Pres. Trump isn’t the only one that should be impeached
16th December 2019 · 0 Comments
By C.C. Campbell-Rock
Contributing Columnist
We’ve seen this movie before. Republicans launched a campaign of obstruction of justice on the day President Barack Hussein Obama was inaugurated. Back then, U.S. Senator Mitch McConnell and his Republican cohorts bypassed the ceremony and huddled together to plan how they would make Obama, the USA’s first African-American president, a Democrat and 44th president of the United States, a one-term president. They vowed to say no to his proposed policies and stop him from appointing any U.S. Supreme Court justices.
The Republicans couldn’t stop Obama from successfully nominating U.S. Supreme Court Justices Sonia Maria Sotomayor in 2009 and Elena Kagan in 2010, when Democrats controlled the 111th Congress (2009–2011), with majorities in both houses of Congress.
Two years later, however, emboldened by wins in the 2014 elections, and the rise of a radical group of Republicans, which gave Republicans control of both houses of Congress, McConnell and his co-conspirators got busy obstructing President Obama’s policies and vowed anew to kill the Affordable Care Act, aka, Obamacare.
On March 16, 2016, President Obama nominated Merrick Garland to serve as an Associate Justice of the Supreme Court to fill the vacancy created by the death of Antonin Scalia. But McConnell, the Senate Majority Leader refused to even hold a confirmation hearing for Garland. The Kentucky senator held the Supreme Court seat hostage until Trump got in and nominated Neil Gorsuch and, later, Brett Kavanaugh to the bench amid allegations of sexual misconduct. Hypocrisy reared its head again, as McConnell had no problem impeaching President Bill Clinton for a consensual sexual dalliance.
Back in 2016, McConnell continued his obstructionism tactics when he declined to give a bipartisan statement with President Barack Obama warning Russia not to interfere in the upcoming election.
After Special Counsel Robert Muller’s investigation, McConnell refused to bring to the floor several election protection bills that would tighten election security, earning McConnell the nickname of the “grim reaper,” because of the number of bills that House Dems have sent to his desk that remain dead on arrival. A reported 275 bills are still waiting for a Senate floor vote.
McConnell isn’t alone in obstructing justice and obstructing Congress, and, in effect, going against his oath of office and conceding his senatorial power to Trump.
Before Democrats took back the House of Representatives in the 2018 elections, House Republicans joined McConnell in blocking any and all proposed legislation by Democrats. They worked to overturn Obamacare, pushed for legislation that allowed dark money into campaigns, and carried out any number of nefarious schemes to protect Donald J. Trump and his campaign cartel from scrutiny.
Even after the Special Counsel’s report concluded that Russia interfered in the 2016 election to install Trump into the Oval Office and that Trump had committed at least 10 acts of obstruction of justice, Trump is still running the same under-the-cover clandestine relationship with Vladimir Putin and his authoritarian henchmen, while Republicans remain complicit.
Trump met last Tuesday with Russian Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov, who promptly contraindicated the official White House readout of their meeting, which said they spoke to one another about election interference. Lavrov said that they hadn’t discussed the topic during the meeting.
Obviously, Trump is continuing his habit of lying daily. Trump has told, according to fact checkers at The Washington Post, more than 13,000 lies since he’s been in office.
Meanwhile, Republicans last week continued to obstruct Congress on Trump’s behalf. They are co-conspirators with Trump in his denial of Russian interference in the election and in the facts about Trump’s wrongdoing exposed by Democrats during the House impeachment hearings.
In fits and spasmodic verbal diatribes that hit the height of hypocrisy, Republicans last week complained and lied about the process the Democratic House majority used to control the Impeachment Hearings. If the process to impeach a president of the United States wasn’t so serious and grave, the hypocritic Republicans actions would be laughable. They cried about a process that they themselves created when they impeached Clinton. They feigned and protested like the victims they painted themselves and Trump to be, while pointing to “secret basement hearings” they said were “unfair.”
These are the same people who, in 2017, held closed door hearings to gather testimony from Donald J. Trump Jr., Jared Kushner, and others involved in back-channel meetings (100 at last count) with Russians to get dirt on Hillary Clinton during Trump’s 2016 campaign. They conducted the hearings because of the public outcry from citizens, who smelled a Russian rat. Of course, the Republicans found no wrongdoing.
Trump continues to obstruct Congress and abuse the power of his office, for which he is now impeached, while the Republicans continue to cover-up and excuse his wrongdoing. Trump refused to allow cabinet members to testify before Congress and made them ignore legally- issued Congressional subpoenas.
The Republicans have said nothing about these obstruction tactics, rather last week during the impeachment hearings they straight up made excuses for why Trump really didn’t commit bribery or orchestrate an arms-for-dirt quid pro quo scheme with Ukraine, just as he did with Russia to get Hillary Clinton’s emails.
Nor have Republicans said anything about Trump’s violation of the Emoluments Clause or about all the wheeling and dealing of Trump’s executive assistants, Ivanka Trump, his daughter, and son-in-law Jared Kushner. While Trump continues to brag about the tariff war with China, in 2018 Ivanka Trump got approval from China for 16 new trademarks — including for ‘voting machines. Meanwhile, since her husband, Kushner entered the White House, a firm he founded has received over $90m in foreign funds.
So, nepotism laws be damned, huh? Clearly, Trump has broken this law, along with a plethora of others.
Federal law, at 5 U.S.C. § 3110, generally prohibits a federal official, including a Member of Congress, from appointing, promoting, or recommending for appointment or promotion any “relative” of the official to any agency or department over which the official exercises authority or control. The federal anti-nepotism statute applies to all public officials (including the President and Members of Congress) in all three branches of the federal government.
As for the Republicans, they will continue to obstruct, cover-up, and mouth Russian propaganda talking points when it’s time for the U.S. Senate Impeachment Trial of Donald John Trump, Sr.
When House Speaker Nancy Pelosi famously told Trump, “All Road lead to Russia with you,” she put her finger on the main reason why Republicans have closed ranks around Trump.
McConnell, Graham, Trump, and several other Republicans, including the National Rifle Association (NRA), a Republican partisan non-profit, have all taken Russian money.
According to a 2017 Dallas News article, Trump and the political action committees for Mitch McConnell, Marco Rubio, Scott Walker, Lindsey Graham, John Kasich and John McCain accepted $7.35 million in contributions from a Ukrainian-born oligarch; the business partner of two of Russian President Putin’s favorite oligarchs and a Russian government bank.
In 2018, McClatchy reported that the FBI was investigating whether Alexander Torshin, a deputy governor of Russia’s central bank, sent money to the NRA to secretly boost Trump’s presidential campaign. Campaign records show that the NRA was Trump’s biggest supporter, spending about $30 million on him during the campaign.
And this year, a Washington Post story indicated that in January, as the Senate debated whether to permit the Trump administration to lift sanctions on Russia’s largest aluminum producer, Rusal, McConnell led the Senate vote, so the project could be built in Kentucky, which McConnell represents.
Now that we know that the obstruction of justice and hypocrisy emanating from the Republican Party to keep Trump and themselves in power by any means necessary, including climbing into bed with Russia, we the people, especially people of color, need to buckle up and join the battle for freedom and democracy.
This article originally published in the December 16, 2019 print edition of The Louisiana Weekly newspaper.
