One of the more Orwellian features of Donald Trump’s dystopian presidency is the role Rudy Giuliani is playing. Because this former celebrated prosecutor and mayor of New York City is now playing a cross between Tom Hagan, consigliere to the “Corleone Family”, and Roy Cohn, counsel to Senator Joseph McCarthy.
But, as mobster capos invariably do, one of Giuliani’s indicted associates, Lev Parnas, has turned on him in a desperate attempt to save his own hide. Specifically, Parnas turned over a trove of documents to House Democrats yesterday – further implicating Giuliani in the scheme for which their putative Mafia boss, Trump, has been impeached.
Those documents include a letter (dated May 10, 2019) Giuliani sent to Ukraine’s newly elected president, Volodymyr Zelensky, seeking ‘no more than a half-hour of your time’ to formalize that scheme.
At Trump’s behest and direction, Giuliani was trying to get Zelensky to announce an investigation of Joe Biden and son Hunter on trumped-up charges of corruption related to the infamous Ukrainian company, Burisma. More to the point, just as he got Russian President Vladimir Putin to do to Hillary, Trump was trying to get Zelensky to publish dirt on Biden to undermine his presidential campaign.
[They] also included messages that mentioned the then-ambassador to Ukraine, Marie Yovanovitch, whom Mr. Trump later fired. In his July phone call with Ukraine’s president, after she had been removed from her post, Mr. Trump described her as ‘bad news’ and said she would ‘go through some things.’
(The Wall Street Journal, January 14, 2020)
Incidentally, the “bad news” Trump referenced betrayed his damning knowledge that Giuliani and Parnas had Ukrainian goons “tracking the U.S. ambassador’s movements in the country.”
[Robert F. Hyde, a retired Marine who is running for Congress as a Republican in Connecticut] said Yovanovitch had turned off her phone and computer, and that his associates in Ukraine would give updates on the ambassador’s movements. He added, ‘They are willing to help if we/you would like a price… Guess you can do anything in the Ukraine with money … what I was told.’
‘Lol,’ Parnas replied.
(NPR, January 15, 2020)
This is the kind of mob-like capers Trump’s capos were up to – all under the supervision of his consigliere, Giuliani. Yet nobody in Washington believes the Senate will convict Trump. This, no matter how much evidence House managers present, or how much his consciousness of guilt shows. That’s why what we are witnessing is surreal to the point of embarrassing.
Apropos of which, I feel constrained to reiterate what I wrote in “Trump Impeached,” December 18, 2019. Because I quipped that the (white) senators who have already declared their intent to acquit Trump make the (black) jurors who acquitted O.J. Simpson look like irreproachable nuns.
The Senate is scheduled to begin Trump’s impeachment trial next Tuesday. But it appears justice will not be done in that court.
So let it be done in the court of public opinion. This, by pillorying every senator who votes to acquit notwithstanding the evidence, and then retiring that senator at the ballot box. Indeed, I submit that November’s General Election is as much about firing Trump as it is about firing his enablers (notably Republican senators like Mitch McConnell, Lindsey Graham, and John Cornyn).
That said, much is being made of the Democratic senators (notably Elizabeth Warren, Bernie Sanders, and Amy Klobuchar) who will have to leave the campaign trail to sit as both judges and jurors for this trial. The prevailing view is that this will redound to the considerable advantage of Joe Biden and Pete Buttigieg.
But nothing would do more for Biden’s candidacy than for him to make a show of calling on all candidates to suspend campaigning for the duration of this impeachment trial. Not only would this show due regard for the solemnity of the occasion; it would also demonstrate the kind of leadership so desperately needed in these rudderless times.
While he’s at it, Biden should also call the Republicans’ bluff by saying he’d be happy to testify … if President Trump does. He could point out that Bill Clinton subjected himself to cross examination under oath, and that the categorical imperative is even greater for Trump to do the same.
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