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Attempted Crimes Are Still Crimes, Mr Trump
In Donald Trump’s public speaking style, every statement is immediately accompanied by its own negation. This storm of “People say all the time…Now I’m not saying...But come on...” gives his sympathizers a partisan Rorschach Test of pick-and-choose platform positions and the thinnest veneer of deniability for his most hateful calls to violence. However, Trump is now using this same rhetorical jumble as a legal defense for the abuses of power his administration and party have committed.
Even before he bribed Ukraine to aid his personal reelection campaign, Trump was funneling more government money into his pocket through his hotels and properties. But he at least seems to have found one act where even the Republican Party will not defend him.
The President recently tried to arrange for the upcoming G7 global conference to be held in a Trump-branded hotel in Miami. Using the power and authority of a public office to enrich yourself is such a basic illegal act that it is expressly banned in the Constitution, and yet since inauguration the Republican White House has been encouraging traveling military personnel to reroute their journeys to stay in Trump hotels and hosting expensive international meetings at Trump properties. Foreign leaders seeking to curry American favor eagerly brag about how much money they have spent in Trump hotels.
President Jimmy Carter sold a peanut farm because it might receive farm subsidies, whereas the Republicans have set up an international system to directly funnel bribes and embezzlement into the President’s pocket.
After pressure from the remaining Republican leadership, Trump backed down on his attempt to use the G7 conference as a money-maker. Yet the administration continues to assert that this unconstitutional act would not have been illegal even if carried through. This is the new Republican strategy.
When White House Chief of Staff Mick Mulvaney confessed in a press conference that the President and his administration had held back military aid to embattled Ukraine to pressure that country to investigate phony charges against the Biden family, he was trying to make our country accept illegal acts. That is the exact fact the House Impeachment Inquiry was set up to address. However, the Republican Party has learned that it can confess to crimes and it only serves to confuse the public as to what the law actually is.
The law must be upheld. U.S. Constitution, Article 2, Section 4: “The President, Vice President and all civil officers of the United States, shall be removed from office on impeachment for, and conviction of, treason, bribery, or other high crimes and misdemeanors.”
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