Dismantling Donald Trump
Truth doesn’t shun the light of scrutiny. Even though the idea that innocent people have nothing to hide is sometimes used as an excuse to rob us of our liberties, it also has the virtue of usually being true. On Friday former White House counsel Donald McGahn revealed to the House Judiciary Committee that Donald Trump attempted to obstruct a federal probe of Russian interference into the 2016 election. There is no conceivable reason why Trump would do this unless he had something to hide.
Now, I thought the Republicans were the party of solemn concern about election security. Apparently that concern extends only to the 2020 presidential election, the one they lost, because committee member Jim Jordan denounced Friday’s session as “re-litigating the Mueller report” and a waste of time. But then, Jordan has similar complaints whenever anyone brings up allegations that he ignored reports of rape and sexual assault by the team’s doctor against his students when he was assistant wrestling coach at Ohio State University. Jordan’s position is that after a certain point you should stop bringing things up from someone’s past. I think Hunter Biden would have a thing or two to say about that.
Not to be outdone by Jordan, committee member and alleged child rapist Matt Gaetz stood straight and tall on his moral high ground and proclaimed that “Mr. McGahn is unable to identify anything unlawful on the part of the president or any other member of the president’s administration.” This would be true were it not for the minor matter of obstruction of justice, which is what Mr. Gaetz engages in every time he lies to the American people about his unlawful activity involving the transportation of underage girls for the purposes of sexual exploitation. Gaetz should count his blessings. So far regular and mandatory drug testing of members of Congress is not a requirement for continued employment. Perhaps it should be.
In a written statement Friday evening, committee chairman Jerry Nadler, a man free of moral and criminal embarrassments, said that McGahn “testified at length to an extremely dangerous period in our nation’s history — in which President Trump, increasingly unhinged and fearful of his own liability, attempted to obstruct the Mueller investigation at every turn.” McGahn, Nadler asserted, was “clearly distressed” by Trump’s repeated refusal to follow his legal advice in order to “shed new light on several troubling events.”
Friday’s testimony represents the culmination of a two year legal battle to put teeth in Congressional subpoenas. Congress has stopped short of taking the matter to the Supreme Court. SCOTUS could have made it mandatory that a congressional subpoena be obeyed. It’s possible Congress chooses to wait until America’s highest court has a less politically biased composition. That day may be coming soon.
In the meantime it is clear that Donald Trump isn’t just one of the worst presidents in our lifetime, he isn’t merely among the most corrupt men to hold the office of the presidency, he is without question or precedence the worst and most evil and most criminal person conceivable in American history to hold the sacred office of President of the United States. Trump’s was exactly the presidency Alexander Hamilton warned us of in Federalist 65 against “the abuse or violation of some public trust.” The twice-impeached Trump is the reason why Hamilton insisted that impeachment be a seminal component in the arsenal of the balance of power.
The revelations of the Judiciary Committee are only the latest in the dismantling of Donald Trump. Trump’s demise continues, his civil and criminal woes are accumulating at a prodigious rate, and if it really is true that no one is above the law, Trump will soon be in prison. And, as ever, ladies and gentlemen, brothers and sisters, comrades and friends, stay safe.
Robert Harrington is an American expat living in Britain. He is a portrait painter.