September 29, 2019
Whether Donald Trump meddled already in the 2020 election is of even less concern to most republicans than was his Mueller-documented meddling in the 2016 election (Volume 1 of the Mueller Report) and his bungled cover-up thereof (Volume 2).
But the current, aggressive impeachment inquiry looks and feels different: Trump's most recently revealed conduct the subject of this inquiry has already changed popular opinion on impeachment from nay to yay, a nearly twenty point swing in the past week.
It came to light that Trump conditioned already Congress-approved US taxpayer funds for Ukraine's defense (against Russia's ongoing aggression) on Ukraine's digging dirt on Trump's political opponent Joe Biden in the 2020 presidential election.
Then Trump buried the verbatim transcript of the phone call with Ukraine's new president Volodymyr Zelensky inside a top secret White House server accessible by very few within the executive branch of government.
Meanwhile, the whistleblower statute's crystal clear seven-day notice requirement to permit Congressional oversight was sidestepped by Trump-appointed White House lawyers and Attorney General William Barr by way of a tortured statutory interpretation only a lawyer could love.
This, according to a whistleblower's complaint filed months ago. The complaint that became public less than a week ago because the White House cynically end-run delayed the statutory mandate.
Of course, there were already numerous high crimes and misdemeanors for which Trump could be impeached. These include countless emoluments clause violations mostly involving his hotels and resorts, numerous obstruction of justice charges documented by Special Counsel Robert Mueller, Trump's unindicted co-conspirator status in the 2016 payoff of his sexual affairs accusers (a campaign finance law violation) for which his former fixer Michael Cohen is now serving a three-year prison sentence, and the undeniable facts (Mexican rapists and drug-dealers gold-escalator speech, anti-Muslim executive order, border detention of innocent brown children, limited asylum for Central Americans, "fine" Nazis, etc) supporting the conclusion that Trump is a racist.
The difference between then and now?
Trump denied, diverted, or otherwise deflected those previous charges. But he has basically confessed to the new charges, even releasing a patchwork memo detailing the phone call particulars that corroborate the whistleblower's complaint.
The fan is on.
The shit is on its way.
The stench of inevitability permeates the air.
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