Trump’s Impeachment Is Now Urgent

So this Tweet seems to have struck a chord. I think the impeachment calculus has changed since this Ukraine/whistleblower story came out.

Refusal to impeach Trump because the “Senate will acquit him anyway” is the same logic as McConnell refusing to put bills up for a vote “because the President won’t sign it.” It’s an abdication of Constitutional responsibility.

— Aaron Astor (@AstorAaron) September 21, 2019

We still don’t know exactly what the whistleblower report says but much reporting connects it to the effort to pressure new Ukrainian President Zelensky to investigate a company (Burisma Holdings) that Hunter Biden served on the board, and on Joe Biden’s role in pressuring Ukraine to fire the former prosecutor, Viktor Shokin, in 2016. The two Biden-related issues have been debunked in reporting in May (there was worldwide pressure to have the corrupt Shokin fired in 2016 and it appears Shokin wasn’t actively investigated Hunter Biden anyway in 2016) and the current Ukrainian prosecutor has said there is no evidence of wrongdoing from Hunter Biden re: Burisma or Joe Biden re: Shokin’s firing.

The biggest question is whether or not Trump explicitly threatened to withhold key defense monies from Ukraine if they don’t re-investigate the Bidens. That would be a clear and obvious abuse of power and cause for immediate impeachment if evidence can be produced of an explicit quid pro quo. But even if there were just implicit threats to withhold the money, the explicit demands (via Giuliani and directly) to investigate Trump’s likely 2020 political rival is a gross, impeachable abuse of power.

The reason it is so urgent, however, is that it involves the 2020 election, not prior behavior.

It is a crime in progress and demands immediate action. Trump clearly feels emboldened by the House’s failure to conduct even routine oversight so he sees no problem in soliciting foreign help in 2020. And that’s why the prior caution about impeachment as “overreach” just doesn’t fly anymore. So, it’s time to stop pondering whether the Senate will ever convict and start doing the House’s Constitutional duty. Not only will future Presidents view Democratic refusal to impeach as acquiescence, but also the current President will view House fecklessness as a green light to encourage bolder foreign interference in the 2020 election.

Image by OpenClipart-Vectors from Pixabay