“In the course of my official duties, I have received information from multiple U.S. Government officials that the President of the United States is using the power of his office to solicit interference from a foreign country in the 2020 U.S. election. This interference includes, among other things, pressuring a foreign country to investigate one of the President’s main domestic political rivals. The President’s personal lawyer, Mr. Rudolph Giuliani, is a central figure in this effort. Attorney General Barr appears to be involved as well.”
— Opening statement in National Security Whistleblower Complaint, delivered 8/19/19 to Director of National Intelligence and reviewed by the U.S. Congress, 9/26/19
Well, here we are…. But, of course, how else was this all supposed to end?
It was only a matter of time before this abomination of a presidency would finally sink us into a constitutional crisis and wind up in the embarrassment of impeachment.
Most likely, Donald Trump isn’t going anywhere—unless we send him packing in November of 2020. The Senate Republicans are not going to convict a president with an intra-party popularity around 90 percent, even if he “shoots someone in the middle of Fifth Avenue.” It is political suicide and that is the game they are playing here, not any hokey, bullshit patriotism, sworn into duty to uphold the Constitution and the rule of law. That is a line you learn in middle school that pertains to none of what actually happens or has happened in Washington D.C. since they elevated a mosquito infested Southern swamp into the nation’s capital in 1790.
Nah, Trump will stay with his shame and his historical marker as a hack criminal whose best work was saved for B-level television, and the inside straight he pulled on November 6, 2016 that we now know occurred with ample assistance from the Russian government. You could see this coming from the start of this mess, just as I wrote to friends within minutes of his Election Day victory. It was always a “Countdown to Impeachment.” He would do ultimately something stupid and wrong, I reasoned (and he has done many things stupid and wrong since), but this latest Ukrainian shit will finally get that scarlet letter “I” painted on his bloated visage forevermore.
History is a bitch, and it has come calling for Donald J. Trump.
His unimpeded lunacy has a shelf life and it has reached its apex. Our national crisis of one; this bleating troll of a man whose check has bounced and the bank….
Well, the bank needs its money, bub. And El Douche knows all about that. His phalanx of failures resulting in a spectacular number of bankruptcies and sad-sack ventures has led to these secret tax returns he still uses an army of lawyers to prevent us from seeing. Oh, the tales they would tell: More embarrassments that will likely come crashing in once he set in motion the Congress’s legal might to impeach. Man, it has become a civic lesson for Donnie, who chose to run the United States like a casino and went belly up. Because belly up is the default position for him. Self-destruction is his raison d’être. His art is masochism.
Ahhh, but The Donald thinks the dogshit in his fist is a sweet-smelling rose. This, and myopic racism is what the father gave him, with a preternatural gift of denial and an unrivaled level of self-unawareness. And that’s probably for the best. It’s always a boon for the victim to not see it coming. My cats know that deal, but the President, well, he needs some education on how this whole system works when it has been cracked in pieces as he’s been stumbling through his Mr. Magoo governing style, careening into crime after crime and then telling us all about it on Twitter and national television. Remember when he admitted to NBC News that he fired the head of the FBI because of “the Russian thing,” which brought the weight of a two-year investigation that he tried to thwart at every turn? This, of course, and a mid-term thrashing that handed Congress over to his political enemies on a silver platter. That should have been enough to impeach, as the ten blatant instances of obstruction of justice that continues with this latest Ukrainian clusterfuck.
I mean, how stupid do you have to be to pull this shit and then evoke the Justice Department, the puppet Attorney General, the Vice President, and drag your mentally ill private attorney, who then fingered the entire State Department, into this nonsense? There are so many fuck-ups in Trump’s attempt to mob-threaten a foreign country to investigate a totally ginned up bullshit story about the son of his likely political opponent, whom he is losing to in every poll since Joe Biden shuffled meekly into this race. Not the least of which is to put the whole affair into “a separate electronic system that is otherwise used to store and handle classified information of an especially sensitive nature,” according to the fancy whistleblower complaint released on 9/26 to Congress, and “not the computer system in which such transcripts are typically stored for coordination, finalization, and distribution to Cabinet-level officials.” Only because… (wait for it…) this is the crap Hillary Clinton rightfully got for having a separate email server. Every time you hear Trumpites mention “Hilary’s emails”—this is why. And, well… duh.
The most damning excerpt in the whistleblower complaint is the White House directing the “lock down of all records of the phone call,” which, (clearing my throat for effect), is an all-star super-duper toppermost of the poppermost cover up. And it will end in the disbarment and perhaps jailing of Steven Engel, director of the Office of Legal Counsel, who blocked the whistleblower complaint from being handed over to Congress, which is dictated by law; Assistant Attorney General Brian Benczkowski, head of the criminal division, who brazenly passed on investigating the President’s crime; Attorney General Bill Barr, who denies having heard about any such call to pursue a conspiracy theory, probably pitched by FOX News talk show host Sean Hannity that it was Ukraine not Russia that helped Trump win in 2016, despite the intelligence community and the Mueller Report conclusions; White House counsel Pat Cipollone, who according to Joseph Maguire, acting Director of National Intelligence, put him in the “untenable position of denying the material to Congress over a claim that it did not fall within his jurisdiction as leader of the intelligence community,” which is literally his job description; and Trump’s personal attorney, Rudolf Giuliani, whose erratic criminal behavior for months enthusiastically headed up this fiasco.
So, in very Nixonian fashion, this whole “getting dirt on the opponent” that took on national security alerts in 2016 with the Russian government basically entrenched in what would be the future president’s campaign, was taken to yet another country with the same crime and then, well covered up. Trump, descending into a state of complete doddering madness, had the bright idea to declassify a private conversation with the Ukrainian president that… (wait for this one…) totally incriminated him. This is what the President of the United States released to the public and an impeachment inquiry the day before the damning whistleblower complaint dropped: Trump to newly sworn-in Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky, “There’s a lot of talk about Biden’s son, that Biden stopped the prosecution and a lot of people want to find out about that so whatever you can do with the Attorney General would be great. Biden went around bragging that he stopped the prosecution so if you can look into it… it sounds horrible to me.”
I think I’ve written this here before, but for the purposes of people who are still stunningly defending this recidivist criminal behavior: Game. Set. Match.
The President of the United States withheld funds appropriated for the defense of an American ally to gain dirt on a political opponent, got a half dozen White House lawyers to lie and cover it up, and then proudly shared the evidence to bury him.
Or, as its also known: just a typical Tuesday afternoon in the Trump Administration.
Hey, you wanted a game show host to give this a try.
Given everything that has transpired up to this, is impeachment really that much of a stretch?
