Monday, May 15, 2017

Robert Parry — The Push for Trump’s Impeachment

The Russia-gate affair has taken a strange turn as advocates for President Trump’s removal say his ouster should take precedence over completing the investigation and actually seeing how much there is there....
Turning dislike for the president into an extraconstitutional crisis.
Yet, what has been perhaps most remarkable about the entire Russia-gate affair is that it has been conducted with almost no evidence being shared with the American people. Thus, we have the prospect of a duly elected President of the United States being targeted for removal by the political and media Establishment without the citizens being let in on exactly what evidence exists and how significant it is....
The curious role of the Central Intelligence Agency, the National Security Agency and the FBI in spearheading the Russia-gate investigation – including having handpicked “senior analysts” from the three agencies produce a clearly biased and nearly evidence-free report on Jan. 6 – has raised concerns of a “soft coup” or “deep-state coup” to negate the 2016 election.
Considering the seriousness of such a move in a constitutional republic that prides itself as the gold standard of democracy, it might have been expected that that the law-enforcement and intelligence agencies would go the extra mile in sharing their evidence with the American people whose electoral judgment would, in effect, be made meaningless: both by Comey’s late intervention against Clinton and now the pressure to impeach Trump.
Yet, instead of a commitment to openness, the intelligence community is telling the citizens that we must accept the fact of Russian “meddling” as “a given,” sans evidence. In addition, influential voices are emerging to declare that Trump’s impeachment should proceed even without the results of the Russia-gate investigation of possible Trump-Russia collusion being known to the public....
Negating the will of the voters as expressed through the constitutional process – as flawed as that process may be – requires its own process that is perceived as open and fair, not some star chamber or kangaroo court where the intelligence community gets to hide the evidence as “classified” and tells the citizenry to “trust us.”
As unfit and inept as Donald Trump may be, he was elected – and no one should underestimate how dangerous it could be for Washington insiders and other Establishment figures to undo the electoral choice through a process cloaked in secrecy.
James Clapper, John Brennan, and James Comey, along with the "anonymous sources" quoted in the New York Times and Washington Post, have and still are politicizing intelligence and threatening American democracy by acting improperly.

Those supporting this folly are complicit in the soft coup that is underway.

This is threatening the foundations of liberalism while purporting to defend it.

Consortium News
The Push for Trump’s Impeachment
Robert Parry

8 comments:

Peter Pan said...

Would it be ironic for Trump to be tried before one of those secret courts and sent to Guantanamo indefinitely?

Ed Seedhouse said...

Maybe there is "nothing there", but if so the Administration's handling of the situation sure *looks* like a coverup, and sure *smells* like one. There's a lot of smoke for no fire...

Tom Hickey said...

Under US law if there is suspicion of criminal wrongdoing, the appropriate investigative agencies are supposed to mount an investigation and if evidence is found, to turn it over to a prosecutor to determine whether there is sufficient evidence to bring charges.

The trial is supposed to be by a jury of one's peers, not the media or public.

In the case of the president, the "jury of peers" is the House, which has the power to impeach, and the Senate, which has the power to remove after impeachment in the House.

What is happening now is a mockery of justice that serves no one in the long run.

And it's highly toxic.

After Nixon and Clinton, if Trump is impeached, even if not removed, this will become a fixture of US politics. In a polarized country, this will be deadly.

Even if nothing more happens starting tomorrow, US politics and the democratic process on which it is based has already been further poisoned.

Tom Hickey said...

Oh, and the latest faux outrage over the president "leaking top secret information to the Russians," it's BS.

Even if he did, and McMaster, who was present, denies it, the president has the power to do so if he chooses. Col Lang said this some time ago in another context, for example, and he is in a position to know.

Here is an explanation in another context.

TRUMP HAS THE POWER TO DECLASSIFY WHATEVER HE WANTS — INCLUDING THE RUSSIAN INTERCEPTS
Jon Schwarz – The Intercept February 15 2017

The huge edifice of classification by the U.S. government has no basis in laws passed by Congress (with one small and, in this case, irrelevant exception [nuclear secrets].) Instead, the executive branch classifies material based on presidential executive orders, with the president’s power in turn based on his constitutional role as commander in chief of the armed forces. The Supreme Court has stated that the presidential power “to classify and control access to information bearing on national security … flows primarily from the constitutional investment of power in the president.”

This means that Trump has the power to declassify anything he wants, right now.…
.

Meanwhile, the media is in an uproar over impeachment for treason.

Tom Hickey said...

This also just in.

Bloomberg View
Trump's Classified Disclosure Is Shocking But Legal
Why federal laws that criminalize the revealing of secrets don’t apply to the president

Noah Feldman

Tom Hickey said...

I should have included that "Noah Feldman is a ... a professor of constitutional and international law at Harvard University and was a clerk to U.S. Supreme Court Justice David Souter."

Peter Pan said...

It's amazing that an American president is allowed to disclose state secrets at will. Does Putin have the same freedom?

Dave said...

Bob I agree, especially when you realize that he can use those secrets to enrich himself and his cronies. This is beyond troubling, it is clear that the elites of this country have decided that having a buffoon in office is fine as long as they get more tax breaks.