American democracy, and the constitutional system that supports it, appear to be entering an especially dark and dangerous period.
Here’s what we know about Ukraine-gate:** a complaint was filed under the Intelligence Community Whistleblower Act (50 USC 3033) regarding a matter of “urgent concern”—defined in the statute as a “serious or flagrant problem, abuse, violation of law or Executive order, or deficiency relating to the funding, administration, or operation of an intelligence activity within the responsibility and authority of the Director of National Intelligence involving classified information.”
**As is often the case, Lawfare has an outstanding analysis (by Robert Litt) of the legal background of this matter. Highly recommended.
The complaint was sent (as required by statute) to the Intelligence Community Inspector General (ICIG)—a presidential appointee, by the way. The statute provides that the ICIG “shall determine whether the complaint or information appears credible,” after which he/she “shall transmit to the Director of National Intelligence a notice of that determination, together with the complaint …”
The ICIG apparently found that the complaint did, indeed, “appear[ ] credible,” and he sent it to the DNI.
The statute says what happens next:
Upon receipt of a transmittal from the Inspector General … the Director shall, within 7 calendar days of such receipt, forward such transmittal to the congressional intelligence committees, together with any comments the Director considers appropriate. Sec 3033(k)(5)(C) (emphasis added).
This, as everyone knows, has not happened; perhaps we will hear more about the reasons for the Administration’s decision not to follow the statutory command when Acting DNI Joseph McGuire appears before Congress on Thursday.
It means that neither the public nor Congress knows what’s in the complaint, and if I were more confident that we (or at least our elected representatives) would find out soon enough, I’d shut up and wait to see what our president did or did not say.
But I am not confident about that, and the basic contours of what we do know (based both on reporting in the Times, the Wall Street Journal, and the Washington Post, and on the President’s own acknowledgment and defenses that he is already putting forward***) are chilling enough. Apparently, in late July—at a time when his Administration was withholding (at Trump’s explicit direction) almost $400 million in already-appropriated funds targeted for the Ukrainian military—Trump initiated a call to the Ukrainian president, during which he suggested/encouraged, repeatedly, that the Ukrainians coordinate with his personal lawyer (and chief consigliere) and open an investigation into supposed improprieties committed by Joe Biden (on behalf of his son Hunter) when Biden was vice-president.
***See his comments to reporters yesterday:) “The conversation I had [with President Zelensky] was largely congratulatory, with largely corruption, all of the corruption taking place and largely the fact that we don’t want our people like Vice President Biden and his son creating to the corruption already in the Ukraine …” And today, he hammered again on the anti-corruption theme: “If you don’t talk about corruption, why would you give money to a country that you think is corrupt?”
This is an almost unimaginable breach of his duties as president: trading our taxpayer dollars for political dirt on his opponents, and conditioning critical US foreign policy decisions on a foreign government’s help in his campaign for re-election. This is not just a presidential candidate publicly asking for help from a foreign government (“Russia, if you’re listening, I hope you’re able to find the 30,000 emails that are missing”), as terrible as that was. This is the President of the United States using the power that We, the People have placed in his hands for his personal benefit.
The “anti-corruption” defense is truly laughable, and anyone who thinks that Trump’s true concern here is with rooting out corruption in Ukraine is being taken for a ride; he cares as much about corruption in Ukraine as he does about corruption in Russia, in Saudi Arabia, in the Philippines, or in North Korea, viz. not a whit.
I doubt that the conversation contained an explicit quid pro quo; even Trump would not say “Investigate Biden and I’ll release the money” any more than John Gotti would say “Kill that S.O.B. and I will promote you through the ranks.” But I can already hear the Trump faithful: “See?! No collusion!! Just good old corruption-fighting!” And I have faith—or at least hope—that the American people will treat that story with the contempt it deserves.
Presidents cannot act this way. Five or ten years ago, that would have been stating the obvious; are we really debating it now? The US government is not the Trump Organization, and the executive branch is not the Mafia. If our governing principle is “the President can do whatever he damn well wants to,” we are in a very, very perilous state indeed.
Where are the Republicans who will stand up to him on this? Trump famously—and grotesquely—boasted during the campaign that he could gun someone down on Fifth Avenue in broad daylight and not lose any voters; I did not think that he was including members of the House and Senate in this appraisal. The Republicans hold the key here if we are to avoid turning a genuine national crisis into a partisan shitshow. I have to believe that there are still some Republican office-holders who will finally say: This is over the line. And I have to believe that there are some Republican senators who will, should it come to an impeachment trial, actually listen to the evidence and cast their vote accordingly.
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