Photo Courtesy of Senate.gov
Logan Ramsey
News Editor
Back in October, I wrote a column where I said that it was too soon to talk about removing President Trump from office because we weren’t in that stage of the impeachment process yet. That was when Adam Schiff was still conducting closed-door testimonies in the fact-finding stage of impeachment, but we’re well past that now.
It’s time as a country we talk about removing a sitting president from office for the first time in America’s history, but the problem is that people made up their minds far too early.
There have been two pieces of evidence that convinced me removal is the right thing to do, but the problem is that they’ve left the national conversation. People don’t seem to care; even the people who have advocated for removal of office since Trump took office.
Those two pieces of evidence are U.S. Ambassador to the European Union Gordon Sondland’s testimony and leaked pentagon emails implicating the justice department in covering up warnings from the Defence Department that withholding federal aid to Ukraine was illegal.
Sondland testified that there was a quid pro quo between the Trump Administration and Ukraine, meaning that they were pushing the country to announce investigations into Joe and Hunter Biden in return for the nearly $400 million military-aid package.
Sondland admitted to being a part of it but said that he was following the President’s orders, communicated to him by Rudy Giuliani, Trump’s personal lawyer.
Sondland said, “everyone was in the loop,” including Vice President Mike Pence, acting White House Chief of Staff Mick Mulvaney and Secretary of State Mike Pompeo.
The second piece of damning evidence came from previously redacted emails published by the national-security blog Just Security.
The emails unveiled how the Pentagon repeatedly warned the Office of Management and Budget that withholding the military aid was illegal.
So far, there’s no evidence to confirm that the President knew about the Pentagon’s warnings, but either way, Ignorance is no excuse for the law. Especially considering the evidence that the people who carried out his order had warning that the act was illegal. Even if no one warned Trump, it’s still a violation of the law.
What likely pushed this evidence out of the conversation was the flood of news surrounding Trump escalating hostilities with Iran. I believe this was a direct effort to distract the news cycle from impeachment. If that was the case, it worked.
Perhaps we will learn more about these pieces of evidence in the Senate trial, but it’s unclear if Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell plans on calling new witnesses to the stand. This is an effect of the extreme partisan gridlock that surrounds this trial.
McConnell has worked closely with the White House on trial strategy and has even met with Trump, which is a blatant sign that the speaker doesn’t intend on conducting a bipartisan trial.
House Majority Leader Nancy Pelosi has now signaled her intent to end the house’s hold on the articles of impeachment. This move was to show the American public the importance of calling new witnesses to testify to the Senate, most notably former national security adviser John Bolton and Mick Mulvaney, who were blocked from participating in the house’s investigation. These two witnesses could provide new information on the aforementioned evidence, so it’s imperative that they testify.
I can’t find a good reason for McConnell to not call them to the stand, other than to rush an acquittal.
If McConnell does block new witnesses from the trial, it still doesn’t speak well to Trump’s innocence. If the President really is innocent of the accused crime, then why not let some of his top advisors exonerate him?
It’s at this point that I have to wonder how we got here, where we’ll watch a trial unfold where the jurors, or Senators, have already taken sides. There’s little hope that the
President will be removed from office. 20 Republicans would have to break rank to remove Trump, and the majority of Senate Republicans are unlikely to do this.
But I see two indicators for hope.
The first is that public opinion has finally shifted in support of impeachment. According to FiveThirtyEight, as of Jan. 10, 50.2% of Americans support the impeachment process.
This advantage is only slight, but any shift is welcome in my eyes.
The second is that if all of the Democrats and just four Senate Republicans vote to convict Trump, it would give the Senate a majority vote for removal. While a majority wouldn’t be enough to remove the President from office, it would at least show some bipartisan condemnation from Trump.
Mitt Romney, Ben Sasse, Lisa Murkowski, and Susan Collins have all been outspoken critics of the President and could break rank. Lamar Alexander, Pat Roberts, and Mike Enzi are retiring after this election cycle, so they don’t have anything to lose by voting for a conviction.
Two senators have been quiet on where they stand. The first is Richard Burr and the second is Jim Risch, one of Idaho’s senators.
Risch has said he plans to keep an open mind going into the Senate trial, so now is the time to let him know what we think. I’m going to email and call his office and let him know that if he votes to call new witnesses to the stand for the Senate trial, then he’ll have my vote of support. Even if he doesn’t vote to convict, supporting a fair trial will earn my confidence.
Risch’s office number is 208-224-2752.
I can’t speak for the rest of you, but it’s all of your duty as citizens of this country to let your Senator know that you expect them to uphold the law and the notion that no one in this country is above it.
