once been prissy prudes about all sexual matters threw away all of those scruples to declare him a saint and a holy man.  White voters uncomfortable and angry about becoming a minority in “their country” cheered every veiled or open attack on immigrants, minorities of all sorts, and their tribal enemies to supposedly sneering liberal elite.  Oligarchs who might cringe at his crudeness and bluster sang hallelujah and emptied their pockets to a President delivering their libertarian utopia by abandoning any and all business, environmental, labor, voting rights, or civil rights regulations.  

The Resident now shook off any of a small army of staffers and appointees who tried to restrain or temper his ever wilder excesses.  No one could stop Trump from being Trump.

That is until an as yet unknown whistleblower alarmed at possibly treasonous attempt to extort a foreign leader into digging up dirt on his leading Democratic presidential opponent, former Vice President Joe Biden and his son.  The whistleblower went through proper channels and the Inspector General of the Intelligence Community (ICIG) found the allegations credible only to have an investigation personally quashed when the acting Director of National Intelligence (DNI) refused to forward the report to Congressional intelligence committees.  After that all hell broke loose.  

Thanks to Trump’s own recklessness and the blabbering mouth of the world’s worst lawyer the essential details of the whistleblower’s alarm were soon made public.  Now armed with a simple and easily substantiated case so damnable that it might even stand a snowballs chance in Hell in the Senate, Pelosi dramatically declared that impeachment proceedings would commence under the leadership of House Intelligence Committee chairman Adam Schiff who moved with lightning speed for Congress with a flurry of subpoenas for documents as well as key individuals, including the whistleblower him/herself who is currently under protection from possible threats to his/her life.

Developments in the case emerge daily, fast than this blogger can hope to keep up with.  Consult your reliable news media daily rapidly breaking developments.  Suffice it to say that at least cabinet members—Secretary of State Mike Pompeo and Attorney General Bill Barr, Vice President Mike Pence, and the ever babbling personal lawyer Rudy Giuliani are also caught up in the scandal one way or another leading to the possibility that not only an incumbent President might be brought down, but his whole administration.

Most observers are now sure that impeachment by the House is a sure thing and that a Bill will be sent to the Senate before the first of next year.

Trump has finally realized the danger he is in and is in full panic mode.

Trump has finally realized that he has been trapped and has responded with increasingly bizarre Twitter rants including demanding to know the identity of the whistleblower and all of his/her informants hinting that they should be charged with treason.  He has also made similar charges of treason against Rep. Schiff claiming that he should be hung.  He has more than hinted at a possible civil war if he is impeached and called the whole procedure an attempted coupe d’etat.  The ravings only dig the whole deeper for himself and some of them might result in additional charges of obstruction of justice.

Impeachment of a sitting President is not only difficult, but rare.  Only two Presidents have been impeached in the House and neither was convicted in a Senate trial.

Representing the House of Representatives as prosecutor, Thaddeus Stevens reads the bill of Impeachment to the Senate.

After the assassination of Abraham Lincoln his Tennessee border state Vice President Andrew Johnson pursued a policy of reconciliation with secessionist states and their rapid rehabilitation within the Union.  This was in line with Lincoln’s own hopes for restoring the Union.  But it was at odds with the Radical Republican majority in the house which demanded harsh treatment of former Rebels and an expansive reconstruction that would empower freed slaves politically and economically while protecting them retribution by Southern Democrats.  Thaddeus Stevens of Pennsylvania saw a possibility for removing Johnson for violating the Tenure of Office Act to restrict the power of the President to remove cabinet members and certain other senior office-holders without the approval of the Senate.  Johnson was impeached by the House by an overwhelming margin but a dramatic Senate trial ended with a 35–19 vote in favor of conviction, one vote short of two-thirds majority needed for conviction.  A politically crippled Johnson served out his term.

 More recently in 1998 Bill Clinton’s cheap and tawdry affair with a starry eyed and naïve White House intern led to impeachment by the House of a still popular President.  Most Americans were disgusted but then believed that private sexual misconduct should not be the cause to “overturn the results of an election.”  The popular MoveOn movement began on that premise.  Today in the Me Too Era many powerful men have seen their careers destroyed on far less evidence than Monica Lewinski’s stained blue dress—witness a risqué photo that brought down Senator Al Franklin.  But back then the Senate voted 45–55 against obstruction of justice and split 50–50 on perjury, a tie that Vice President Al Gore had to recuse himself from braking.  

More celebrated than the Clinton case was the almost impeachment of Richard Nixon for numerous offences lumped together as the Watergate Scandal.  Months of investigative journalism and televised hearings by both House and Senate special committees had built an overwhelming case against the President.  Nixon was tempted to tough it out hopping that a groundswell of support by his beloved Silent Majority would prevent conviction in the Senate.  Then a delegation of Republicans including Minority Leader Hugh Scott, conservative icon Senator Barry Goldwater, and House Minority Leader John J. Rhodes came to the White House to deliver the news that the game was over—the Senate would vote for impeachment if the House delivered a Bill.

Richard Nixon resigned before he could be impeached and flew off to political exile and disgrace.

After wavering a bitter and disappointed Nixon finally decided to spare the nation a show trial and a constitutional crisis.  He delivered a one sentence letter of resignation to the Secretary of State and then boarded a military helicopter on the White House lawn to fly into exile and disgrace.  Gerald Ford went on television to announce “Our long national nightmare has ended.”

Nobody much expects the Mitch McConnell and Senate Republicans will rise above their slavish partisan devotion the President to act responsibly on clear evidence this time.  But some believe that the cornered rat might lash out so viciously and commit more open violations of the Constitution and the nation’s laws in plain sight that even they—or some of them—might finally abandon him.

There has been a long history of failed Presidential impeachment attempts.

 Whigs wanted to go after Andrew Jackson for beating the Second Bank of the United States to death and settled on a literal tempest-in-a-teapot bringing back up the Eaton Affair back in 1831 when Jackson demanded the resignations of most of his cabinet members because their wives insulted the wife of his friend and Secretary of War John Eaton.  It was a flimsy excuse and brought forward years after the fact.  It got nowhere because Democrats firmly controlled Congress and everybody was scared to death of the volcanic Presidential temper.  And everyone remembered what happened when a Federal Court issued a ruling against his imposition of Marshall Law in Louisiana in 1815.  After jailing at state legislator, a prosecutor, and a Federal Judge he dismissed a writ of Habeas Corpus defiantly asserting “The Judge made his ruling.  Now let him try to enforce it.”   No wonder politicians were terrified of Jackson.  Trump terrifies no one except Senate Republicans who fear that their MAGA cap wearing base will rise up against them.

• 

  John Tyler was the first President to face a formal impeachment inquiry

  
  

In 1842 Congressman and former President John Quincy Adams led an attempt to impeach John Tyler—an accidental President after the death of Whig William Henry Harrison and a man without a party in Congress—for the use of the veto to reject Whig-backed tariffs.  Vetoes had been seldom used previously and there was some contention over just what a President could or could not achieve by a veto.  The attempt went nowhere but it did end up confirming the right of the President to freely use the veto.

In 1860 Whigs again targeted a Democratic President, the hugely unpopular James Buchanan, a “Northern man of Southern principles,” who had dilly-dallied through the impending secession crisis.  At issue was suspected wide-spread corruption in Buchanan’s home state of Pennsylvania.  A special investigation committee did uncover some staggering corruption and even possible treason.  But it issued a report and Congress did not act on impeachment.  The election of 1860 would quickly dispose of Buchanan and render him an embarrassing footnote in American history.

Republicans thought that Harry Truman's firing of General Douglas MacArthur might be impeachable.

In 1951 Republican Congressmen George H. Bender of Ohio and Paul W. Shafer of Michigan each introduced impeachment bills against Harry S. Truman for firing General Douglas MacArthur for insubordination.  The resolutions were referred to the House Judiciary Committee which, being run by Democrats, sat on them. However, the Senate held extensive hearings on the matter.  MacArthur benefited from a Senate investigation and was promoted at a possible Presidential candidate himself.  But he faded away and a more tactful general and war hero, Dwight D. Eisenhower, got the nod instead.

·     There were several attempts to launch impeachment investigations against George W. Bush. The most serious was filed by Congressmen Denis Kucinich of Ohio, and Robert Wexler of Florida in 2008 with several articles covering launching the War with Iraq, lying about its justification, outing the identity of covert American intelligence agent Valerie Palme, mistreatment of detainees, covert attempts to over throw the government of Iran, National Security Agency warrantless surveillance of American citizens, malfeasance in responding to the victims of Hurricane Katrina, as well as other complaints.  It was a long and unfocused laundry list however justified any of the charges might have been.  The House voted to send the resolution to the Judiciary Committee which let if quietly die before the 2008 election.

Attempts to impeach Barack Obama hardly got beyond the stage of racist memes.

Perhaps in retribution to the Kucinich-Wexler articles, Republicans moved, or talked loudly about moving, against Barack Obama from the beginning.  Among the focus of allegations were the bogus claim that Obama was not born in the United States, allowed people to use bathrooms based on their gender identity,  allegedly covered-up after the 2012 Benghazi attack, and failure to enforce immigration laws.  Despite chest pounding and blather no list of articles of impeachment was ever drawn up or proposed to the Judiciary Committee.

Nobody expects the current impeachment crisis will go away so easily.