Several of the Republican arguments against impeaching President Trump are astonishingly illogical. Let’s examine them.
“Impeachment shouldn’t occur because an election is less than a year away, and the voters can decide for themselves.”
This is a theme pushed incessantly on social media and by Republican officeholders and even by usually sensible conservative columnists. It is poppycock.
In this case, there was a monthslong effort by the president and his attorney, publicly identified as improper 14 months before the election. The phone call that started it all was made 16 months before the election. Those arguing that the election should settle things are in effect offering a “do whatever you want” ticket to a president for at least the final 16 months of his first term, if not longer. Why wouldn’t any future president try to rig his own reelection, knowing there would be no legal consequence to getting caught?
The timing shouldn’t matter. If we had video of Trump taking a cash bribe or shooting somebody on Fifth Avenue, the calendar would not be an obstacle. Nor should it be in this case.
There can be no offense if the scheme isn’t fully effectuated.
The aid that Trump threatened to withhold was eventually released to Ukraine, was it not? And Ukraine never had to publicly announce a new investigation into the Bidens. Therefore, there was no misconduct at all.
Again, this is a spectacular failure of logic. A crime becomes a crime with a concerted attempt to commit it, even if it isn’t successful. In this case, Trump never delivered the meeting he had promised and held up the legally mandated military assistance for two months (the two “quids”) while repeatedly demanding, in person and through his representatives, that Ukraine conduct two investigations (the “quos”) into his rivals.
In fact, as even Trump’s honest defenders admit, the demands were effective: Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky was scheduled to announce the investigations in an interview with CNN’s Fareed Zakaria on Sept. 13, after earlier declining several times to issue a statement drafted for him to that effect by Trump’s representatives.
Only the public reports of the whistleblower’s complaint stopped this basically extortionary plan from having its effect. The inspector general of the Intelligence Community alerted Congress on Sept. 9 to the existence of the whistleblower’s complaint, and the public news about it — although not its exact substance — leaked almost immediately. Trump released the aid two days later, leading Zelensky to cancel the planned interview with Zakaria.
The misconduct already had been committed, though, through many months of Trump’s pressure campaign.
The president can do anything he wants with regard to foreign policy.
No, he can’t. Congress has the powers to “provide for the common defense” and to “regulate commerce with foreign nations” and, of course, the sole power to appropriate public funds. The Supreme Court indicated in Train v. City of New York that presidents do not have general authority to “impound” funds appropriated by law.
All three of these arguments, then, are nonsensical. Nobody should take them seriously.
