[Peace-discuss] Why Impeach Donald Trump

[David Swanson]

Why Impeach Donald Trump

By David Swanson, FireDonaldTrump.org

*What are the grounds for impeachment?*

They will likely be piling up rapidly. President Trump did use Day 1 to
advise
<http://www.politico.com/story/2017/01/full-text-trump-pence-remarks-cia-headquarters-233978>
the CIA that the United States should have stolen all of Iraq's oil. But
here is a place to start. We already have a president who is violating two
clauses in the U.S. Constitution, one forbidding any gifts or benefits from
foreign governments, the other forbidding the same from the U.S. government
or any U.S. state. This is the result of Donald Trump refusing to separate
himself from major business interests as past presidents have done. Those
interests will also inevitably involve Trump in violating the STOCK Act
which forbids the use of non-public government information to make a
private profit.

Article II, Section 1 of the Constitution states: "The President ... shall
not receive ... any other emolument from the United States, or any of
them." This means that the President cannot receive personal financial
gains from the United States government or from the governments of any of
the 50 states while he is president. This restriction is absolute and
cannot be waived by Congress. Trump is already in violation of it and will
be more so with every law, rule, regulation, enforcement, or lack thereof
that his subordinates, Congress, or any agency of the federal government
enacts to the benefit of Trump's businesses and possessions.

For example, Trump's lease of the Old Post Office Building violates an
explicit clause in the General Services Administration lease contract which
states: "No ... elected official of the Government of the United States ...
shall be admitted to any share or part of this Lease, or to any benefit
that may arise therefrom." The GSA's failure to enforce that contract is an
unconstitutional benefit to Trump.

Or, to take a state-level example: since 1980 Trump and his businesses have
garnered
<https://www.nytimes.com/2016/09/18/nyregion/donald-trump-tax-breaks-real-estate.html?_r=0&mtrref=undefined&gwh=02283F727B1B2B81A57F08A309661208&gwt=pay>
"$885 million in tax breaks, grants and other subsidies for luxury
apartments, hotels and office buildings in New York." Continuing or
increasing those subsidies puts Trump in violation of the Constitution.

Article I, Section 9 of the Constitution says that "no person holding any
office of profit or trust under [the United States government], shall,
without the consent of the Congress, accept of any present, emolument,
office, or title, of any kind whatever, from any king, prince, or foreign
state." This is essentially the same ban as above, but applied to foreign
governments
<https://www.bloomberg.com/graphics/tracking-trumps-web-of-conflicts/#foreign_properties>
.

The Trump Organization has licensing deals with two Trump Towers in
Istanbul. Trump himself says
<https://www.bloomberg.com/graphics/tracking-trumps-web-of-conflicts/#foreign_properties>,
"I have a little conflict of interest, because I have a major, major
building in Istanbul." China's state-owned Industrial and Commercial Bank
of China is the largest tenant in Trump Tower. It is also a major lender to
Trump. Its rent payments and its loans put Trump in violation of the
Constitution. Foreign diplomats have begun shifting their D.C. hotel and
event reservations to Trump International Hotel. The Embassy of Kuwait was
reportedly pressured by the Trump Organization to do so. Pressured or not,
Kuwait's business at a Trump hotel puts Trump in violation of the highest
law of the land.

In November, there were reports (denied by Trump) that Trump had asked the
president of Argentina for help with a building permit in Buenos Aires.
Whether he did or not, and whether he receives that help or not, President
Trump will be frequently granted or denied similar approval for his
business ventures from numerous foreign and domestic governments.

*Why punish a successful business man?*

We can set aside the legality and morality of Trump's business success, and
the question of how successful he has been. A campaign to impeach him for
his violations of the Constitution can hold the position that Trump is
perfectly welcome to keep all of his businesses and loans. He just cannot
simultaneously hold an office in which they create gross violations of the
U.S. Constitution. Past presidents have sold off their assets or placed
them in a blind trust. A blind trust would not, however, be blind for Trump
who would inevitably learn of the approval of new towers or the sale of
properties. Selling (and using a truly blind trust to do so) was Trump's
only option
<https://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/trumps-blind-trust-is-neither-blind-nor-trustworthy/2016/11/15/6eeca1fc-aaa5-11e6-a31b-4b6397e625d0_story.html?utm_term=.3baa31beb741>
other than not being president. He chose not to take his only
Constitutional choice.

*Is this partisanship?*

A great many people do anything political for partisan reasons. As I'm
unable to put an end to that, it is inevitable that people will favor or
oppose impeaching Trump for partisan reasons. But they need not. The above
charges against Trump are unprecedented. They should apply to him and any
future presidents who engage in the same abuses, regardless of party.
Someone who voted for Trump as a way out of corruption should want him
impeached as much as someone who voted against him for the same reason.
Trump is now the worst possible "insider" -- using public office for
personal greed.

Is this morally worse than Secretary of State Hillary Clinton taking Saudi
government and Boeing funds into her family foundation, and then working to
waive legal restrictions on Boeing selling weapons to Saudi Arabia  --
weapons now being used to slaughter innocents? Some will think so and
others not, largely along partisan lines. Personally I'm in favor of
impeaching Clinton, Obama, and George W. Bush right now and imposing the
penalties of a bar on holding future office and a denial of retirement
benefits. But those efforts are simply not the same priority today as
halting the presidency of the current president.

When I advocated for impeaching Bush I explained that if he was not held
accountable his successors would expand further the abusive powers he had
expanded. When I argued that Obama was in fact doing this and should be
impeached, I was generally called worse things than partisan. But the
longer presidents are allowed to act without a check on their powers, the
more they will expand and abuse them. Numerous government officials and
members of Congress would best serve the world by resigning. But the place
to start is with an unprecedented and unique form and level of corruption
in the single highest office in the land.

*Is this personal?*

A great many people focus their political interest on personalities rather
than policies. They forbid themselves to praise a good action by a
politician who mostly makes bad ones, or to condemn a bad one by a hero.
They make heroes of whoever is not their enemy, and vice versa. They place
greater importance on whether they'd like to be friends with someone than
on whether that person will benefit or harm the world. Because I lack the
strength to change this, many will support or oppose impeaching Trump based
on whether they consider him obnoxious or inspiring. They shouldn't and
need not. President Obama oversaw activities that would have horrified his
supporters had they not been so focused on his style. History does not look
kindly on the impeachment of Bill Clinton for personal flaws, something the
majority of the public opposed -- while there were much better grounds on
which to have impeached him. (History may also frown on Congress's refusal
to even attempt to impeach George W. Bush, something the majority of the
public supported.)

*Is the point to make Mike Pence president?*

The question of who is worse, the president or the vice president, is a
very different question from this one: Who is worse, President Trump in an
era of total unchecked power and immunity, or President Pence in an age of
popular sovereignty with the threat of impeachment looming behind every
high-crime-and-misdemeanor that comes up for consideration by the White
House? I believe changing the office of the presidency into one that can be
lost for substantive crimes and abuses -- a radical change from its current
state -- would be more significant than the personality, ideology, or party
of the presidents who come next. I believe part of that significance would
derive from the benefits of building the movement that imposes impeachment
on a corrupt and partisan and reluctant Congress. Cultural change comes
principally from movement building, and very little from the personalities
of elected officials.

*Why not impeach Trump for being a Russian agent?*

Both an impeachment in the U.S. House of Representatives and a trial in the
Senate will require public evidence. The case made above relies on readily
available and public evidence in great abundance that will grow daily, and
may very well come to include benefits from the Russian government.

In contrast, if there exists any evidence of the Russian government hacking
Democratic emails or of the Russian government giving those emails to
WikiLeaks, it has not been made public. If there exists any evidence of
Trump being complicit in those actions, it has not been made public. You
may suspect that such evidence exists. If so, it could certainly become the
basis for additional articles of impeachment once it is produced. Meanwhile
the content of the DNC emails could arguably form part of the basis for a
case against current or former civil officers among Democrats involved in
manipulating their own primary.

*Why not impeach Trump for helping to destroy the earth's climate, or many
other reasons?*

I'm in favor of it, yes. But it should wait at least a week or two to allow
the damage to accumulate. Removing all mention of climate change from the
White House website is not sufficient. And the case will never be as easy a
sell to the House of Misrepresentatives. The Constitution does not prohibit
destroying the earth's climate, unless we so interpret the preamble -- or
so interpret the mythical language that a militarized government has
rumored to exist in the Constitution creating a presidential duty to
protect the country from danger.

Impeachment is a political process. Individuals and cities and towns and
organizations can demand it. Representatives can pursue it. We can impeach
for continuing or accelerating the destruction of our natural environment,
even if presidential predecessors did the same or similar. We can impeach
for war or torture or drone murders or warrantless spying or proclaiming
the needs to steal oil or kill families or ban Muslims, or for any form of
discrimination or cruelty that we find sufficiently intolerable. And I wish
we would. But which charges can clear the hurdles of the House Judiciary,
the full House, and the Senate is not a simple moral question.

*Why impeach Trump when he could prevent war with Russia?*

Yes, Trump seems to favor deescalating the dangerous cold war created under
Obama. He may favor this for corrupt or environmentally destructive
reasons. Regardless, any steps away from confrontations with nuclear
governments are highly desirable. But Trump's vision is one of greater, not
lesser, militarism. His preferred targets just don't include Russia. And
impeaching Trump for abusing his power hardly sends a message to future
presidents that they should pursue more wars. Holding one president
accountable creates a certain level of accountability in the entire
government going forward. And that tends to move us away from war, not
toward it.

*Is the point to empower the CIA and the corporate media?*

That might be the point of going after Trump over Russian hacking rumors.
The result might be a failure to impeach if there is no evidence. It might
be greater hostility with Russia. And it might be a feather in the cap of a
couple of institutions worthy of mountains of scorn. But these are not
issues when Trump is impeached for public offenses visible to the naked eye
with no spying or journalism required.

*Do you really think Congress will impeach a president?*

Yes, it certainly might, especially as the evidence of
high-crimes-and-misdemeanors accumulates and Trump's popularity sinks even
lower than its current record level -- an effect that just opening an
impeachment process has usually contributed to (Bill Clinton's unpopular
impeachment being an exception to the rule). But even an unsuccessful
impeachment, like Truman's or Nixon's can have seriously beneficial
results, including ending the abuses for which Truman was almost impeached,
and ending the war and presidency of Nixon.

*Do you really think everything is normal and nothing radical is needed?*

I think all potentially useful strategies are desperately needed and that
impeachment is one of them. Others are marches, sit-ins, petitions, media
production, legislation, strikes, refusals to cooperate with illegal
actions, protection of those in danger, peace initiatives, local and global
moves toward sustainable economies, boycotts, divestments, foreign
exchanges, art work, parades, etc., etc. But a nonviolent movement seeking
to overturn an abusive government would fantasize about an impeachment
provision if it didn't exist. It's the best gift that the drafters of the
Constitution gave us. Much of the rest of the document is horribly out of
date, and many of the best parts of it are routinely violated. Continuing
to neglect the power of impeachment would be a terrible waste.

*Do you really think something as radical as impeachment is needed?*

I think it's needed in much less extreme situations than this one. If it's
not needed now, when would it be?

*Wouldn't our time be better spent holding marches or blocking pipelines or
burning limos or educating children or building a new party or designing
bunkers or . . . ?*

Yes, there are lots of good ideas and bad. I'd like to see all of the good
ones pursued, with people putting their energies where their passions and
talents lie. But we cannot ignore an out of control government. Taking it
(not "taking it back" since we never had it) has to be high on our list of
priorities. It is still what Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. said it was 50
years ago this spring: the greatest purveyor of violence on earth. Leaving
that entity in the hands of an attention-starved man who wants primarily to
personally profit from it is playing with fire.

*If I've persuaded you, or if you already agreed, please sign this
petition: http://ImpeachDonaldTrumpNow.org
<http://ImpeachDonaldTrumpNow.org>*


-- 

*David Swanson *is an author, activist, journalist, and radio host. He is
director of WorldBeyondWar.org and campaign coordinator for RootsAction.org.
Swanson's books include *War Is A Lie <http://warisalie.org/>*. He blogs at
DavidSwanson.org <http://davidswanson.org/> and WarIsACrime.org
<http://warisacrime.org/>. He hosts Talk Nation Radio
<http://davidswanson.org/taxonomy/term/41>. He is a 2015 and 2016 Nobel
Peace Prize Nominee.

Follow him on Twitter: @davidcnswanson <http://twitter.com/davidcnswanson>
and FaceBook <http://www.facebook.com/pages/David-Swanson/297768373319#>.
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