Trump faces impeachment on a grave day in history

“You are the ones obstructing justice. You are the ones bringing pain and suffering to our Republic for your own selfish personal, political and partisan gain,” Trump wrote, accusing Democrats of the very offenses of which he is accused.

Pelosi described Trump’s tirade as “really sick.”

Trump’s impeachment has become about more than the misbehavior of a President and the Democratic claim that his actions reach the constitutional bar of “high crimes and misdemeanors.”

In retrospect, it might have been an inevitable constitutional collision given his belief in his own ultimate power and his disrespect for any conventional notions of presidential discretion — factors in evidence right from the start of the property-branding titan’s 2016 campaign, which turned US politics on its head.

A nation divided

“This is not something you can do based on polls,” said moderate Democratic Rep. Elissa Slotkin of Michigan. “The voters will have a chance to decide next year.”

An already bitter feud is stirring in the Republican-led Senate ahead of a trial early next year expected to fall well short of the two-thirds majority needed for Congress to oust a president for the first time.

But there may be moments of hope on Wednesday too, as the ancient mechanism of America’s democratic experiment swings into action to prove that no man is a king dwelling above the law.

Pelosi forced to act

Specifically, Trump is accused of withholding $400 million in military aid and the prospect of an Oval Office visit from new Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky to coerce him into announcing an investigation into Biden and his son Hunter’s business dealings in the country.

While the decision by the former vice president’s son to accept a paid role on the board of Burisma, a Ukrainian energy giant, while his father was in office is ethically questionable, there is no evidence of wrongdoing by either Biden.

For Democrats, such behavior validated impeachment because it confirmed the fears of the country’s founders that a rogue, demagogic president could incite foreign interference in US democracy.

“His scheme to corrupt an American presidential election subordinated the democratic sovereignty of the people to the private political ambitions of one man, the President himself,” said Rep. Jamie Raskin of Maryland at a House Rules Committee hearing Tuesday.

“Second, after this corrupt scheme came to light, and numerous public servants with knowledge of key events surfaced to testify in our committee investigations about the President’s actions, President Trump directed the wholesale, categorical and indiscriminate obstruction of this congressional impeachment investigation.”

For Democrats the question was: If this is not impeachable, what is?

A struggle for Republicans

From the start, Republicans struggled to counter the facts of the impeachment case, not least because Trump appeared several times to confirm the Democratic accusations against him.

Instead, the GOP in the House set out to attack the process, accusing Democrats of abusing their power themselves and inventing Trump’s abuses of authority to fulfill their dreams of destroying a President they had never forgiven for beating Hillary Clinton.

“We’re in a kangaroo court, it feels like in this place, because all of this is backwards,” Rep. Doug Collins, the top Republican on the House Judiciary Committee, said Tuesday.

“We’re more ‘Alice in Wonderland’ than we are House of Representatives. Because whether you agree that he needs to be impeached or not, do you not think there needs to be a modicum of process and rights?” Collins said.

While several officials from Kiev criticized Trump, there is no evidence that Ukraine participated in anything like the massive Russian intelligence and misinformation operation that US spy agencies say was designed to help Trump win the presidency.

Republicans also accused Democrats of failing to glean testimony from key witnesses, even though officials like former national security adviser John Bolton and Mulvaney were barred from showing up by Trump in a sweeping immunity claim.

Democrats declined to litigate to compel testimony, arguing that court action could take many months and Trump posed a “clear and present” danger to US security and the 2020 election.

Republicans — supported by the right-wing media propaganda machine — have also claimed that abuse of power is not a specific crime and is not therefore an impeachable offense. They argue that Trump asked Zelensky in the call to do “us” a favor, as in the United States, rather than seeking personal gain. But they have not explained how investigating a 2016 conspiracy theory or one of his political opponents represents a compelling US national interest.

Trump’s refusal to admit any transgression has deprived Republicans of the political cover of the defense that saved President Bill Clinton 20 years ago: that his actions were lamentable but did not rise to the level of impeachment.

That may be problematic for vulnerable Senate Republicans in swing state races in 2020. But the lockstep GOP support for Trump also demonstrates the President’s remarkable control over a party he transformed in his own nationalist image.