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Impeachment Trial

Marie Yovanovitch Testifies as Impeachment Hearings Continue

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Congressional hearings aren’t exactly known for being entertaining or dramatic spectacles. Nevertheless, one of the major criticisms of the first round of public impeachment hearings was that it was boring, and not exciting enough to capture the attention of the American public. This opinion was offered both by Republicans in an attempt to discredit the hearings as well as certain members of the press, who judged the event as if it were a television spectacle rather than a serious, sober government proceeding. Predictably, these comments were mocked on Twitter and elsewhere on the Internet, with Jonathan Allen’s complaint that the witnesses called on Wednesday lacked “pizazz” drawing significant attention.

It’s harder to make this criticism of today’s hearing, during which lawmakers questioned former ambassador to Ukraine Marie Yovanovitch, who was ousted from her position in Ukraine despite 33 years of highly celebrated public service during which she received numerous awards and being told she had done nothing wrong. Yovanovitch testified that she believed the reason for her ouster was to establish a shadow foreign policy, separate from the official channels of international diplomacy, to allow the president to pressure Ukraine to announce an investigation that would hurt Joe Biden and help Trump’s reelection campaign. Yovanovitch’s testimony corroborates Wednesday’s testimonies from Bill Taylor and George Kent, two government officials with experience in similar matters.

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During his opening remarks, Adam Schiff explained Yovanovitch’s relevance to the impeachment hearings in an attempt to make the case that Trump removed Yovanovitch in order to facilitate his bribery attempt of Ukraine. Representative Devin Nunes spent much of his opening statement reciting a transcript released today by the Trump administration of a phone call between Trump and the newly-elected president of Ukraine, which was largely congratulatory and included an invitation from Ukrainian President Zelensky for Trump to attend his inauguration. This recitation bore little relevance to the matter at hand, and was likely performed in order to distract from the substance of the hearing, as the presence of a non-incriminating preliminary conversation does not negate a later, incriminating one.

Despite Trump’s attack on Yovanovitch, Republicans in the House of Representatives were careful not to deride Yovanovitch’s character, instead thanking her for her decades of service and praising the importance of her work.

Donald Trump, despite saying repeatedly that he would not be watching the hearings, was nonetheless active on Twitter throughout, providing commentary and denigrating Yovanovitch’s character. This gave chairman Adam Schiff a rare opportunity to respond to the president in real-time; during his questioning, Schiff mentioned the tweet, posted just minutes prior, which claimed that Yovanovitch’s conduct led to disastrous outcomes in Ukraine and Somalia, and asked Yovanovitch whether those accusations were accurate. She replied that they were not. Schiff suggested comments like these were destructive to the impeachment process, as they would discourage other witnesses from coming forward, and took the opportunity to assure Yovanovitch that the Committee takes witness intimidation very seriously. Notably, Trump’s tweet may form the basis for an additional article of impeachment, as witness intimidation is a crime and facilitates obstruction of justice.

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Despite Trump’s attack on Yovanovitch, Republicans in the House of Representatives were careful not to deride Yovanovitch’s character, instead thanking her for her decades of service and praising the importance of her work. This discrepancy is just one example of the rift between Republicans in Congress, who are doing everything in their power to defend the president throughout the impeachment hearings, and the president himself, who frequently undermines these attempts by publicly contradicting them. As the president is quick to deride anyone who displays the slightest bit of disloyalty to him, even members of his own party who attempt to defend him but don’t do so strongly enough for the president’s liking, this rift has the potential to lead to further isolation of the president even from his allies.

Coincidentally, the trial of Roger Stone, a former advisor to the president, concluded today, and Stone was found guilty of lying to the FBI among other charges. In an obvious display of his anger and frustration, the president took to Twitter to complain about this outcome, and called for the jailing of his political opponents, including Adam Schiff and former special counsel Robert Mueller. Lately, it seems that news breaks every day that damages Trump’s presidency, and today is certainly no exception.

Impeachment

What to Expect from Public Impeachment Hearings This Week

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The presidential impeachment inquiry is well underway in the House of Representatives, as they just voted along party lines to enter into the public phase of the process, during which witness testimony will be televised live on several networks. While much of the evidence unearthed during the inquiry has already been made public by way of news reports, comments from representatives, and document releases including transcripts, the public performances from witnesses with first-hand knowledge of Trump’s phone call with the president of Ukraine are hoped to bring about a sea change in the American people’s view of the matter. 

Scheduled to be broadcast live on major networks like ABC and NBC, the hearings are expected to attract a wide audience both in America and around the world, as political spectacles of this sort have historically drawn large crowds. Democrats hope that being able to hear witnesses speak directly about the president’s misconduct will persuade more Americans to support impeachment, whereas Republicans will try to use the opportunity to deflect and evade, as they have by and large criticized the inquiry as a “witch hunt” since it began.

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The current impeachment inquiry is historic, as presidential impeachment has only been attempted three other times in U.S. history, and while impeachment led to the resignation of Richard Nixon, no American president has ever been removed from office through the mechanism of impeachment. Impeachment is built into the U.S. constitution as a corrective mechanism against a tyrannical or dangerous president, and is meant to be used only in extreme circumstances when essential elements of American democracy are at risk. 

Democrats hope to explain, through witness testimony, how the president abused the awesome powers of the executive branch in service of his own personal interests, against the interests of the country and of American democracy as a whole.

Two sessions will take place, on Wednesday and Friday, during which some of the most compelling witnesses from the first phase of the inquiry will speak candidly before the American public, answering questions from both Democratic and Republican lawmakers. Democrats will use the opportunity to attempt to establish a clear, compelling, straightforward narrative of events concerning the president’s attempted extortion of the Ukrainian government for political favors. Meanwhile, Republicans will likely do everything in their power to obstruct the investigation, and are bound to attack the process of impeachment, accuse the Bidens of wrongdoing, and attempt to diminish the credibility of witnesses. While Republicans can suggest witnesses, the direction of the inquiry is currently in the hands of Democrats, as they represent the majority party in the House. Republicans have taken bold steps in their opposition of the inquiry, even attempting to reveal the identity of the original whistleblower, in violation of federal law.

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Congress and the American people will hear testimony from three key witnesses: the former United States Ambassador to Ukraine, Bill Taylor; the Deputy Assistant Secretary of State for European and Eurasian Affairs, George Kent; and senior American diplomat Marie Yovanovitch. Bill Taylor will testify first. All three witnesses have previously testified during closed-door meetings, and the transcripts of these testimonies have been released, so lawmakers and journalists already have a good idea of what the testimony will contain. These witnesses defied a White House order not to comply with congressional subpoenas and have all told very similar stories about their observations of the President’s conduct. As career government officials and non-political-appointees, they are considered by experts and the media to be reliable and trustworthy witnesses, though Republicans are sure to attack their credibility nevertheless. 

Republicans have struggled to mount a unified defense for the president, who often changes his explanations and justifications for his conduct. Public impeachment hearings will only make this problem worse for Republicans, at least in the short term, as the many allegations of the president’s extortion of Ukraine are consistent and even corroborated by evidence released by the White House and statements from Chief of Staff Mick Mulvaney. Witnesses will likely testify that the president engaged not only in a quid-pro-quo arrangement with Ukraine, but in fact extorted the small European country for illegal election assistance. Democrats hope to explain, through witness testimony, how the president abused the awesome powers of the executive branch in service of his own personal interests, against the interests of the country and of American democracy as a whole. Only time will tell, however, how voters react and more importantly how Republican senators handle the likely upcoming trial after Democrats present them with articles of impeachment.

Twitter

Twitter to Ban All Political Ads

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As social media rapidly replaces traditional journalistic forms of disseminating information, regulators have been slow to catch up with the new form of communication, as the appropriate legal boundaries on free speech on social media platforms remain an open question. Recently, Facebook has drawn criticism for allowing demonstrably false political advertisements to run on its platform, and the company’s founder and CEO, Mark Zuckerberg, defended the decision to do so by citing free speech concerns. In an apparent response to Zuckerberg’s decision, Twitter’s CEO Jack Dorsey announced that all political ads from around the world would be banned on Twitter, neatly avoiding the problem of politicians spreading disinformation through sponsored posts. Though Dorsey didn’t mention Zuckerberg or Facebook by name, it’s pretty clear that the company’s decision was made in the context of its rival’s position of allowing politicians to lie using advertisements, and it effectively functions as a commentary on Facebook’s policy.

Already, politicians have taken advantage of Facebook’s almost-nonexistent restrictions on paid political speech by running advertisements that contain falsehoods. The Trump campaign, for instance, ran an ad on Facebook falsely accusing rival Joe Biden of “[offering] Ukraine $1 billion to fire the prosecutor investigating a company affiliated with his son.” In response, the Biden campaign asked Facebook to remove the ad from its website, citing a lack of evidence supporting that claim, and Facebook declined to do so, reiterating its policy and defending it by arguing that removing political advertisements constitutes censorship. Elizabeth Warren, one of the leading Democrats in the race for the presidential nomination, ran an ad falsely suggesting Mark Zuckerberg endorsed Donald Trump in order to draw attention to Facebook’s political ad policy and point out how easily it can be abused. The Trump campaign has already spent millions of dollars on Facebook ads containing disinformation, including video ads that have been rejected by CNN and MSNBC for containing falsehoods, which nevertheless have been seen by millions of people.

“A political message earns reach when people decide to follow an account or retweet. Paying for reach removes that decision, forcing highly optimized and targeted political messages on people. We believe this decision should not be compromised by money.” — Jack Dorsey

Recently, Mark Zuckerberg appeared before Congress with the intent of discussing his crypto-currency service, Libra, but instead found himself being grilled by lawmakers over Facebook’s stance on misinformation. One exchange which grabbed headlines recently involved freshman Representative Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, who questioned Zuckerberg about the boundaries of the company’s restrictions on ads, and posed a hypothetical question: under Facebook’s policy, would she be allowed to run ads in Republican districts claiming that her Republican opponents had endorsed the Green New Deal? Zuckerberg replied that he didn’t know, but that she probably would be allowed to do so. Facebook doesn’t run ads for political campaigns through independent fact-checkers except in rare circumstances, so in all likelihood, Ocasio-Cortez would be permitted to run such an ad if she so chose.

Recently, Zuckerberg revealed that political ads make up only 0.5% of the company’s revenue, suggesting that banning all political ads on the site would have little impact on Facebook’s bottom line. Nonetheless, Facebook remains steadfast in its position, even after receiving significant controversy from the media, Congress, and the general public alike. Zuckerberg also recently drew criticism for having lunch with Republican politicians and conservative commentators, a decision that he defended by stressing the importance of getting along with people from different political stripes. In an apparent rebuke of Zuckerberg’s take on political speech, Twitter’s Jack Dorsey opposed the idea that allowing political ads to run indiscriminately is necessary to avoid censorship and ensure free speech, saying “A political message earns reach when people decide to follow an account or retweet. Paying for reach removes that decision, forcing highly optimized and targeted political messages on people. We believe this decision should not be compromised by money.” This difference in opinion is at the core of the argument about free speech on social media platforms, and may very well one day manifest in the form of regulations about using advertising to spread misinformation on social media platforms, like the ones that already exist for other forms of media.

White House

Key Details Omitted from White House Transcript, Official Testifies

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The House of Representatives’ impeachment inquiry has been progressing rapidly, despite the protests of Republican members of both the House and the Senate as well as strong opposition from the White House. While the White House has attempted to block witnesses from testifying before committees investigating potentially impeachable offenses, many government officials who have been subpoenaed have appeared in the House of Representatives nonetheless, offering damning testimony that corroborates both the whistleblower complaint which started the inquiry as well as leaks from the Trump administration and a reconstructed transcript released by the White House describing a call between President Trump and President Zelensky of Ukraine. 

As witness testimony reveals the extent of the Trump administration’s involvement in attempting to secure political dirt from a foreign power, it is also revealing the administration’s attempts to hide their tracks. Yesterday, for instance, Lt. Col. Alexander S. Vindman testified that the transcript released by the White House omitted details about the President’s conversation with Zelensky, suggesting a possible attempt to obscure the nature of the call.

According to Vindman, Mr. Zelensky said the word “Burisma,” the Ukranian energy company Hunter Biden worked for, whereas the official reconstructed transcript is more vague. Additionally, Vindman claims that Mr. Trump mentioned the existence of recordings of Mr. Biden discussing issues of Ukrainian corruption, whereas the reconstructed transcript includes no such detail. Vindman testified that he tried to correct the record, but his corrections were ignored, which is unusual for official notes of conversations between the President and other officials. 

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Additionally, previous witness testimony has alleged that reconstructed transcripts, including the one released by the White House in response to the whistleblower complaint, were stored in a top-secret computer system to which only a handful of individuals had access, in a break from traditional White House methods of handling this sort of information, suggesting that the White House intended to keep secret the details of this call among others even within its own administration. 

Vindman’s testimony doesn’t change investigators’ impression of the fundamental purpose of the call, but rather bolsters the accusation that the call represented an improper request for the Ukranian President to assist in Trump’s reelection campaign. As such, Vindman’s testimony simply adds to the increasingly convincing collection of evidence procured by Congress, enabling the rapid transition towards the public phase of the impeachment inquiry. 

Rep. Adam Schiff, one of the House of Representatives’ main investigators, has declined to take legal action against White House officials who have refused to comply with subpoenas, instead relying on the testimonies of others, including diplomats Gordon Sondland and Kurt Volker. Democrats have stated that they want to complete their impeachment investigation quickly, and given the substantial amount of evidence already available to investigators, the testimonies from witnesses who have refused to cooperate with subpoenas are considered unnecessary.

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Although Republicans have decried the impeachment inquiry as an illegitimate and partisan attack on the President fueled by lingering resentment about the outcome of the 2016 election, Democrats’ actions have nonetheless plunged the GOP into chaos, as their defenses of the President’s conduct have become increasingly strained. During Vindman’s testimony, a shouting match between Democratic and Republican representatives reportedly erupted, and last week Republicans attempted to physically obstruct witness testimony, refusing to leave a secure hearing room during a scheduled closed-door proceeding. Meanwhile, Republicans in the Senate have generally been uncharacteristically quiet about the specific accusations, claiming that they are reserving judgment until the trial.

Republican protests to the impeachment proceedings have generally been specious — talking points have included the claim that the President is being robbed of due process rights, that the House never voted to formalize the inquiry, and that Republicans have been denied access to witness testimonies. All of these complaints have been addressed by Pelosi’s announcement of a vote to formalize proceedings. Nancy Pelosi has called for a vote tomorrow, October 31st, on a resolution to formalize rules for the public phase of the impeachment inquiry, which would allow Republicans to call witnesses, make witness testimony public, and allow Trump’s lawyers to present a formal defense of him. 

While Republicans in the House of Representatives are likely to continue to decry the proceedings despite these concessions, the Democratic majority in the House ensures that impeachment is all but certain. Only time will tell, however, whether the Senate will decide to remove the President from office, which requires a two-thirds majority vote, meaning 20 Republican senators would have to break ranks with the President, an unlikely but possible scenario.

Business Conference

Hunter Biden Announces Departure from Chinese Company Amidst Criticism

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Until recently, the business dealings of the son of former Vice President and Democratic presidential candidate Joe Biden were not often the subject of political discussion. However, following an unlikely and consequential string of events involving President Trump, a phone call with Ukraine, and a whistleblower complaint, Hunter Biden announced his decision to step down from the board of a Chinese company, BHR, to reduce the appearance of a conflict-of-interest with respect to his father’s presidential bid. Trump has responded to the news of the whistleblower complaint, which alleges that he illegally requested campaign assistance from a foreign power when he asked the President of Ukraine to investigate his likely political opponent, Joe Biden, by doubling down on his attacks of the Biden family, putting the Biden campaign in an awkward and defensive position.

No evidence of misconduct on Hunter Biden’s part is known to exist, and he has not been formally charged with a crime nor is he known to be under investigation. However, the younger Biden has been the target of relentless, vicious, and personal attacks from President Trump on the campaign trail and by abusing the powers of the presidency to undermine the integrity of the upcoming election in what has become the subject of an ongoing and historic impeachment investigation. Trump’s ongoing attempts to smear his political rivals by using both lawful and unlawful strategies, including outright lies and quid-pro-quo requests for foreign assistance, present a unique and unprecedented challenge for the Biden campaign as well as for the campaigns of any potential nominee.

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Hunter Biden’s announcement came via a statement released by his lawyer, who also said that the younger Biden would pledge to forgo all work in foreign countries if his father is elected president. Hunter Biden’s decision seems to have been made independently of his father’s campaign, as both Bidens have publicly stated that they had never discussed Hunter’s business dealings with each other. Joe Biden has said that he only found out about his son’s decision to step down from BHR after being contacted by Hunter’s lawyer, and had no input into the decision-making process.

The younger Biden’s decision to step down from his position at BHR is the first time anyone in the pro-Biden camp has acknowledged the appearance of impropriety of Hunter’s business activities, and though the move was made in order to quell conspiracy theories about political corruption, the political ramifications are as of yet difficult to predict. Predictably, Trump responded to the news with a tweet, asserting without evidence that Hunter Biden was “forced to leave” the company. Joe Biden, on the other hand, praised his son’s decision, arguing that it demonstrates his son’s integrity, and hoped that it would put an end to any speculation of political corruption.

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In a brief news conference on Sunday, Joe Biden reaffirmed his commitment to transparency and integrity, promising that if he becomes president, neither he nor anyone in his family would be involved in any foreign operation whatsoever. Joe Biden also took the opportunity to indirectly point out the political family corruption of his opponent, President Trump, by saying “No one in my family will have an office in the White House, will sit in on meetings as if they’re a Cabinet member, will in fact have any business relationship with anyone that relates to a foreign corporation or a foreign country.” (The President’s daughter and his son-in-law, Ivanka Trump and Jared Kushner, both have worked for the White House and for Trump’s campaign, as have his sons Eric and Donald Trump Jr.)

Despite ongoing concerns about Trump’s various business properties around the world and their impact on his foreign policy, the roles of his family members in government and business, and the funneling of taxpayer dollars into Trump-owned businesses, the President and his campaign have decided to focus on political corruption as a line of attack against Biden, spending millions of dollars on ad campaigns featuring demonstrably false accusations. In his defense, Joe Biden has pointed out that “no one has asserted that I have done anything wrong except the lying president.” However, Biden seems reluctant to call out his opponent’s political corruption, apparently signaling a refusal to stoop to his level, though he has called for Trump’s impeachment.

Impeachment

How the World is Reacting to US Impeachment Inquiry

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On Tuesday, Speaker of the House of Representatives Nancy Pelosi announced that the House would be opening an impeachment inquiry after a whistleblower’s complaint, which alleged that the President had attempted to court the assistance of a foreign power to interfere in the 2020 presidential election, was confirmed by the White House when it released a memorialization of a phone call with the president of Ukraine. President Trump is now the fourth-ever president to have faced an impeachment investigation, and the first to have been accused by Congress of conspiring with a foreign government to undermine American democracy. Given the historic nature of the occasion, Pelosi’s announcement made headlines not just in the US but around the world, inspiring a range of reactions in essentially every nation on the planet. Because of the significance of the United States in shaping global politics, other nations are keenly interested in how American politics plays out, and this interest has perhaps never been as intense as it is in the present moment.

According to CNN, most envoys and diplomats are concerned by the recent developments in the United States, but have also grown used to the chaos that has unfolded in Washington DC on a near-daily basis. Over the past two years, the US has fallen from being a leading voice on the world stage to being one that offers a vacuum of leadership, as President Trump has failed to impress upon other world leaders and has not been successful in negotiations with countries like Mexico, Iran, North Korea, and China. While many government officials around the world were expecting the president’s time to be largely occupied with re-election concerns heading into 2020, recent developments in Congress lead them to believe Trump will have even less interest in foreign affairs. Many around the world are skeptical that impeachment will result in Trump’s removal from office, and even believe that impeachment will help Trump’s re-election campaign, as it allows the president to continue to portray himself as the victim, a strategy that has worked well for him in the past.

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Much attention has been focused on the fact that Trump unilaterally decided to declassify a memo describing his conversation with the leader of another country, which has led to concern about the secrecy of phone calls with the president. For instance, Russia’s Foreign Minister, Sergei Lavrov has condemned the president for making the phone call public, and Russia warned the US that there would be negative repercussions if Trump released conversations between the White House and the Kremlin. (According to reports from several news outlets, details about Trump’s incriminating phone call with Ukraine were initially quarantined in a highly classified computer system designed for protecting state secrets, as were conversations involving Saudi Arabia and Putin.) Officials of foreign governments worry that they will not be able to have private conversations with the United States, as Trump’s declassification of details of the Ukraine call establishes a precedent that the White House may arbitrarily decide to release details involving conduct with other countries.

Though many officials predict the White House will be less involved with international affairs as a result of the impeachment proceedings, not every official considers this to be negative. Officials from around the world have long been concerned about the effects of Trump’s haphazard decisions when dealing with other countries, such as his glorification of North Korea, his withdrawal from the Paris Climate Accords, his cancellation of the Iran nuclear deal, and his expensive trade war with China, and sometimes view Trump’s presence in global affairs as a nuisance rather than as an asset. While some are concerned that Trump may pursue war as a distraction from impeachment proceedings, most view this as unlikely, and instead are concerned about the potential impact on global markets. A number of officials who spoke with CNN marvelled at how quickly and how far political discourse in the US has fallen, and Gerard Araud, a former French ambassador to the US, characterized Trump’s conversation with the Ukranian president as “appalling.” 

Disinformation

Disinformation Campaigns On the Rise Around the World

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The United States is currently in the midst of an intragovernmental conflict that speaks to the core of questions about the proliferation of truth and facts in a democracy and about how disinformation can spread to corrupt the ordinary political processes that ensure fair and proper representation of citizens by government. The Trump administration, infamous for its strategy of communicating falsehoods and outright lies in an unyielding effort to smear any and all political opposition, nevertheless enjoys seemingly-unshakable support from a core constituency of voters who, while not representing the majority of American voices, enable largely unchecked majority rule in the federal government. The stability of this coalition speaks to the efficacy of disinformation campaigns, promulgated by the White House and repeated unquestioned by propaganda outlets including Fox News. The success of such campaigns affecting the US has resulted in similar strategies being tried in other governments, as the New York Times reports that at least 70 countries have had disinformation campaigns.

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The article references a report conducted by the Computational Propaganda Research Project at the University of Oxford, which studied governments that spread disinformation “to discredit political opponents, bury opposing views and interfere in foreign affairs.” According to the report, the number of governments employing such tactics has more than doubled in the past two years, and manipulation of social media is a key factor in their expansion. Despite efforts from companies like Facebook, Twitter, and others to combat disinformation, colloquially called “fake news,” social media remains the primary avenue by which malicious actors spread deliberately harmful information, owing to the lack of journalistic standards inherent to the way information spreads on the medium. Governments use disinformation on social media to interfere not only in their own elections, but in the elections of other countries, as infamously exemplified by the Russian government’s successful effort to leverage their Internet Research Agency to improve Trump’s odds of being elected.

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One notably prominent actor in the disinformation space is China, which has long been known to proliferate political lies and has expanded its efforts in the wake of pro-democracy protests in Hong Kong, leveraging technology in innovative and uniquely destructive ways. As time has progressed, disinformation campaigns have become more formalized and professional operations, as governments have recruited university students and others to create and spread disinformation on fake social media accounts. Generally, disinformation campaigns don’t produce news articles, which are easy to identify as disreputable, but instead create content like memes and videos, which are spread anonymously and for free and are difficult for social media platforms to spot. Given the fact that an increasing number of people get their information about politics from social media instead of traditional news organizations, the proliferation of disinformation via memes is particularly worrying.

The threat of disinformation is real, but it can be reduced by the development of a well-informed and thoughtful citizen population

Because of the awesome power of the United States on the world stage and growing concerns about the stability of its democracy, of particular concern is the integrity of the 2020 election. Given the success of their disinformation campaign in 2016 and the relative lack of consequences faced for having conducted it, Russia is likely to attempt to meddle in the election again, supporting the incumbent president over the democratic nominee. The incumbent party has additional advantages in the form of gerrymandered district maps, which have prevailed despite ongoing legal challenges, the gradual weakening of the Voting Rights Act, and the electoral college, which has allowed Republican candidates to win the presidency despite losing the popular vote on multiple occasions. And the incumbent party, having benefited from Russia’s interference, has already demonstrated a willingness to corrupt the country’s system of free and fair elections, most recently by actively soliciting the help of a foreign government to smear a political rival.

Given the threat of disinformation, it falls upon citizens to become extra vigilant in defending themselves against propaganda and false beliefs. The best way to do so is to maintain a skeptical yet inquisitive attitude concerning the validity of political information, and to develop a sense of news literacy to serve as a guide in navigating questionable and murky developments. To be well-informed, it is essential to understand why certain media outlets are trustworthy and why others aren’t, which comes from an understanding of how news outlets go about finding sources and verifying their reports, and to have the ability to separate facts from opinions and recognize bias when it’s present not only in the news, but in oneself. The threat of disinformation is real, but it can be reduced by the development of a well-informed and thoughtful citizen population, which starts at the individual level.

Impeachment 2

Formal Impeachment Announcement Largely Symbolic, but Captures Nation’s Attention

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In the past several days, news emerged that a whistleblower from the federal government observed disconcerting behavior from the President, who reported this news to the Director of National Intelligence, who considered the complaint to be urgent and serious. The Director of National Intelligence, by law, was supposed to hand over this information to Congress, but was blocked from doing so by the White House. As such, the full content of the complaint is currently unknown to Congress and to the American people, but what has become known is deeply troubling to lawmakers, including Speaker of the House Nancy Pelosi, who yesterday publicly announced that Congress would be holding impeachment inquiries and investigations.

Less than a day after reports of the existence and circumstances of the complaint emerged, sources spoke to the Washington Post to reveal some, but crucially not all, of the details. According to several news outlets, in July President Trump had a phone call with the newly-elected president of Ukraine during which he asked the Ukrainian government to investigate unfounded claims concerning political corruption of the son of Joe Biden, whom Trump considers his main political opponent. While doing so, Trump had also taken the highly unusual step of withholding aid funds from Ukraine, suggesting the possibility of a quid-pro-quo of restoration of funds in exchange for “dirt” on Joe Biden. Yesterday, Trump admitted to reporters while standing next to Air Force One that he had spoken with the President of Ukraine and discussed Joe Biden and corruption concerns, but downplayed the seriousness of his conduct, describing the call as “largely congratulatory” and “perfect.”

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Despite the President’s comments, however, many Democratic lawmakers, particularly those who have backgrounds in national security and the military, considered these allegations to be an unprecedented breach of a President’s constitutional responsibility, as asking a foreign power for help in winning a domestic re-election campaign threatens to undermine the system of democratic governance around which American political life is built. If left unchecked, this conduct could set a precedent that enables presidents to engage in unconstitutional conduct with impunity, fatally threatening the security of the country. As such, Nancy Pelosi yesterday publicly announced the beginning of formal impeachment proceedings in Congress, a risky political move considering the fact that the Senate is controlled by Republicans who are unlikely to convict the President and remove him from office, which could be seen as an embarrassing defeat for the Democrats and vindication for the Republican party. Following the announcement, several dozen Democratic congresspeople proclaimed their support for impeachment, bringing the number of House Democrats favoring impeachment past 200, close to the 218 representatives necessary for an impeachment vote to pass in the House.

According to reports from various news outlets, yesterday Trump called Pelosi in advance of her announcement, asking whether they could work out a deal concerning the whistleblower complaint, to which Pelosi replied he could authorize the release of the complaint to Congress as is required by law. Reportedly, Trump was surprised by Pelosi’s announcement, and took to Twitter to complain about it, even as he attends a U.N. summit. In response to the growing calls for his impeachment, Trump announced he would release the transcript of his call with the Ukranian President, claiming that it would exonerate him, and did so today. Democrats, who insist upon receiving the entire complaint and not just the transcript of the call, were expecting this transcript to be unremarkable, edited heavily or perhaps even falsified to create the impression that there was no wrongdoing. However, the transcript clearly shows Trump asking for an investigation into Joe Biden, as he said “there’s a lot of talk about Biden’s son, … whatever you can do with the Attorney General would be great.” While it is not the full complaint that Democrats are demanding, the transcript is surprisingly damning for the President, suggesting he perhaps does not recognize the extent and nature of the crime he just presented evidence of himself committing. Though the transcript shows no direct evidence of a quid pro quo arrangement, as Republican lawmakers were quick to point out, such an arrangement is irrelevant to the charge of asking a foreign power for assistance winning an election.

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Despite the groundbreaking and unprecedented news, however, little is likely to change in the immediate term. This is because several investigations into the President’s conduct, including his connections with other governments and his finances, are already ongoing in the House, but the word “impeachment” had not been used to describe these investigations until now. And even if the House does vote for impeachment, which is growing ever more likely by the day, the President is only removed from office after a two-thirds majority vote in the Senate. However, recent developments expand the scale of the already-quite-serious allegations of misconduct by the President, as this is the first time Trump has been known to proactively seek assistance from a foreign power to improve his re-election odds, whereas previously he had only expressed an openness to the idea.

The times have found us

That being said, this is an undoubtedly tumultuous period in American history, as the political establishment is dealing with issues for which there exist no precedent and for which the outcome is difficult to predict. Nevertheless, the President’s conduct serves as a vital test of our country’s system of checks and balances, a self-correcting mechanism established deep within the core of the philosophy constructing this country’s politics. This system, comprised of three independent and co-equal branches of government, is designed to withstand and undo bouts of corruption and other internal threats to democracy, but only functions by the action of elected officials. In her announcement yesterday, Nancy Pelosi reiterated a phrase used by the country’s founders, proclaiming “the times have found us.” Indeed, the circumstances influencing political corruption have called upon elected officials to act in service of restoring the soul of the country, or witness the gradual undermining of the country’s founding principles and the dissolution of the rule of law and the rights of citizens.