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By John Wojcik
Ditching months of claims by President Trump that his dealings with Ukraine were “perfect,” Trump’s TV lawyers and GOP lawmakers are now asserting that a quid-pro-quo of aid for political favors – even if proven beyond a shadow of a doubt – is not grounds for impeachment.
They have taken the logic offered them Monday by sleaze lawyer Alan Dershowitz and they are running with it. Dershowitz said that since all politicians overlap their own and the public interests, “it cannot be impeachable.” If a president believes that doing things that are good for him are also good for the country then he cannot be impeached, he told lawmakers at the trial this week.
Following that logic, even if a president broke U.S. law, for example, by bribing a foreign leader to construct a hotel in that country, a hotel from which he would reap the profits, he could not be impeached if he “believed” that such lining of his pockets was good for the country as a whole.
The point to which that absurdity takes us, of course, is to the point where it is impossible to impeach a president for any reason whatsoever, up to and including the shooting of someone on Fifth Avenue.
Since all politicians conflate their personal interests with the public interest “it cannot be impeachable,” the GOP lawmakers are telling us now.
It is clear from the question and answer phase that began yesterday that almost all the GOP senators are buying into this logic and have made up their minds against witnesses and for acquittal of the president. It is unlikely that there will be more than three who bolt, short of the necessary four needed to call witnesses....
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