Impeachment Must Pull No Punches
A little over two years ago I offered a $10 million reward for information leading to the impeachment of Donald Trump. I was more than willing to pay in full to get this dangerous imposter out of office. Unfortunately we didn’t uncover a smoking gun at that time. Still, I was confident Trump would eventually provide one, given his monstrous ignorance and contempt for the law. Now he’s done it by actually ransoming American aid to Ukraine for campaign dirt on Joe Biden—an unambiguous crime—and then admitting and bragging about it. Even his acting chief of staff, Mick Mulvaney, blurted out that it was a quid pro quo.
Nancy Pelosi finally did the right thing by triggering impeachment hearings. If successful, this will prove the surest bet to preventing four more years of mayhem. But it will take more than the Ukraine business to convict Trump in the Senate, where Republicans fear that a backlash from their base will jeopardize their own reelection—unless the case for impeachment is overwhelming.
It’s going to take more ammo, and there’s one big storehouse of it that hasn’t been mined yet—Trump’s long hidden tax returns. In October federal courts ruled that Trump had to turn over eight years of his tax returns to New York prosecutors and to the House Oversight Committee investigating his possible fabrication of business records. It appears that Trump kept two sets of books: one for lenders and one for the IRS and state tax agencies. There’s also evidence that he may have fabricated a loan to avoid paying $50 million in income taxes and used other illegal schemes to shield a $400 million inheritance from taxation. All of this amounts to gross financial fraud. And I would bet there’s even more in those tax returns, including possible financial hanky-panky with Russian oligarchs and gangsters. Of course, Trump’s lawyers are still appealing and fighting these court orders, which tells us there’s probably dynamite involved.
But even if all of the above doesn’t convince enough Senate Republicans to impeach him, it will certainly serve to tarnish the varnish that has hidden Trump’s true character from his blind supporters. Just enough of them might get wise enough to flip back to a Democratic candidate in 2020.
Of course, these political shenanigans do not fully convey the urgency for getting rid of Trump. The Constitution does not include “suicidal stupidity” as grounds for impeachment, but that’s exactly what pulling us out of the Paris Agreement amounted to. We are all whistling past the graveyard these days; scientists are unanimous that time is running out for avoiding climate catastrophe. Every year, every month, every day counts now. That’s the real reason for impeaching this monstrously irresponsible clown.
