Impeaching and removing Trump is definitely the right thing to do. The problem is that it is itself a distraction because, while it seems like everything, it is actually only a half measure, one that may not work.
Trump’s co-conspirators are legion: Pence, Barr, Pompeo, Mulvaney, et al. All are complicit. Everyone was and still is in the loop.
More than that, Russia’s assets, the debtors of its largesse, the victims of its kompromat are legion, not just Trump (as a current FBI fraud investigation into Russian money laundering is increasingly revealing; h/t annieli), but also members of the Senate:
Susan Collins and other GOP Senators shuddered when Jerry Nadler said that the Senate itself was on trial. They shuddered under the mask of decorum for impugning the Senate’s own juror-judges, but the actual reason for shuddering was Russia and its stranglehold on US politics.
Even the sudden shift in Supreme Court majority, the retirement of Justice Kennedy, and his replacement by rapey Brett Kavanaugh, has the reek of Russian money behind it.
In their impeachment arguments in the Senate, the House Managers can’t implicate GOP Senators. And they certainly can’t call into question the Supreme Court or its justices.
But the rest of the House can.
During the second phase of the impeachment trial, during the so-called defense to be given by the president’s legal team (several of whom themselves are co-conspirators in the president’s scheme, victims of Russian kompromat or largesse), how about we have a concurrent set of House committee hearings about Russian influence among government officials, particularly in the president’s appointees and Senate allies?
Half measures aren’t going to work. Trump is a symptom, not the disease. Russian autocratic values, sabotage, and bribery need to be combated on all fronts if we are to win this battle for the hearts and minds of the American people.
I suspect that part of the interest of Bloomberg and Steyer in running for president, and of Jeff Bezos in exposing the Trump-Saudi connection, is that we have a war of the billionaires happening in front of our eyes.
The Senate under McConnell’s leadership is compromised. The Supreme Court itself may be partly compromised.
The Democratic House needs to be the tip of the spear in this war, not on the sidelines.