TRUMP - THE CHOICE

The Impeachment Trial of Donald J. Trump, the forty - fifth President of the United States, starting this week is about more than the future of the current incumbent of the Presidency. Ultimately it is about what type of Government America wishes to choose to live under. The urgency of the termination proceedings are as a result of Trump’s pattern of illegal behavior and the fear that he will continue. He openly welcomed illegal foreign intervention for his benefit in the 2016 presidential contest and has followed up attempting to extort it from Ukraine for his 2020 re election. 

In arguing against the charges Trump is essentially relying on a revisionist interpretation of the Constitution that he has absolute power as the facts of the shakedown are no longer in contention.

 Speaker Pelosi resisted Impeachment proceedings against the rogue President for as long as she could. They became mandatory because of his actions which were not only an abuse of power but threatened America’s national security. She was eventually persuaded to proceed by those Democratic House Representatives who were elected in constituencies in 2018 that Trump had easily won in 2016. They argued that losing their seats in 2020 was far less important to them than upholding the constitution, which was their foremost obligation to their constituents.

IT ONLY GETS WORSE BUT “SO WHAT”

The recent documentary revelations from Freedom of Information requests, the devastating testimony of indicted Lev Parnas, which he backed up by troves of supporting evidence, the finding of the Government Accountability Office watchdog that Trump broke the law in withholding Congressional voted moneys to aid an ally in a war against Russia are all breathtaking examples of the naked hubris the President has exhibited in prioritizing his agenda in favor of that of the nation. The latter evidence added to the House of Intelligence uncontested narrative that there was a Trump directed extortion and bribery operation directed against the Government of Ukraine, to extract dirt on a political opponent leaves the Trump camp with the core defense that the President can do whatever he chooses. The facts are not in dispute. In short he used the power of the Executive for his own personal purposes thereby risking the nation’s security but ‘so what as President he is constitutionally entitled to'. 

THE RATIONALE FOR THE  FOUNDING OF AMERICA IS BEING REINTERPRETED.

It is not being melodramatic to scream that the period America is experiencing now is negating the purpose and the reasons why George Washington was in battle for eight year’s in America’s War of Independence. Obviously according to the President's enablers it was for the right of the President to shoot someone on Fifth Avenue New York. Trump’s Attorney General has argued in court that there can no redress in the event that he does so. 

Also that which Madison, Mason and Hamilton wrote in the Federalist Papers is now being seen as supportive of an absolute monarch. Finally what Madison, Jefferson and Adams were fighting about in their creation of the American Constitution was apparently the right of one branch of government to be unanswerable to the others. One wonders why they went to the ends of the earth to create three "co -equal" branches when one was to be more "co - equal" than the others.

 The simplistic solution of Trump, Barr, Dershowitz and Starr was that all these endeavors were to enshrine the right of Donald J. Trump to be above the people's elected representatives and the law.

 To the disbelief of their many peers and the legal community Alan Dershowitz and Kenneth Starr support Trump’s constitutional position one way or another. Jay H. Ell is disinterested in the hypocrisy that can be alleged at the pair. Just to make a few comments on Dershowitz's contention that Founders' intended that impeachment could only be instituted when there was a defined breech of criminal law. Not only is that assertion contradicted in the Federalist Papers at the time of the Consitution there was no Criminal Code to break! The pair will persuade no one. However they will provide legitimacy to those who believe the American Revolution was about ultimately reintroducing the Monarchy, in the form of the cult of Donald John Trump

A number of individuals, constituencies and the American people as a whole face the choice of whether they want to return to an absolute monarchy or in this instance a dictatorship. 

THE CHOICE

The Republican Party

What the POTUS is asking is that the Republican Party to officially morph into the cult of Donald John Trump. They are being enjoined to sanction in unambiguous terms that his actions cannot be called to question. There is little doubt that the Republican National Committee have decided that is what they stand for. They have supported Trump in limiting the Primary challenges he has to withstand as just one example of the consequences of their total capitulaton.

The Republican Senators

This leaves the Republican Senators to weigh in how history will judge them - the criterion being whether or not they interpret the American Constitution in the same way as Trump and his echo chamber do. They will have a number of choices. Firstly as to whether they will back their cynical amoral leader that there should in effect be no trial. Failing that his constitutional contention is that there should not be witnesses as the Democrats should have called them in the House of Representatives. The fact that they weren’t was because Trump refused to allow them is considered irrelevant as is the fact that that this behavior is a component of the second Impeachment charge - obstruction of Congress’s constitutional obligation of oversight.

 There is however a distinct possibility that enough  Senators might disaffect on the subject of hearing witnesses so that those such as The National Security Advisor John Bolton who characterized Trump’s Ukraine initiative as a “drug deal” can give testimony.  Bolton has publicly announced that he has additional information to share and will respond to a Senate subpoena, There are others who, if this really is a trial, will be able to flesh out in the first person Trump’s mob operation and those participants that aided and abetted him. Ambassador Sondland’s pithy assessments included that “Everyone was in the loop - we followed the President’s orders and there was a quid pro quo”. As seventy percent of the electorate have indicated in polls that they wish to hear witnesses there has to be a chance that four Republicans, will if not following their consciences, will follow the polls. 

Then each and every Senator should allow the gravity of their decision to weigh heavily on what values they uphold.. In a matter of such gravumen Jay H. Ell is singularly unimpressed with the defense that by voting against Emperor Trump they risk losing their seats either in a Primary or an election. He is more than mindful that there will never be twenty members of what was once Abraham Lincoln’s Party will vote to remove the POTUS. They will cling to the rationale that Dershowitz and Starr will provide rather than follow the lead of their Democratic House of Representative colleagues who claimed that upholding the values of the Constitution was more important than the privileges of membership of the most exclusive club in America.

Former Administration Members

From former Trump administrators, from Bolton, to Bannon,  and all the others that haven’t been convicted for crimes related to the Commander in Chief there is a strange silence. They too have first hand knowledge to add meat to the bones of the conspiracy. Where are the Generals? They have an overriding oath other than to shut up and swallow the orders and abuse of their unstable Commander in Chief who has hand on the nuclear buttons. Let Rex Tillerson explain how he came to be fired and why he thought Trump was a “f,,,,ing moron”

Chief Justice Roberts versus Rehnquist in the Clinton Trial

The Chief Justice of the Supreme Court too has a dilemma. The Constitution is vague as to how he might behave in presiding over this solemn occasion. He can cop out as Chief Justice Rehnquist did in Clinton’s impeachment in 1999. The latter claimed that he did very little but he did it very well. In sync with his Gillbert and Sullivan allusion he also wore stripes on his robes as the Lord High Chancellor did in a production of the pairs' musical "Iolanthe". Rehnquist may well have thought the matter was a joke because after all is said and done no one could have ever thought George Washington and those that followed that eight year war did it all to ensure that an election should be overturned for lying about a consensual sexual affair. Lindsey Graham then pontificated with the utmost conviction that that was Madison et al were gadding about in the Federalist Papers when they were discussing impeachment. Mitch McConnell maintained, with a straight face, that you couldn’t have a trial without witnesses, especially when it involved consensual sex which had already been graphically described in pornographic detail by Ken Starr. It is the selfsame Kenneth Starr that has staked what is left of his reputation on the mantra that lies about sex were far worse than the close on two thousand Trump has chalked up thus far, even when they involve risking national security for personal gain. 

Now if Jay H. Ell can see this all surely so can the Chief Justice. He can, with the nation watching, make it clear what he understands what constitutes a trial and what the Constitution stands for. There is an inkling of hope that he just might.

The American People

Ultimately the choice is that of the American people both by making their views known now and in the 2020 elections. The Democrats also have to make a choice - who to elect to run as their Presidential nominee against Trump who, unless there is a Damascus moment in the Senate Republican caucus, will be Trump. 

Trump’s Choice

Trump is once again making his preference clear. He wants to run against Senator Sanders. He claims that Nancy Pelosi held up the impeachment articles so that Bernie would have to sit through the proceedings and not be able to campaign in Iowa. Sanders is there with three other Democratic contenders who Nancy, one presumes, also doesn’t want to win the nomination. The POTUS maintains that the Democratic Establishment axed Bernie last time as well as they preferred Hillary, while he supported Bernie. In fact in his non condemnation of the Russian intervention he not suprisingly did not chastise them for supporting “the socialist” over Hillary,

Trump’s choice as to whom he doesn’t want to run against is as obvious - the reason he is being impeached - Joe Biden. He is terrified that "Sleepy Joe" because he is a continuation of the Obama he hates will be preferred over he who is the greatest King America has had since declaring Independence. In fact Trump is even better than George III.

AT THE END OF THE DAY

Although it will take time to fully corroborate Lev Parnas’s testimony it made for spell binding television. He appeared highly credible whatever his motives were for spilling the beans. Everything he matter of factly blurbed has been corroborated by previous witnesses, documents and his own cache of supportive paper. It was riveting viewing as he matter of a factly laid out the efforts from the leader himself, Rudi Giuliani, Mike Pence, Secretary Perry, Secretary Pompeo and the like. He added the insights as to the direct negotiations he had with the Ukrainian establishment, the Ukrainian dramatis personae that they were trying to utilize to get dirt on Biden, the effectiveness of Ambassador Yovanovitch as an anti corruption agent and the ongoing efforts to remove her, the internal corruption that still exists within the country and the conclusion that contrary to the supposed rationale that justified this illegal operation, Joe Biden had done nothing wrong. He would make a great witness. 

Full credit to President Zelensky for not succumbing to Trump’s bribery scheme. He has enough corruption to deal with without sorting out America’s.

If Trump survives, as expected, this ordeal he has plenty other jeopardy in the offing. Not the least are his financial details. The most significant for America’s future will however be 2020.