Donald Trump keeps proving Nancy Pelosi right
In an interview with The Washington Post in early May, Speaker Nancy Pelosi characterized Trump as “becoming self-impeachable.” She meant that beyond what Trump has already done, he continues committing fresh acts that may constitute new grounds for impeachment. “The point is that every single day, whether it’s obstruction, obstruction, obstruction — obstruction of having people come to the table with facts, ignoring subpoenas and the rest… Every single day, the president is making a case — he’s becoming self-impeachable, in terms of some of the things that he is doing,” she explained.
A month later, Trump continues proving the astuteness of Pelosi’s observation. Yesterday, The Washington Post published an op-ed co-written by two legal minds who have been sharp critics of Donald Trump and outspoken proponents of the rule of law. The first is George Conway, a conservative lawyer who, famously, is married to White House Senior Counselor Kellyanne Conway, one of Trump’s staunchest defenders and most shameless sycophants. The other is Neal Katyal, the former acting Solicitor General who helped draft the Special Counsel regulations in the 1990s.
As the title of their piece implies, “Trump just invited Congress to begin impeachment proceedings” lays out the case for impeachment based on something new that he did on Tuesday. “Trump gave us direct evidence of his contempt toward the most foundational precept of our democracy — that no person, not even the president, is above the law,” Conway and Katyal wrote. They refer to how Trump filed a “spectacularly anti-constitutional brief” that takes the position that Congress cannot investigate a President short of possibly in the context of impeachment. The authors argue that this act itself is disqualifying because “anyone who harbors such attitudes toward our Constitution’s architecture is not fit for office.”
That was Tuesday. By Wednesday evening, Trump managed to outdo himself. His shockingly demagogic “legal” filing was pushed aside by yet another egregiously impeachable act. This one took place in the Oval Office with the cameras rolling. In an interview with ABC News’ George Stephanopoulos, Donald “No Collusion!” Trump confidently declared that he would accept information from a foreign government about his political opponents and that he would “go maybe” when asked about reporting such contact to the FBI.
Obviously, Trump remains hard at work in the self-impeaching business, as his list of offenses grows longer and stronger. As Palmer Report recently reported, support for Trump’s impeachment has also been climbing. Impeachment is one thing; conviction in the Republican-run Senate is another. But as the tide continues to turn against Trump, we should not be surprised to see signs of erosion there as well. As Conway and Katyal conclude, “Every principle behind the rule of law requires the commencement of a process now to make this president a former one.”
Ron Leshnower is a lawyer and the author of several books, including President Trump’s Month