Trump Supporters Thrive on the Drama, and Endanger National Security

Today, Florida Representative Matt Gaetz engaged in a political stunt by leading a group of about thirty Republican House members to storm into the Sensitive Compartmented Information Facility ("SCIF") where the House Judiciary Committee was to take the deposition of the Deputy Assistant Secretary of Defense for Russia, Ukraine and Eurasia, Laura Cooper, endangering national security in the process.  The SCIF is a facility set up to permit members of Congress to receive classified information concerning national security while keeping the information secure.  No electronic devices are permitted inside the hearing room.  A special room outside of the hearing room exits so everyone who enters the hearing room can lock up their cell phones and other electronic devices.

Nonetheless, Gaetz and his Republican cohorts violated protocol, storming into the hearing room uninvited without locking up their electronic devices.  Indeed, a tweet appeared on Gaetz Twitter account celebrating the intrusion.  After Chairman Adam Schiff abruptly ended the proceedings, the SCIF had to be swept to ensure no electronic devices that could spy on the hearings had been left behind.  As Mieke Eoyang, Vice President for the Third Way's National Security Program (@MiekeEoyang) reported on her Twitter account, many members of Congress are targets for foreign intelligence due to what they know about national security.  Yet, at the same time some Congress members fail to observe strict steps to secure their sensitive conversations. Knowing what is discussed within the SCIF would be a boon to foreign adversaries, says Eoyang, which is why breaching protocol by bringing electronic devices into the hearing room is such a danger to national security.

Despite the threat to national  security, Trump supporters are likely to be thrilled with Gaetz's brazen political stunt.  Hard core Trump supporters thrive on the drama, regardless of the threat to the nation, both from hostile foreign entities, and from the autocratic tendencies of the chief executive and his administration.  Indeed, Trump supporters love the "in your face" combative tactics that Trump and his defenders have adopted in opposition to the current impeachment inquiry.

Trump supporters have long memories.  Their unwavering loyalty can be traced back to the Impeachment of President Bill Clinton.  Clinton was, of course, caught lying whiles testifying under oath about a sexual encounter with a White House intern.  He was impeached for perjury, however, the Democrats rallied behind their President.  As a result, Clinton survived the removal trial in the Senate.  Conservative voters decried how the Democrats could continue to support a man, nicknamed Slick Willie for his perceived dishonesty.  As successive Republican leaders, such as Newt Gingrich and Bob Livingston, resigned from Congress amid marital infidelity allegations, conservative talk show hosts, such as Rush Limbaugh, lamented that Republicans would rather throw their leaders under the bus than stand up and fight when such allegations were made. 

When Trump came along in the middle of the 2016 Republican presidential nomination campaign, he turned the event into a slugfest.  He slapped his opponents with derogatory nicknames, like Little Marco Rubio, and Lyin' Ted Cruz, that injected drama for low information voters, who otherwise found the crowded field of candidates uninteresting.  Conservative voters had found a candidate who could fight, and who would enjoy their undying support.  Trump was, in essence, their Bill Clinton.

Indeed, the support from Trump from these voters was so strong, it didn't matter that his White House was reported to be in chaos, it didn't matter that Trump would blab highly confidential intelligence to Russian officials, and, of course, it didn't matter that Trump was willing to engage in lawlessness, such as obstructing the investigation into Russian interference in the 2016 election on several occasions.

Those same supporters blindly defend Trump, despite what factual evidence of his wrong doings emerge.  Despite public statements by Trump that he asked a foreign leader for dirt on a political opponent, their support is undying.  The release of the memorandum of his telephone call with Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky confirming that asked Ukraine to investigate Joe Biden and his son, Hunter did not change their minds.  Even with evidence piling up indicating that Trump was withholding military aid to Ukraine, approved by Congress, until the Ukrainian Government would announce that it had opened that investigation, Trump supporters still believe his claims that the phone call was "perfect."

When Acting Chief of Staff, Mick Mulvaney, admitted in a press conference that the flow of funds was held up until Ukraine made steps to combat corruption, which in the President's mind included the investigation, core Trump supporters' loyalty never wavered.  After admitting the facts that make up the quid pro quo, Mulvaney infamously told the press corps, "get over it."  While Washington pundits continue to buzz about the admission, it has hardly moved any hard core Trump supporters.  Within days, Mulvney's admonition to the press to "get over it"  found itself emblazoned on t-shirts for sale on Trump's 2020 campaign website.   (Research has shown that t-shirt saying, "I voted for Trump, Get Over It" were available through the website even before Mulvaney's press conference.  However, I could not find the simple "Get Over It" alone on a t-shirt until after Mulvaney's said it to the press.)  Despite Mulvaney's admission of the President's gross illegality and abuse of power, Trump supporters could themselves get "in your face" with a defiant message, indicating Trump was still their man, no matter his outrageous offenses.

Trump supporters just don't care about the threat to national security when it comes to being loyal to "their man."  Trump supporters did not protest Trump's tweeting of a classified spy satellite image taken of an Iranian rocket installation.  They do not protest Trump's continual discrediting of the U.S. intelligence community.  They don't mind that Trump met with Russian President Vladimir Putin in secret multiple times.  Certainly, they won't mind now that Representative Gaetz has led so many Republican representatives to breach security protocol in such an audacious manner.  Indeed, his political stunt plays right into their wheelhouse, having show that they prefer the drama and confrontation that is the hallmark of the Trump Administration.

By:  William J. Kovatch, Jr.

Whistleblower Complaint Provides More Evidence of Trump's Abuse of Power

The House Permanent Select Committee on Intelligence released the whistleblower complaint Thursday morning, after it had been declassified.  Through the complaint, the whistleblower detailed pressure placed on Ukraine to provide Trump with information he and his allies viewed as helpful for the President's 2020 campaign.  That pressure went beyond a mere telephone call, and circumvented the normal channels of U.S. foreign policy.  Moreover, the whistleblower detailed procedures in place to cover-up Trump's other abuses of his office for political gain.

Despite assertions by key Republican figures that the memorandum of the telephone call between Trump and Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky revealed no "quid pro quo," the whistleblower detailed how Trump and his allies had been placing pressure on Ukrainian officials to cooperate with Trump's desire to smear his political rivals for several months. 

On Wednesday, before the complaint was released, Trump was desperate to show that the telephone call did not reveal any impeachable offense.  To that end, Trump and his Republican apologists attempted to constrain the analysis to the four corners of the memorandum of the telephone call, claiming that language used showed no pressure or quid pro quo.  The goal was to distract the public rom the fact that no quid pro quo was even necessary to show an abuse of office, as the solicitation of information to be used against an opponent from a foreign source is itself sufficient for there to be a criminal violation of federal campaign finance law.

Trump, therefore, attempted to dispel allegations that he put pressure on Zelensky by parading the visibly nervous Ukrainian President in front of the television cameras at the United Nations on Wednesday.  Not surprisingly, Zelensky responded in the negative when Trump pointedly asked if he felt pressure from the July telephone call.  However, the whistleblower cited President Zelensky's website, on which was posted the first acknowledgment of telephone call on July 25, 2019.  This post included a statement that Trump hoped Ukraine would "complete the investigation of corruption cases that have held back cooperation between Ukraine and the United States."  From the memorandum of the telephone call, the only case of alleged corruption mentioned by Trump was the investigation into Joe Biden and his son Hunter.  Clearly, Ukrainian officials understood that cooperation with Trump and his allies over providing information on Biden was a condition to renewed U.S. assistance.  Given the timing of the call, which took place after Trump had suspended military aid to Ukraine, Trump's reminder to Zelensky that while the United States had provided assistance to Ukraine in the past the cooperation between the two countries had not been reciprocal, and the fact that Trump requested a favor from Zelensky immediately after Zelensky indicated a desire to purchase more Javelin missiles, it is easy to see how Zelensky viewed future cooperation with the Trump Administration would be contingent on providing the information on Biden that Trump requested.

Moreover, the whistleblower detailed how Trump and his allies placed pressure on Ukraine to investigate both the hacking of the Democratic National Committee's email server and the Bidens months before Zelensky won the presidential election. The scheme centered around a Ukrainian Prosecutor General, over whom Trump and his allies believed they had influence.  Trump believed that his efforts to manipulate that prosecutor has been frustrated by official U.S. foreign policy channels.

In the July telephone call, for example, Trump refers to a "prosecutor who was very good" whom Trump believed was "shut down."  Trump described this situation as "really unfair" and involving "very bad people," including "[t]he former ambassador from the United States, the woman . . . ." 

Up until the release of the whistleblower complaint, many had assumed Trump was talking about Viktor Shokin.  Shokin was the Prosecutor General that the Obama Administration, as well as most of Western Europe, opposed as being soft on corruption.  This was the prosecutor whom Obama wanted Biden to pressure the Ukainian President to remove in 2016.  However, the whistleblower discussed a more recent Ukrainian Prosecutor General, Yury Lutsenko, who served under Zelensky's predecessor, Ukrainian President Petro Poroshenko. 

The whistleblower noted that Trump's private attorney, Rudolph Giuliani, met with Lutsenko once in New York in January of 2019, and again in February of 2019 in Warsaw.  In March of 2019, Lutsenko and his allies claimed that Ukraine had evidence that the Head of the National Anticorruption Bureau of Ukraine, Artem Stynyk, and a member of the Ukrainian Parliament, Serhiy Leshchenko, worked with the DNC and the U.S. Embassy in Kiev to interfere in the 2016 U.S. presidential election.  They also claimed that U.S. Ambassador Marie Yovanovich obstructed Ukrainian corruption investigations by providing a "do not prosecute" list and by preventing Ukrainian prosecutors from traveling to the United States.  Further, Lutsenko and his friends claimed that Biden pressured Poroshenko to fire Shokin to stop an investigation of Burisma, the Ukrainian oil and gas company that employed Biden's son, Hunter.  Lutsenko stated his desire to discuss these matters with U.S. Attorney General William Barr.

The timing of Lutsenko's allegations, after Lutsenko had met with Giuliani, raise the very serious question of whether Giuliani planted these ideas in Lutsenko's head, and urged him to investigate the matters.  Bearing in mind that Trump still refuses to accept the conclusions of the U.S. intelligence community, the FBI and Robert Mueller's investigation that Russia interfered in the 2016 election, and that Trump regularly engages in the tactic of deflection when evidence of his wrongdoing surfaces, it is clear to see how Lutsenko's statements about the DNC would politically benefit Trump.  To detract from proof of Russian interference, Trump has claimed that it was the Democrats who actually solicited foreign interference in the 2016 election from Ukraine to support Hilary Clinton's candidacy.  By publicly claiming to have evidence of a DNC scheme, Lutsenko would appear to corroborate Trump's conspiracy theory.

Additionally, Ambassador Yovanovich, who was appointed by President Obama, had voiced her criticism that Lutsenko was himself soft on corruption.  In April of 2019, Lutsenko walked about from the March allegation, admitting that Yovanovich never provided a "do not prosecute" list, and that it was Lutsenko who had actually requested such a list. Yovanovich was therefore acting in opposition to Trump's scheme, as implemented by Giuliani.  In fact, as an Obama appointee, Yovanovich was independent of President Trump, and in a position to thwart Giuliani's attempts to solicit political help from the Ukrainian Government. 

Yovanovich was recalled to Washington in March, and removed as the Ambassador in April, after Zelensky's election as President.  Giuliani this was "because she was part of the efforts against the President."

Moreover, in May, Lutsenko acknowledged that there were no investigations targeting Biden or his son, Hunter, and that Ukraine had no evidence of any wrong doing of either Biden.

Nonetheless, Lutsenko had proven to be receptive to Giuliani's urgings that he investigate alleged Ukrainian interference in the 2016 election on behalf of the Democrats, and the claim that Biden had pressured Poroshenko to remove Shokin to protect Hunter Biden.  When Poroshenko lost the Ukrainian presidential election, Trump viewed it as in his personal interests to have Zelensky permit Lutsenko to continue as the Prosecutor General.  This is what Trump appears to be implying in the July telephone conversation.

In furtherance of the pressure Trump and his allies were already placing on Ukraine, the President instructed Vice President Michael Pence to cancel his trip to attend Zelensky's inauguration as Ukrainian President on May 20.  According to the whistleblower, it was "made clear" to Ukrainian officials that Trump did not want to meet with Zelensky until Trump saw how Zelensky "chose to act."  Specifically, a meeting or telephone call between Trump and Zelensky would be contingent upon Zelensky's willingness to "play ball" with the allegations of collaboration between Ukraine and the DNC, and that Biden had acted to protect his son from an investigation into corruption.

The whistleblower, therefore, outlined a campaign of pressure on Ukrainian officials, dating back to at least January of 2019, through Trump's private attorney, to find evidence to support Trump's claims that the DNC cooperated with Ukraine to interfere in the 2016 U.S. presidential election, and that Biden had pressured Ukraine to fire its top prosecutor to protect his son.  That is, Trump's campaign of corruption concerning Ukraine concerned more than merely one telephone call in July of 2019.

At any rate, the pressure Trump has placed on Ukraine to dig up dirt on his political opponents is but only one troubling aspect of the whistleblower complaint.  Equally serious is that Trump has been conducted a sort of rogue foreign policy circumventing the normal governmental avenues of the State Department and the national security apparatus.  Instead, Trump is sending his private lawyer, a man with no experience in foreign policy, to pressure Ukrainian officials into doing Trump's bidding.  Indeed, Ukraine has been getting two separate set of communications from the United States, one from the official foreign policy channels, and one from Rudy Giuliani.  These communications have been in conflict, necessitating U.S. Government officials to advise Zelensky and other Ukrainian political leaders on how to navigate the waters between official U.S. policy and Trump's rogue policy.

Still worse, the whistleblower detailed the extent to which Trump's corruption has been accepted by White House staff as normal.  In this regard, the White House has a computer server where transcripts of the President's telephone calls are kept until they can be finalized.  The data on this server is available to cabinet members and other executive appointees to allow them to keep up with Trump's communications with world leaders.  However, the transcript of this conversation with President Zelensky was pulled off the widely available server, and placed on a server where telephone conversations containing sensitive matters of national security are stored.  Access to this server is not widely available, but closely guarded.  The Zelensky conversation was placed on the more secure server despite the fact that the conversation did not address sensitive matters of national security.  Rather, the whistleblower detailed a practice whereby Trump's telephone calls where he abuses his office for private political gain are routinely taken off the widely available server, and stored on the national security server.  Thus it appears that Trump's staff has been complicit in covering up multiple instances where Trump has abused his position for personal gain.

The transcript of the July conversation with President Zelensky was bad enough.  But Congress should not constrain itself to considering that conversation alone.  While Trump's public admissions and the memorandum of the telephone conversation are themselves enough to establish violations of Trump's constitutional oath and criminal campaign finance laws, the whistleblower's complaint details a much farther reaching scheme. This scheme involves Trump's abuse of his role in foreign relations to seek personal political gain, and a cover-up meant to protect Trump from scrutiny and accountability.  All toll, the evidence in favor of Trump's impeachment is mounting, and cannot be ignored.

By: William J. Kovatch, Jr.