Impeachable Offense

By GENE NICHOL

Like a lot of folks, I’ve been trying to wean myself from thinking about Donald Trump. It’s not working.

Last week, Michael Cohen pleaded guilty to lying to Congress about the timing of the negotiations to build a Trump Tower in Moscow and how often he’d discussed the dealings with Trump during the presidential campaign. He also said he’d worked to organize a Trump trip to Russia after the Republican nomination was secured. Cohen lied, he said, to hide Trump’s involvement, to match Trump’s public falsehoods, and to deflect the Russia investigations. Cohen told a packed Manhattan courtroom he “made the misstatements to be consistent with (Trump’s) political messaging.”

So what, you ask? The Trump crew lies all the time and Cohen has already established himself as Trump’s adultery payoff pimp and coercion man. Is there, suddenly, gambling in the establishment? Come on.

It’s not so much, in this case, that Cohen lied. It is rather, who he lied to and what he lied about. The personal lawyer of the president of the United States admitted lying to the Congress about his client’s dealings with a hostile foreign power in order to keep the legislators and the country from knowing his client was playing footsie with our leading adversary.

It is impossible to know, yet, whether Trump instructed his lawyer to commit perjury on his behalf. It may just be, of course, that Cohen knew, without an up-dated mandate, that committing crimes to protect his ever-illicit boss was his accepted (or even sought-after) lot in life. But whether that is true or not, there can be no doubt that Trump, obsessed with the investigation, knew that his lawyer lied to the Congress about his business dealings and the president didn’t lift a finger to correct the falsehoods lodged on his behalf. If Cohen hadn’t eventually spoken up, Trump would be relying on his lies to the legislators still.

Cohen committed (another) crime. A serious one. He did it to cover up his boss’ persistent prevarications on involvement with Russia. Few would appreciate a candidate for the presidency, or a president, selling out the interests of the nation to make money on a building in Moscow. But Trump and his fixer weren’t to be deterred by (weak) concerns like the American democracy. The money and the crime came first. Perhaps Cohen acted only with tacit instruction and then concrete and precise ratification. But separating Trump from the criminality and the violation of constitutionally-imposed legal norms would absurdly elevate form over substance. Perjury carried out by Trump’s agent, on his behalf, with his (at least subsequent) approval, and without his required intervening correction, is, in real terms, Trump’s perjury as much as Cohen’s.

Alexander Hamilton wrote in Federalist #65 that impeachment lies for:

“those offenses which proceed from the misconduct of public men, from the abuse or violation of some public trust. They are of a nature which may with peculiar propriety be denominated political, as they relate chiefly to injuries done immediately to the society itself.”

Hamilton, meet Trump.

North Carolina’s Richard Burr, chairman of the Senate Intelligence Committee, said a couple of days ago that Cohen’s guilty plea should be seen as a stern and potent warning: “It’s a loud message to everybody that is interviewed by our committee, regardless of where the prosecution comes from, if you lie to us we’re going to go after you.”

Nice talk. Such threats are easily made. We’ll see if the declared umbrage applies to the general directing the battle plan or only to the foot soldiers doing his bidding. I’m not holding my breath.

Gene Nichol is Boyd Tinsley Distinguished Professor of Law and in 2015 started the Poverty Research Fund at the University of North Carolina School of Law after the UNC Board of Governors closed the state-funded Poverty Center. He is also President Emeritus of College of William & Mary.

From The Progressive Populist, January 1-15, 2019

Populist.com