Now that the whitewash tragedy known as the Senate Impeachment Trial is over I would like to offer a few final thoughts on claims made by Trump and his senate lapdogs.
Trump has always claimed that the reason that he (illegally) withheld money appropriated by the congress and intended for Ukraine’s defense is because of his concern for corruption in that country.
Who and how the corruption was done, and how the withholding of aid was supposed to solve it, was never specified. It was just a lame excuse for withholding (not delaying) the money offered up after the fact just to have something to cover his overfed butt.
But let’s hold Trump to his word. If he was willing to withhold aid to Ukraine because of some unspecified corruption then he should immediately start withholding aid to Israel.
Unlike the Ukraine, where no one ever accused President Zelensky of a crime of corruption, in Israel it is perfectly clear who is being tried (not just accused) for corruption: Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu.
Netanyahu was officially indicted by the Israeli Attorney General Avichai Mandelblit at the end of January on charges of corruption. And there is no confusion about what those charges are: In cases 1,000, 2,000 and 4,000 he is specifically charged with breach of trust, accepting bribes and fraud. Pretty clear, huh? citation
The most serious charge is case 4000, in which “the government alleges Netanyahu advanced regulatory benefits worth more than 1 billion shekels (approximately $280 million) to his friend, millionaire Shaul Elovitch, who owned the Walla! Newsite as part of his control of the Bezeq communications company.”
In their brief, “prosecutors are claiming that in that exchange Netanyahu, who also served at that time as Israel’s Minister of Communication, received favorable news coverage on Walla! as well as influence over the choice of stories and language used."
It is not for me or any other American to decide if Netanyahu is guilty of one or all of the corruption charges against him. I can only hope that the Israeli Knesset, unlike our Senate, is free of the corruption that afflicts so many cowardly and immoral Republicans. In the meantime, I think that Trump should immediately request a full cut off of all aid to Israel until we know if Netanyahu is guilty.
Back home, Donald Trump has been found not guilty of the impeachment indictments of abuse of power and obstruction of justice by his senate toadies.
For those of us who have followed the impeachment proceedings it is interesting to note how many of the Republicans had “evolved” in their defense of Trump. These Republicans went from denying that there had been any cut off of aid at all to finally claiming that even if it had all happened as alleged - it did not rise to the level of an impeachable offense (and of course, they hardly bothered with the obstruction of justice charges). In other words, his actions were “inappropriate” not impeachable.
What the Republicans are saying is that as long as Trump’s base can scare the snot out of them, then they will excuse anything. Therefore, every wrongdoing is minimized to the point of - not rising to the level of impeachment.
I bet that among Trump’s supporters he could kill a nun, beat up a crippled child, givel nuclear secrets to the Russians and sell us out to the Chinese and it still wouldn’t rise to the “level of an impeachable offense.”
But Trump’s offense of withholding aid to the Ukraine very clearly rises to the level of impeachment and conviction. Why, refer back to my blog post of January 20, 2020. In that post I talked about the Impoundment Control ACT (ICA).
The ICA was passed after Richard Nixon purposely and unilaterally withheld some aid that had been appropriated by the congress. The ICA mandates that a president neither withhold or delay the spending of money that has already. If for any reason he withholds or delays the funds he can do so for only a short period of time and only for very specific reasons - none of which has anything to do with whatever political policy he likes. And above all, he can’t withhold or delay the funds for his own political gain. That is the law of our land. And this law was passed, with strong bipartisan support, to specifically prevent a president from doing exactly what Trump did.
Trump and the Senate Republicans violated this law. And it was not just that they broke the law: the money appropriated was the result of both Democrats and Republicans voting together, on a bipartisan basis, to get money to Ukraine to help them fight the communist Russians. That was by far far the clear and unmistakable will of the American people.
Donald Trump deserves to be in jail for extorting Ukraine and violating both the law and the will of the American people. If the Senate Republicans were not immoral, degenerate and cowardly, they would have voted to convict him. Believe me, they would have done it to a Democratic President in a beat of their tiny, little immoral hearts.