By Tom McCarthy in New York and Lauren Gambino in Washington
No volume of howling by Donald Trump could prevent the shadow of history from falling over
his White House on Wednesday, as the House of Representatives prepared to
approve articles of impeachment against a president for only the third time.
For nearly three months, Trump has fought the
impeachment inquiry at every turn, blocking witness testimony, denying
documents and complaining on Twitter that no president has ever suffered such
mistreatment at the hands of his political enemies.
But
congressional investigators have pushed inexorably toward the scene expected to
play out on the House floor on Wednesday evening, when members will vote on
charges that Trump abused the powers of his office and obstructed Congress in
service of a Ukraine scheme meant to harm a political rival, former
vice-president Joe Biden.
With a solid
Democratic majority in the chamber and a wave of party moderates announcing their support for impeachment,
the vote seemed sure to go against Trump by a comfortable margin, hitching him
forever to Bill Clinton (1998) and Andrew Johnson (1868) as the only US
presidents to be impeached. Richard Nixon resigned in 1974 before the House
could vote to impeach him.
Trump would
then face a trial early next year in the Republican-controlled Senate. With a
two-thirds majority of senators needed to convict Trump and remove him from
office, his survival – until the November 2020 election, at least – seems
likely.
“It’s a good thing when there are some limits
on the conduct that a president can engage in,” said Elliot Williams, a former
justice department official and principal with the Raben Group, a public affairs and
strategic communications firm.
“And it’s up
to Republican senators now to decide whether there are any limits left.”
Just three
months ago, Trump was on his way to completing his first term without facing
official impeachment proceedings, despite a pile-up of scandals culminating in
a report by special counsel Robert Mueller that detailed 10 episodes of alleged
obstruction of justice by Trump himself.
In response to every new allegation, Trump’s
response has been to mix praise for his own “perfect” conduct with charges of
“fake news”, partisan aggression and “deep-state” conspiracy mongering. On
Tuesday, he dashed off an acrid letter to House speaker Nancy Pelosi,
charging her with “declaring open war on American Democracy” and calling
impeachment an “election-nullification scheme”.
But a
mountain of evidence indicates that it was Trump who sought to undermine
American democracy. Harboring no illusions about the political risks of
pursuing impeachment, and waiting perhaps for the case to build to overwhelming
strength, Pelosi for months held her fire. Then
a whistleblower complaint originating inside the White House in August was
temporarily blocked from reaching Congress, as is required by law.
The complaint, alleging Trump was “using the
power of his office to solicit interference from a foreign country in the 2020
US election”, snapped Pelosi to action. On 24 September, saying Trump had
committed a “betrayal of his oath of office, a betrayal of our national
security and betrayal of the integrity of our elections”, she announced the
launch of impeachment proceedings.
In closed-door depositions and then public
hearings, witnesses from within the administration gave overlapping
descriptions of how Trump directed a pressure campaign against Ukraine, withholding a White House visit
and military aid while demanding an announcement about investigations of Biden
and a wild 2016 election conspiracy theory.
Republicans
attacked the Democrats’ management of the proceedings but never mounted a
substantive defense of Trump’s conduct, for all the president’s urging.
Norm
Ornstein, a resident scholar at the conservative American Enterprise Institute
and bestselling author of One Nation After Trump, said Republicans
had shamefully demonstrated a loyalty to Trump that ran deeper than their oaths
of office.
“I’ve started to refer to this not as the
Republican party but more cult-like,” said Ornstein. “Voting against the
theology means that you could be shunned or excommunicated. And that’s a
powerful impetus.”
If
Democratic unity was ever in doubt, Pelosi, renowned for her ability to take
the temperature of her party, was vindicated in recent days as a cascade of moderates from pro-Trump districts announced
their support.
“It is with
a heavy heart but with clarity of conviction that I have made my decision,”
said Oklahoma representative Kendra Horn, whose district Trump won in 2016 by
13 points. “The oath I took to protect and defend the constitution requires a
vote for impeachment.”
On Tuesday,
the House held a final hearing, setting the parameters for the floor debate.
The Democrat
Jamie Raskin, a constitutional scholar and member of the judiciary committee,
laid out the majority’s case in stark terms, calling Trump’s obstruction
“unprecedented” and “dangerously unconstitutional”.
“If accepted and normalized now,” Raskin said, “it
will undermine perhaps for all time the congressional impeachment power itself,
which is the people’s last instrument of constitutional self-defense against a
sitting president who behaves like a king and tramples the rule of law.”
Doug Collins, the top Republican on the judiciary
committee, said it was a “sad day” for the country and accused Democrats of
trying to interfere in the 2020 election by removing Trump from office.
In the Senate, Republican majority leader Mitch
McConnell vowed to carry forward Trump’s defense, indicating he would oppose
Democratic attempts to secure testimony from potentially key
witnesses, including former national security adviser John Bolton
and acting chief of staff Mick Mulvaney, who were blocked by the Trump
administration from testifying before the House.
Williams, the former justice department official,
said this impeachment would be remembered not only for Trump’s historic
wrongdoing but for the Republicans’ historic forfeiture of their civic duty.
“Members of Congress swear an oath not to their
constituents, but to the constitution,” he said.
“They are failing in their core responsibility when
they are willing to sell that oath out simply because of the likelihood that
the president will put out a nasty tweet about them if they step out of line.” - The Guardian
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