This week we have witnessed an impeachment inquiry that settles in most rational minds that Donald Trump is using the office of the presidency for personal political advantage. Unless you are willfully blind, it is clear that this is the ultimate result of a sustained effort on the part of Mitch McConnel to inject unlimited secret money into our politics. Moscow Mitch’s drive to sell American elections to the highest bidder was aided and abetted by Chief Justrice John Roberts when he wrote the now notorius Citezens United decision. At the time, concerned citizens, including President Obama, warned that unlimited secret money would invite foreign interventions in our elections. The Cheif Justice’s blythe assertion that such money would not give rise to the appearance of corruption, along with his decision to leave disclosure rules up the the congress, left a gaping hole in the hull of our ship of state, and the dirty money started pouring into the bilge almost immediately. Less than a decade after the 2010 decision, The Russian Federation dumped tens of millions of dollars into the NRA, who in turn used the largesse to fund conservative Republicans up and down the ticket. Given the sway the NRA has and continues to have over the GOP, I doubt any of the party on the right is not tainted by this money.
So now, the two men most responsible for inviting foreign intervention in our politics will control what happens in the Senate when the house concludes its impeachment inquiry. Mr McConnel will no dobt use his power over the conduct of the Senate to follow the letter of the constitution on impeachment but no more than that. I do not expect the Senate to act in the same serious manner as the House has shown in the past two weeks. The Senate Majority Leader’s modus operandi is to thwart anything coming from a Democratic House as illegetimate. Sure, he will hold a trial, but if the rules allow him to keep it short and out of public view, he will move heaven and earth to prevent the kind of honest examination of the sort we have been witnessing. I also expect them to flood the zone with nonsensical non-sequiturs in the manner of Devin Nunes and Jim Jordan. No one should count on Mr. McConnel to do the right thing.
So the fate of American Democracy will come down to Chief Justice Roberts. If he is a man of true character, he needs to accept that he was wrong about the impact of Citizens United. Foreign money, as well as other things of value normally limited by campaign finance rules, were clearly deployed during the 2016 elections. Every fiber of the National Security community is yelling at the top of their lungs that it will happen again in 2020. Mr. McConnel refuses to stop it, and in fact seems determined to take advantage of it again. So, the Chief Justice has a choice, allow the Senate proceedings to be nothing more than a whitewashing of proven illegal acts to the benefit of one party rule, or to find his spine and to draw the bright line he was so reluctant to name in Citizens United. Money may be viewed as another form of speech, but secret money leads only to corruption.
Cheif Justice Roberts may be under some pressure to get with the program, but he does still care about the legitimacy of the courts. If he blows this opportunity to correct the flaw in his decision, then who on the left would believe and accept the future decisions of the Roberts Court. The law depends upon all participants believing the process is fair, and accepting the results of that process even when one looses.
Dr. Hill made clear, the hearings this week were about Ukraine only to the extent that the Ukraine story was meant to obscure the efforts of Russia in 2016. The Ukraine story is a smokescreen that sows doubt about Mr Trump being placed into the presidency by Vladimir Putin. How did Putin do this? Well thanks to Justice Roberts and Majority Leader McConnel, he did it the old fashioned American way, by dumping money and assitance into an ecosystem ripe for abuse, and short on controls.
I think any Senator who took money from Russia in 2016, either through the NRA or through any of the scores of secretive pacs and superpacs, should recuse themselves from the Senate trial. I know they wont, but they should. I also believe the Senate Majority leader has too many conflicts of interest here to act as a reliable manager of the Senate process. I hope and pray John Roberts has learned his lesson and will not conduct the trial with the kind of naivete he showed in Citizens United. The survival of the constitution, who both men swore to defend from enemies foreign and domestic, is truly at stake here. They hold the fate of the Republic in their hands. Heaven forfend they should treat this as just another political exercise.