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Dems prepare impeachment, with slim hopes of conviction

The House Judiciary Committee meets today (Wednesday) under a cloud of doubt whether any articles of impeachment against President Trump if approved will escape the knife of his loyalist GOP members, who hold a clear majority of the Senate.

The committee is considering articles against him that the full House is likely to accept. But the Democrats are well aware that more than enough Republicans in the Senate are poised to reject them by denying the two-thirds vote required to convict Trump.

The expected impeachment articles include obstruction of Congress and obstruction of justice, with the possibility of a violation of the Constitution’s emoluments clauses, which bar a president from receiving any payment from a foreign power or from receiving payments beyond his salary from the United States or any individual state.

House special impeachment committee chairman Adam Schiff of California has said the investigation into Trump’s conduct will continue, in the hope of strengthening the case against him. But the president and his Republican allies have argued the hearings will only harden support from him in Congress and among his electoral base, to the futility of Democrats who hope somehow to depose him before next year’s election.

Some now argue that broadening the charges of malfeasance against Trump will risk diminishing the principal accusations. The main allegations against him rest on evidence that he violated the Constitution by bribing or extorting the assistance from Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskiy in getting political dirt on former Vice President Joe Biden, a leading 2020 Democratic candidate, and his son Hunter.

Schiff has decided to press on without waiting for federal courts to rule on Congress’ power to subpoena Trump administration officials such as White House Chief of Staff Mick Mulvaney, Secretary of State Mike Pompeo, former Energy Secretary Rick Perry and former National Security Adviser John Bolton, who are all stiff-arming congressional committees.

All have been ordered by Trump to ignore the House subpoenas, in violation of co-equal Congress’s mandate to oversee the executive branch. Trump himself has declined to attend or testify, clinging to his view that the process is illegitimate despite its clear sanction in the Constitution.

According to Schiff, “the President has accepted or enlisted foreign nations to interfere in our upcoming elections, including the next one. … We have made it abundantly clear to the President that the failure to permit witnesses to testify and the failure to respond to any of our subpoenas has only built the case for the obstruction of Congress. … This an urgent matter that cannot wait if we are to protect the nation’s security and the integrity of our elections.”

The charge of abuse of presidential power in the Ukrainian affair has been labeled “bribery” by House Speaker Nancy Pelosi, as specifically mentioned in Article II, Section 4 along with treason as “other high Crimes and Misdemeanors.”

But will the American public respond against Trump after further evidence of wrongdoing? To get Senate Republicans and Trump’s political base to abandon him, it likely would take some bombshell equivalent of the White House tapes of the Watergate years, which recorded President Nixon acknowledging a scheme to cover up the Democratic Party headquarters break-in.

The Grand Old Party apparently is now devoid of the sort who told Nixon his choice was impeachment or resignation. The party seems destined to stick with Trump to enable him to seek a second term in 2020, throwing its own political fortunes with him.

When President Bill Clinton was impeached in 1999 for having sex with a White House intern in the Oval Office and lying about it under oath, he was acquitted by fellow Democrats in the Senate, holding their noses. Trump may be equally lucky by having fellow Republicans there doing the same, or not smelling anything equally foul about him.

In the 2018 midterm elections, however, suburban women voters were critical to the Democrats’ success in gaining control of the House. In 2020, they could give the Democrats the Senate as well, facilitating a second effort to impeach and convict Trump if he manages to get reelected.

For now, he will continue to hold his huge rallies of diehard devotees, feeding them the same diet of lies and rancor that won them over in 2016 and hoping it will work for him a second time.

——

Jules Witcover’s latest book is

“The American Vice Presidency: From Irrelevance to Power,” published by Smithsonian Books.

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