Democrats talking about impeaching President Trump are so absurdly premature as to convict themselves of extreme political hackery.
Their excuses for impeachment change with the news cycle, but right now, the only ground remotely reasonable for impeachment is the evidence reported by inspector general Robert Mueller that Trump tried on 10 occasions to impede the Russia-related investigation. The contrary arguments, though, are strong. The first two are that Trump apparently committed no underlying crime to cover up and that he provided remarkably free access to requested documents and to members of his team without asserting executive privilege. It’s hard to charge obstruction when he destroyed no documents and suborned no perjury.
The third counterargument is that in those instances where the obstruction would have been an issue, his aides talked him out of it or did not follow through on his alleged directives. If someone talks about stealing something from a car with an open window but doesn’t actually do it, he hasn’t committed a crime. Likewise, the mere consideration of obstruction of justice is not itself obstruction.
The next reason discussed for impeachment is Trump’s defiance of post-Mueller-report subpoenas. Again, the charge would be obstruction. But this charge is nowhere near ripe. Most of these subpoenas are less than two months old, and all are at least somewhat challengeable, constitutionally. Trump’s resistance to subpoenas for the former White House legal counsel is on quite solid legal ground (as the Wall Street Journal recently explained); his resistance to fishing expeditions through private business affairs is quite understandable (more on that, momentarily); and his other pushback is a typical part of the constitutional give-and-take of interbranch squabbling in a system of separated but overlapping powers.
Less than two months of such wrangling, over matters of not-immediately-pressing public importance, is utterly unremarkable. It’s not a constitutional crisis.
The final possible ground for impeachment involves suspicions that Trump committed crimes in his private business affairs, in his filings with the IRS, or in hush payments made to his (ahem, alleged) mistresses. Some of us, familiar with his past that many would charitably describe as grifting, would be unsurprised if those suspicions are correct.
Mere suspicions, however, are not grounds for rifling through private finances, not even those of a president. Absent specific reason for such subpoenas — reasons strong enough to justify the equivalent of a criminal-investigation search warrant — those subpoenas arguably are abuses of congressional power that is intended for oversight, not for satisfying curiosity or gathering opposition research.
It appears from the outside that the only specific, rather than general, reason to suspect criminal wrongdoing is based on testimony from former Trump lawyer Michael Cohen. Cohen, though, is an admitted criminal liar and apparently a serial fabulist. Unless he has provided serious documentary evidence to back up his charges, House investigators are at best overhasty in talking impeachment based on Cohen’s word.
Now, to anticipate the counterargument, let everyone understand that what would be a fishing investigation into Trump’s finances is significantly different than the originally focused probe into the Clintons’ personal financial dealings known collectively as Whitewater. In the Clintons’ case, taxpayers were forced to bail out a savings-and-loan operation to the tune of $60 million, resulting from what rather obviously was fraudulent activity by the Clintons’ business partners.
When there is fraud connected to taxpayer dollars, the matter is inherently a legitimate focus of congressional investigation — especially when the president was at least tangentially (and possibly more) involved. Such circumstances do not pertain to Trump’s business affairs.
For all those reasons, Trump has significant arguments to make against the Democratic subpoenas, and the Democrats have no legitimate grounds to move straight to formal impeachment proceedings.
Sober, careful inquiries are justifiable. But, especially on a matter as serious as impeaching the president, hyperpartisan rushes to judgment are not.
