A cocoon of bitterness and resentment*

And paranoia.

From the planned subpoenas by Democrats in the House, to the new filings by special counsel Robert Mueller, to the recent confessions of his former lawyer Michael Cohen, Trump has now reached the stage of post paranoia.

While the Justice Department has stressed that Trump is a “subject,” not a “target,” of the special counsel investigation, he appears to be a rather significant subject that features a virtual bulls eye.

Jonathan Turley @ The Hill

No. He IS a target; the DOJ just isn't admitting it.

The week began with what might have seemed good news for Trump. Jerome Corsi, an associate of Trump confidant Roger Stone, refused a plea bargain from Mueller that he said would force him to lie. However, the draft of the agreement had a clear target in mind, and it definitely was not Corsi.

The draft notably refers to “Donald Trump” rather than using standard code like “Person One.” It further states that the Russians did in fact use WikiLeaks as a conduit for the public release of information. It described Stone as someone “Corsi understood to be in regular contact” with candidate Trump. It recounts how Stone allegedly told Corsi to “get to” WikiLeaks founder Julian Assange, and how Corsi related that their “friend in embassy plans 2 more dumps” with “very damaging” information, and how in early 2017, Corsi allegedly “deleted from his computer all email correspondence that predated October 11, 2016.” Corsi has been clearly treated as the direct link to Stone, and Stone as the direct link to Trump.

Then came the guilty plea by Cohen for lying to Congress, an account loaded with clear shots at Trump, including Cohen stating he lied to be consistent with Trump and to try to limit the Russia investigation. According to a later leak, Cohen told Mueller he was led to believe he would be given a presidential pardon or some other protection if he continued to maintain this false account. There was very little ambiguity as to the person who gave Cohen that idea in the statement.

[...]

Cohen lying to Congress does not implicate Trump unless he encouraged it, which could constitute subornation of perjury and other possible crimes, but it raises new questions about what Trump had known or even encouragement of such false testimony.

Those questions were there long before the Cohen plea. What the plea does is underline them and strongly imply the answer.

While the known evidence falls short of a clear criminal connection to the president, the immediate danger could be a strategy to trigger Trump to commit possible impeachable offenses.

This author is Jonathan Turley, a Constitutional lawyer (who tends to be very conservative in his interpretations). But, what the hell?  "Trigger...possible impeachable offenses"?

Obviously, I can't claim to know more about the Constitution than Turley, but Trump has continuously committed impeachable offenses. The fact that no one is willing to levy them doesn't mean they aren't there. You don't have to commit a crime - although Trump has done that as well - to be guilty of impeachable offenses. In fact, impeachment is not a criminal proceeding, but a political one.

If Mueller were to indict Trump Jr., he would likely wait until he indicted or secured pleas from most of the other players. This would make it more difficult to unravel the investigation and pending prosecutions. Any indictment of his son would likely trigger a furious response from Trump, and it is in such moments that the president is at his most vulnerable. Unlike past episodes, even a concerted White House staff effort in this case might not stop an enraged executive order to fire Mueller or the issuance of a slew of pardons to block prosecutions.

While some constitutional experts insist that firing a special counsel is not a crime, and therefore not impeachable, such a narrow view is contrary to the statements of the Framers and the history of impeachments. Many offenses are not federal crimes, yet they constitute impeachable abuses of power. Indeed, the Richard Nixon articles of impeachment included obstruction counts as well as the promising of “favored treatment and consideration” for witnesses to remain silent or to offer false testimony.

That's better.

The Constitution provides for charges beyond treason and bribery of "high crimes and misdemeanors" as impeachable offenses. Does dangling pardons and paying sexual partners for silence not constitute bribery? The Constitution does not specify bribery to be the taking of a bribe. It could also be the offering of one.

So let's look at "high crimes and misdemeanors", according to the Constitutional Rights Foundation:

The framers wanted a stronger federal government, but not one too strong. To achieve the right balance, the framers divided the powers of the new government into three branches—the executive, legislative, and judicial. This is known as the separation of powers. They also gave each branch ways to check the power of the other branches.

[...]

James Madison of Virginia successfully argued that an election every four years did not provide enough of a check on a president who was incapacitated or abusing the power of the office. He contended that “loss of capacity, or corruption . . . might be fatal to the republic” if the president could not be removed until the next election.

  CRF

Loss of capacity is a little tricky, since Trump had no capacity for being president in the first place. But corruption is rampant in the Trump family background, and to the extent that Trump is still tied to Manafort and Mohammed bin Salman, to name two figures, corruption is a current condition. It could also be argued that his use of personal property to gain from both US taxpayers and foreign players is corrupt. How about appointing cronies and family to high positions? How about lobbying the DOJ to investigate his rivals?

For the more than 200 years since the Constitution was adopted, Congress has seriously considered impeachment only 18 times. Thirteen of these cases involved federal judges. The “high crimes and misdemeanors” that the House charged against these judges included being habitually drunk, showing favoritism on the bench, using judicial power unlawfully, using the office for financial gain, unlawfully punishing people for contempt of court, submitting false expense accounts, getting special deals from parties appearing before the court, bullying people in open court, filing false income tax returns, making false statements while under oath, and disclosing confidential information.

Only three of the 18 impeachment cases have involved a president — Andrew Johnson in 1868, Richard Nixon in 1974, and Bill Clinton in 1998.

[...]

[Johnson] The House passed 11 articles of impeachment. Eight involved Johnson’s violations of the Tenure of Office Act. One charged him with sending orders through improper channels. Another accused him of conspiring against Congress, citing a statement he made about Congress not representing all the states. The last summarized the other 10 charges and charged him with failing to enforce the Reconstruction Acts.

[...]

[Nixon] In 1974, the House Judiciary committee voted three articles of impeachment. One accused Nixon of obstruction of justice. Another accused him of abuse of power. The third charged him with contempt of Congress for defying the committee’s requests to produce documents.

[...]

[Clinton] In 1998, Independent Counsel Kenneth Starr issued a report to the House Judiciary Committee. It found 11 possible impeachable offenses, all related to the intern scandal. Based on the independent counsel’s investigation, the House Judiciary Committee voted four articles of impeachment. The first article accused the president of committing perjury before a grand jury convened by the independent counsel. The second charged him with providing “perjurious, false and misleading testimony” in a civil case related to the scandal. The third accused him of obstructing justice to “delay, impede, cover up and conceal the existence” of evidence related to the scandal. The fourth charged that he misused and abused his office by deceiving the American public, misleading his cabinet and other employees so that they would mislead the public, asserting executive privilege to hinder the investigation, and refusing to respond to the committee and misleading the committee about the scandal.

[...]

[As to the founders' intent, w]ith the [Constitutional] convention agreed on the necessity of impeachment, it next had to agree on the grounds. One committee proposed the grounds be “treason, bribery, and corruption.” Another committee was selected to deal with matters not yet decided. This committee deleted corruption and left “treason or bribery” as the grounds.

But the committee’s recommendation did not satisfy everyone. George Mason of Virginia proposed adding “maladministration.” He thought that treason and bribery did not cover all the harm that a president might do.

[...]

Madison objected to “maladministration.” He thought this term was so vague that it would threaten the separation of powers. Congress could remove any president it disagreed with on grounds of “maladministration.” This would give Congress complete power over the executive.

Mason abandoned “maladministration” and proposed “high crimes and misdemeanors against the state.” The convention adopted Mason’s proposal, but dropped “against the state.” The final version, which appears in the Constitution, stated: “The president, vice-president, and all civil officers of the United States, shall be removed from office on impeachment for, and conviction of treason, bribery, or other high crimes and misdemeanors.”

[...]

Most of the framers knew the phrase well. Since 1386, the English parliament had used “high crimes and misdemeanors” as one of the grounds to impeach officials of the crown. Officials accused of “high crimes and misdemeanors” were accused of offenses as varied as misappropriating government funds, appointing unfit subordinates, not prosecuting cases, not spending money allocated by Parliament, promoting themselves ahead of more deserving candidates, threatening a grand jury, disobeying an order from Parliament, arresting a man to keep him from running for Parliament, losing a ship by neglecting to moor it, helping “suppress petitions to the King to call a Parliament,” granting warrants without cause, and bribery. Some of these charges were crimes. Others were not. The one common denominator in all these accusations was that the official had somehow abused the power of his office and was unfit to serve.

After the Constitutional Convention, the Constitution had to be ratified by the states. Alexander Hamilton, James Madison, and John Jay wrote a series of essays, known as the Federalist Papers, urging support of the Constitution. In Federalist No. 65, Hamilton explained impeachment. He defined impeachable offenses as “those offences which proceed from the misconduct of public men, or in other words 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.”

Misconduct - abuse or violation of public trust. Injury done to society itself.  Lying constantly, concealing information about his ties to Russia.  Add that to the bribery and misuse of the office charges.  We don't even have to go back to his episodes in money laundering, which truly is a crime.

Case closed on cause for impeachment of Donald J Trump by the founders of the Constitution.


* LA Times

UPDATE: Another impeachable offense:

President Donald Trump threatened to declassify “devastating” documents next year if House Democrats launch probes into his administration. “If they want to play tough, I will do it,” he said during an Oval Office interview [...] with the New York Post. "They will see how devastating those pages are." Trump told the paper he would declassify FISA warrant applications and other confidential documents from Robert Mueller’s investigation, which he said would expose efforts by the FBI, the Justice Department and the Clinton campaign to set him up. “If they go down the presidential harassment track, if they want to go and harass the president and the administration, I think that would be the best thing that would happen to me,” he said. “I’m a counter-puncher and I will hit them so hard they’d never been hit like that.” Trump also told the tabloid he would wait to reveal such documents until they are absolutely needed, saying, “It’s much more powerful if I do it then.”

  Daily Beast