by Tom Maertens
Tom Maertens was a naval officer, a Peace Corps Volunteer and a Foreign Service Officer who served around the world, in the White House and in the U.S. Senate.
Under U.S. law, it is illegal for anyone to solicit, accept, or receive anything of value from a foreign national in connection with any election in the United States.
The crime is soliciting help, regardless of whether anything is given or even offered in exchange; the quid pro quo argument is a red herring.
Donald Trump solicited electoral assistance from Ukraine and China, and through Attorney General William Barr, from Italy, Australia and the UK.
Igor Fruman and Lev Parnas, Ukraine-born American citizens, have been accused of helping the president’s personal lawyer Rudy Giuliani instigate a Ukrainian investigation into former Vice President Joe Biden and his son Hunter, and indicted for illegally funneling foreign money to Trump’s campaign.
What we have is a conspiracy led by the president, assisted by Rudy Giuliani, to persuade foreign actors to investigate Trump’s political opponent in order to influence the outcome of U.S. elections.
In addition, he openly invited Russia to interfere in the 2016 election (“Russia, if you are listening…”). Russia began hacking Democratic servers five hours later.
The Mueller report listed 10 examples of Trump obstructing justice that could have warranted impeachment, including asking staff to lie for him, dangling pardons, constructing a false paper trail, destroying evidence, encrypting crucial communications, and now, defying subpoenas.
Now Trump has his corrupt, lapdog attorney general flying around the world seeking foreign help to discredit the Mueller investigation by investigating the investigators — the typical abuse of power by would-be totalitarians.
The Republican-led Senate Intelligence Committee concurred with Mueller that Russia tried to harm Clinton in the 2016 election to help Trump. He has never explained why his campaign had 272 contacts and 38 meetings with Russians and lied about every one of them, but the record makes clear that Putin has some leverage over him.
As Nancy Pelosi said, with Trump, all roads lead to Putin. It was the Republican House minority leader, Kevin McCarthy, who told his GOP colleagues privately: “There’s two people I think Putin pays: Rohrabacher and Trump. Swear to God.”
The recent evidence of Trump’s wrongdoing is unambiguous, including the so-called transcript of the phone call attempting to shake down Ukrainian president Zelensky – with a dozen witnesses listening in; the statements of at least two whistleblowers; the press conference by his acting chief of staff; and testimony by several Foreign Service ex-colleagues, including Masha Yovanovitch and Bill Taylor, whom I consider highly reliable. His own ambassador to the EU, Gordon Sondland, described the quid-pro-quo policy as coming directly from Trump.
According to Citizens for Responsibility and Ethics in Washington (CREW), “There is compelling evidence that Donald J. Trump may have personally committed up to eight criminal offenses while campaigning for president and during the first year of his presidency. The potential offenses include violations of laws regulating campaign contributions and their disclosure, making false records and statements, and a conspiracy to defraud (or to violate the laws of) the United States.”
Trump is attempting to cover up his criminal activity with daily Twitter lies and disinformation, claiming endless grievances, citing a witch hunt, a hoax, treason, a coup, and a lynching.
Predictably, his cult members, including most evangelicals, cheer his bald-faced lies on command, now averaging more than 13 lies per day, and totaling over 13,000, according to the Washington Post.
He is attempting to discredit any organization that threatens his tenure; the danger is that he will destroy public confidence in organizations like DOJ, the FBI and the CIA, that maintain order and defend national security.
The rot has gone so far that the Chairman of the Senate Homeland Security Committee, Sen. Ron Johnson, R-Wisconsin, a Trump apologist, said on national television that he doesn’t trust the FBI or CIA.
The latest outrage is Trump’s betrayal of the Kurds, the ones who provided crucial information on Baghdadi, by providing Turkey with US intelligence on Kurdish military positions. He also greenlighted Turkish ethnic cleansing, which forced 200,000 Kurds into the desert and set hundreds of ISIS members free.
Trump has claimed that the Kurds were “incredibly happy” with his actions, but General Barry McCaffrey called his claim “…simply absurd, it’s cruel, it makes him look stupid.”
General David Petraeus called them a betrayal.
Retired Admiral Bill McRaven, a former NSC colleague who led the raid on bin Laden, has written “our Republic is under attack from the president…he's undermined the intelligence community, the law enforcement community, the Department of Justice, the State Department…” in order to distract attention from his illegal actions.
This article was also published in the Mankato Free Press.
No comments:
Post a Comment