The Saturday Morning Impeachment Catch-Up

A majority of registered voters (54%) agree with Republican Justin Amash (MI) that Trump committed impeachable offenses. Pelosi knows he's committed impeachable offenses as well, but doesn't want to start impeachment proceedings against him for partisan considerations and because she is an old coward who should retire. In the middle of a clash with Judiciary Chair Jerry Nadler over impeachment on Tuesday evening, she told her senior leadership team that she’d like to see Trump "in prison." She isn't the sheriff and it isn't her job to put Trump in prison. It's her job to impeach him and she apparently can't bring herself to do it. According to Heather Caygle at Politico "Nadler pressed Pelosi to allow his committee to launch an impeachment inquiry against Trump-- the second such request he’s made in recent weeks only to be rebuffed by the California Democrat and other senior leaders (Hoyer and Bustos). Pelosi stood firm, reiterating that she isn’t open to the idea of impeaching Trump at this time."

Only about a quarter of House Dems have come out and publicly said they're for impeachment now. But there are far more who are waiting for Pelosi to give them the OK to get on the impeachment train. It really is just the Blue Dogs on the far right fringe of the Democratic Party who are adamantly opposed. Once Pelosi gives the signal, the dam will break and the majority needed to start the process will be there the next day. Trump is getting nervous enough to have fumed at a Fox News interview with Laura Ingraham from Normandy that Mueller is "a fool," Schumer "a jerk" and Pelosi "a nasty, vindictive, horrible person... I actually don’t think she is a talented person… I’ve tried to be nice to her because I would’ve liked to have gotten some deals done. She’s incapable of doing deals."

Yesterday, Charlie Cook offered an extra-constitutional alternative to impeachment. His argument was flaccid because, essentially he doesn't grok the difference between what the House does and what the Senate does. (I hope he watches the Robert Reich video below.) "There is one solution I have yet to hear from Democrats," he wrote, "but would seem pretty obvious. First, defeat Trump in November 2020 and do it by a convincing margin, one that he cannot dispute or claim was stolen from him and that he could not contest. Then, after he leaves office on January 20, 2021, appoint a legal eminence, preferably a prominent Republican lawyer or jurist, possibly someone who served in one of the last two pre-Trump Republican administrations of George H.W. Bush or George W. Bush, to serve as a special counsel for the sole purpose of deciding whether allegations against Trump warrant indictment with a reasonable chance of conviction-- and if so, do it. For the most bitter Trump-haters, what could be sweeter than watching him fight to stay out of jail and possibly not succeeding in that? It circumvents the constitutional concerns of prosecuting a sitting president-- as Robert Mueller cited the Justice Department’s long-standing policies against it-- and it offers those who loathe Trump the pound of flesh they seek."

On Thursday, former federal prosecutor Renato Mariotti penned a post for Politico along similar lines, How Trump Could Be Prosecuted After The White House. "The outlines of a potential civilian prosecution of a former president Trump are already emerging," he asserted. "While there are reports of tax dodges, illegal campaign contributions, and improper foreign contributions to his inaugural committee-- among other things-- investigations into those claims are ongoing. There is, however, an overwhelming case that the president engaged in obstruction of justice-- his effort to stop the special counsel’s office from probing his campaign’s ties to Russia. In the second volume of his 448-page report, Mueller sets forth evidence of obstruction of justice that any competent federal prosecutor could use to draft an indictment. And Mueller made it clear himself that his detailed report was intended, in part, to 'preserve the evidence' because 'a President does not have immunity after he leaves office.' Although it’s impossible to know exactly what a prosecution of Citizen Trump would look like, or who would conduct it, it’s already possible to project some paths a likely prosecution would take. In the eyes of a seasoned former federal prosecutor looking only at the evidence we have so far, here are the likely routes-- and what Trump has to worry about next."

Everything he writes is predicated on two outcomes not happening in November of 2020: obviously that Trump not win reelection and, also that Biden-- who would absolutely pardon him-- is not elected. Neither Bernie nor Elizabeth Warren would pardon Trump, so were either to become president, Mariotti's 3 strongest cases against Trump would come into play:

• 3 obstruction convictions are in the bag:

• "his attempt to fire Mueller, the man appointed to investigate the Russian government’s interference in the 2016 election and the possibility that the Trump campaign conspired with it"
• directing Cory Lewandowski to persuade then-Attorney General Sessions to limit the scope of Mueller's investigation or to fire him
• pressuring Don McGahn to create a false record to hide the fact that Trump had directed him to fire Mueller.

• Trump’s efforts to dissuade Paul Manafort, his former campaign chairman, from cooperating, which Mueller appears to believe is supported by substantial evidence.
• Federal prosecutors in the Southern District of New York told a federal judge that Trump directed payments (to women he had had affairs with) that were campaign finance crimes for which Trump’s former lawyer Michael Cohen pleaded guilty. State-level charges have an extra level of jeopardy because Trump cannot be pardoned for them by a Biden should he-- God forbid-- be the next president.