Kremlin.ru
Trump's contact with Russian president Vladimir Putin has raised suspicion among U.S. democrats.
New York is abuzz over the latest revelations about Donald Trump. I’m here on a book tour discussing Iran, but audiences want to know if the President will be impeached.
Court filings in the case of Trump’s longtime personal lawyer Michael Cohen show he was directed by The Donald to pay off two women with whom he had sexual relations. Prosecutors consider the payments, totaling several hundred thousand dollars, to be illegal campaign contributions because they were explicitly used to prevent scandal during the 2016 presidential race.
Top Democratic Party leaders admit those payments constitute impeachable offenses, but have so far not called for impeachment. Representative Jerrold Nadler of New York, who will head the House Judiciary Committee in January, has become the master of equivocation.
“Well, they would be impeachable offenses,” the Democrat told CNN. “Whether they are important enough to justify an impeachment is a different question.”
In my opinion, Trump is guilty of a number of high crimes and misdemeanors. He has escalated the undeclared wars in Syria and Yemen, serious crimes that have largely gone unmentioned in the impeachment debate. He obstructed justice by firing FBI Director James Comey, and covered up meetings his associates had with Russians.
Norman Solomon, co-founder of RootsAction, has been building a grass-roots movement for impeachment over the past two years. (Solomon is also co-author with me of the book Target Iraq.) He says Trump regularly violates the Constitution’s emoluments clause. The Trump family directly benefits from foreign governments renting rooms in Trump hotels in Washington, D.C., among other shady business dealings.
“Trump has been violating these clauses since his first day as President,” Solomon told me.
For now, the Republican-dominated Senate is not likely to convict Trump. By voting for impeachment in the House, but losing in the Senate, the Democrats could end up strengthening Trump. But new evidence may yet emerge. And even a House vote to impeach would force Trump to focus on defending himself, and potentially reduce his ability to wreak havoc on the government.
Last year, fifty-eight members of the House voted to debate impeachment. Democrats now hold a majority and the party base remains angry at Trump’s corruption and despotism. The House could start impeachment hearings at any time and enjoy considerable popular support.
I don’t see Trump’s collusion with Putin as one of the impeachable offenses. To date, there’s no solid evidence that Trump cooperated with Russia to illegally influence the 2016 elections, or adopt pro-Russian policies as a quid pro quo for favorable business dealings.
Yes, the Russians spent a few hundred thousand dollars to set up fake social media sites to attack Hillary Clinton and support Trump. The fake news was widely distributed but, despite the liberal outcry, it had relatively small impact.
Yes, high-level Trump officials met with Russians in hopes of getting dirt on Hillary Clinton. And Trump’s campaign did advocate easing Russian sanctions and establishing better relations with Putin.
Trump's activities involving Russia are as easily explained as political maneuvers rather than conspiracies.
But those activities are as easily explained as political maneuvers rather than conspiracies. Trump was looking for whatever support he could get. During the campaign, he sometimes professed an isolationist foreign policy that included improving relations with Russia. For their part, Russian leaders hoped for an end to Clinton’s neoliberal interventionism.
If Putin and Trump had a secret deal, why did Trump immediately appoint ultra-conservative interventionists to key cabinet posts, who then cranked up hostility with Russia?
For too many Democrats, Putin-bashing serves a convenient political purpose, says Alan MacLeod, a researcher at Glasgow Media Group.
“If Russia is to blame, there is no need for introspection, nor to cede political ground to progressives,” he told me. “Instead, it can be business as usual. There is no need to change policies, reflect upon a poorly run campaign . . . or understand why their policies failed to inspire the American public.”
Insisting on a Putin-Trump conspiracy also promotes Russia as a dangerous enemy, and allows Democrats to attack Trump on national security issues.
Nancy Pelosi, who will become speaker of the House, has summed up the mainstream Democratic Party view succinctly. “It seems that Putin is Trump’s puppeteer,” Pelosi said earlier this year. And in July, Nadler joined other Democratic House leaders calling for increased sanctions against Russia, proclaiming, “If we do not take any action, the American people may not trust the outcome of the next election.”
As it turned out, Russian midterm election interference never materialized.
In reality, Russia is a lesser imperialist power compared to the United States, or even Britain and France. It seeks hegemony in a limited number of places, such as the former USSR and Eastern Europe, and more recently, in parts of the Middle East. Putin heads an authoritarian government that oppresses the Russian people. But Russia is no more threat to the people of United States than any other lesser imperialist power. We face far greater threats from the neocons currently occupying the White House.
I view Russian interference in U.S. elections the same way I see its espionage. Both countries carry out illegal spying on one another. Occasionally a spy is caught. One side self-righteously denounces the other, but no one believes espionage will topple either government.
A recent Gallup poll showed that 58 percent of the American people favor improving relations with Russia while only 38 percent want more sanctions. So in both factual and practical terms, the Democrats should stop braying about the Trump-Putin conspiracy and focus on the White House’s real crimes.