Democrats have been careful not to use the word “impeachment” even as special counsel Robert Mueller drops indictments and details emerge on President Trump’s potential conflict of interests. But what happened in Helsinki on Monday is testing their patience.
Democrats in and outside Congress unleashed a torrent of statements calling Trump’s remarks alongside Russian President Vladimir Putin “treasonous,” “disgraceful,” and “treacherous.” On Tuesday, House Democrats increased the drumbeat, planning to bring a resolution to the floor rebuking Trump and confirming the chamber’s position in support of the U.S. intelligence community’s conclusion that Russia interfered in the 2016 presidential election, attacking multiple facets of the Democratic Party in an effort to sway the election.
Pelosi issued a guidance letter to the caucus, informing them of the actions, which included a doomed motion to increase funding for Election Assistance Commission grants. A few hours later, she stood alongside current and former House Intelligence Committee Democrats, who urged Republicans to draw a red line for Trump.
“This has gone beyond norm defying, beyond norm shattering,” said Rep. Denny Heck, D-Wash., who sits on the Intelligence Committee. “We’re now at the place putting our country at peril. If ever there were a clarion call to put country above party it occurred in Helsinki, Finland and it is at the doorstep of congressional Republicans.”
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Though most Democrats stopped short of connecting the dots from Trump’s Helsinki gambit to impeachment, the implications were clear. Democrats in Congress aren’t running on impeachment in the midterm elections and they don’t intend to. Even the most liberal supporters of impeachment who sit on the House Judiciary Committee don’t talk about it ceaselessly.
But Democrats have high hopes that they will be the party in power, at least in the House, come January 2019. They’re already keeping scrupulous records of every conflict of interest, or Russia-related discovery they may want to investigate should they take the House and the subpoena power that comes with the majority.
“We have reached a number of inflection points, points where we thought something now is going to happen as a result of the actions of the president of the United States,” Rep. Jan Schakowsky, D-Ill., said at the Tuesday press conference hammering Trump for Helsinki. “If we in the United States Congress let this moment go by without anything being done about it then shame on all of us.”
When asked if Trump’s Helsinki appearance could increase calls for impeachment, Pelosi said, “perhaps in the country.”
“But again in the Congress we want to stay focused on honoring our oath of office to protect and defend the Constitution and our country,” Pelosi said. “That’s our fight.”
Most Democratic lawmakers aren’t throwing around the word “impeachment” like rising progressive candidates, but it is just below the surface. It follows that when a member says a president’s actions are “treasonous,” impeachment would be lingering close behind.
Harvard professor Laurence Tribe told Newsweek it’s reasonable to call Trump’s actions at the presser standing side-by-side with Putin treasonous because “if one defines war to include cyberwar — e.g., by deliberately hacking into a nation’s computer-based election infrastructure,” then America witnessed Trump “openly aiding and abetting the Russian military’s ongoing war against America.”
Liberals are mindful of the possibility that using words like “treason” and “impeachment” could harm Democrats’ chances of regaining the majority.
“There’s a big difference between avoiding too much loose talk about impeachment, which I strongly favor avoiding, and avoiding thought and understanding about it,” Tribe told Crooked Media in June. Tribe also warned that impeachment is traumatic to the country, and carrying it out typically proves perilous to the party in power. The risks are many and the outcome far from certain.
Presently, Democrats don’t expect help from Republicans, who have twisted themselves into knots to appear tough on Russia while simultaneously refusing to criticize Trump. House Republicans have been uninterested in conducting oversight into Trump’s potential violations of the Constitution’s emoluments clause or joining with Democrats in a symbolic resolution to rebuke Trump.
“Trump’s betrayal of America in Helsinki adds quite a bit to the case for moving toward possible impeachment,” Tribe told the Washington Examiner. But it takes away none of the risks, which Tribe outlines in his new book with Joshua Matz on the subject, To End a Presidency.
“Appointing a select bipartisan joint House-Senate committee with subpoena power entrusted to both the majority and the minority, charged to investigate what happened during the 2-hour closed meeting between Trump and Putin, and to explore all aspects of Trump’s peculiar stance toward the Russian Federation, would make sense as a minimum first step even before the midterms,” Tribe said in an email to the Washington Examiner.
Rep. Schakowsky, one of the other 58 who voted in favor of impeaching Trump last year, said Trump’s actions “border on treason” but, practically, impeachment is “not going to happen.” She hoped that Helsinki would at the very least force Republicans to break with Trump, but signs of fracturing have predominantly appeared on the Senate side.
“This is national security crisis in my view; combine that with a denigration of our closest allies and the embrace of this dictator, this KGB agent, to me it’s obviously unacceptable activity for a president,” Schakowsky said. “But I don’t know, today seems a lot like business as usual.”
“It should be a tipping point,” she said. “It doesn’t feel like a tipping point.”
