Impeachment Taught Trump All the Wrong Lessons
He
thinks he can get away with anything.
By Barry Berke
Mr.
Berke served as special counsel to the House Judiciary Committee during the
impeachment of President Trump.
·
April 19, 2020
Following the presentation of evidence
in President Trump’s Senate trial, Senator Susan Collins argued that the
president did not need to be removed from office because he has learned a “pretty big lesson” from his impeachment. The president did
in fact learn lessons from his impeachment and acquittal, but all the wrong
lessons, which he since has been applying in misleading the American people
about the catastrophic pandemic, and exacerbating its devastating impact.
Mr. Trump was impeached because when
confronted with an urgent crisis that threatened the security of our country —
Russia’s hostile invasion of Ukraine — he put his personal and political
interests over the interests of the country. He refused to protect the American
people by releasing previously approved and desperately needed military aid for
our vital ally unless that country agreed to help his re-election by announcing
an investigation of his political rival Joe Biden.
While serving
as special counsel to
the House Judiciary Committee, I warned in my opening statement for the committee’s
impeachment hearings that
if the president got away with what he did, “our imagination is the only limit
to what President Trump may do next.” Those concerns have unfortunately proved
prescient, as the lesson Mr. Trump apparently learned from his Senate acquittal
is that he could once again get away with putting his personal and political
interests over the safety of the American people when confronted with an even
more dire crisis.
The
parallels are striking and, as with all recidivists, are particularly important
for what they reveal about the president’s motives, intent and modus operandi. In other words,
we have seen this movie before.
In considering President Trump’s
motives, there is little doubt that he warned that he might withhold
desperately needed equipment from states whose governors did not express
appreciation for his efforts, such as Gov.
Gretchen Whitmer of
Michigan, to force these vulnerable leaders to act in his political interests.
Of course, that is exactly the same card he played in response to Ukraine’s
request.
The reason the president has made
blatantly false claims about the availability
of testing,
the unmet
needs of states for
ventilators and masks, and the potential of unproven
cures is
again to advance his political standing by embellishing the success of his
efforts. The reason he dismissed early
pronouncements of the dangers of the virus by the health experts in his
administration, and denied their validity, is because he cared more about the
stock market falling and potentially harming his re-election prospects.
There can be little doubt that the
president acted knowingly and intentionally in putting his personal and
political interests over the health and safety of the American people by
delaying the measures recommended by his advisers. Reports over the past few
days reveal that he was warned in late January
and early February of the costs of not acting quickly by his most senior
advisers, including his health and human services secretary, Alex Azar, and his
principal trade adviser, Peter Navarro.
And
last weekend, Dr. Anthony Fauci, the head of the National Institute of Allergy
and Infectious Diseases and the administration’s top infectious disease expert,
appeared to confirm that he and his colleagues warned of the need for social distancing in mid-February, following a New
York Times report detailing
the delays. But President Trump nevertheless dismissed those warnings, and
delayed announcing the need for social distancing and other actions recommended
by his experts.
What
these disclosures reveal about the president’s state of mind is not that his
impeachment and Senate trial distracted him from these risks, as he and his supporters now claim. To the contrary, he
was very much aware of these risks in real time, and his acquittal taught him
that he could use the same means to again get away with abusing his
power for his own selfish purposes.
Just as he deflected
all responsibility and
blamed others for the Ukraine scandal, he
has done the same by
simply saying “I don’t take responsibility at all” for the pandemic, and again
blaming Democrats, this time the governors facing the consequences of his
actions, in addition to the Democrats who impeached him, the media and the
so-called deep state. The president’s name-calling and personal attacks on the
governors, reporters and TV news anchors who tell the truth or criticize him is
straight out of his impeachment playbook, mirroring his treatment of the
ambassadors, administration officials and legislators who similarly told the
truth about Ukraine or criticized him.
Finally, the president’s last move is
to send a message to others that he is above the law and that anyone who
reveals the truth about his actions will be punished. Mr. Trump’s recent
termination of the inspector general for the intelligence community, whose forthright
handling of the whistle-blower complaint helped to uncover the president’s
wrongdoing, follows
the firing and demotion of the other patriots who came forth with the truth
about his misconduct toward Ukraine. It was clearly intended to send a message.
In fact, immediately following his termination of the intelligence community
inspector general, he
removed the
Defense Department’s acting inspector general, who had just been chosen to lead
the Pandemic Response Accountability Committee and provide oversight of the
administration’s distribution of $2.2 trillion in coronavirus relief funds.
The president will no doubt also try to
seek retribution against those who tell the truth about what he knew of the
Covid-19 risks and when he knew it. That may already be in the works, as
reflected in the president’s retweet last week of a post critical of
Dr. Fauci that ended with #FireFauci.
There is one administration official
who deserves to lose his position for once again putting his own personal and
political interests before those of the nation. The American people will make
that decision in November and teach the president the right lesson.
Barry Berke is a trial lawyer who specializes in white-collar
criminal defense.