A Tennessee Department of Environmental Conservation air pollution regulatory manager once told his subordinate, a supervisor, that the State of Tennessee owned his "mind" for "7 1/2 hours a day," and that if told by management to "jump off a roof," he must “jump off a roof.” The supervisor was fired for doing his job, e.g., citing landowners for setting massive tire fires.
Americans' fundamental rights to speak our minds must be zealously protected, not recklessly neglected.
But President* Donald John Trump treats everyone -- even Generals and Ambassadors -- like hired hands, as if he were King Donald I.
Exhibit A: Trump firing our Ambassador to Ukraine, based on defamation from Rudolf Giuliani's Russian-American associates.
Prediction: Trump will be impeached by our House of Representatives. Trial will be in the Senate, which Gladstone once called "the world's greatest deliberative body." Senators will not "jump off a roof" for a bullying bumptious bribe-paying, bribe-taking billionaire. Trump could be removed from office, de facto or de jure, whether by vote, resignation or plea bargain (as in the case of President Richard Nixon's vicious Vice President Spiro Agnew, who resigned with no jail time for bribery in 1973).
As a teenager, I watched in awe as Congress investigated President Richard Milhous Nixon. Our system worked.
As it unfolded, heroic Senate Watergate Committee Chair Samuel James Ervin, Jr. (D-N.C.), said, "I love my country.... I think that Watergate is the greatest tragedy this country has ever suffered. I used to think that the Civil War was our country’s greatest tragedy, but I do remember some redeeming features in the Civil War in that there was some spirit of sacrifice and heroism displayed on both sides. I see no redeeming features in Watergate."
Watergate-conspiracy tapes were ordered released by the Supreme Court. Nixon resigned rather than be impeached, after he was told by Senator Barry Goldwater, et al, that he had perhaps fifteen Senate votes left.
Will Trump profit from Nixon's example? Let us hope so.
115 years ago, U.S. District Judge Charles H. Swayne of St. Augustine, Florida and Wilmington, Delaware, was impeached by the House of Representatives on a party-line vote, accused of:
- expense account padding;
- abusing powers as railway bankruptcy-receiver to twice order up -- for his, his family's and friends' use -- a private railway car, porter and accoutrements from the bankrupt Jacksonville, Tampa and Key West Railway (riding in style to Delaware and California);
- jailing/disbarring two attorneys who requested his recusal (in property case re: land owned by his wife);
- living outside his district boundaries (changed after his appointment), delaying for nine years moving his residence to Pensacola.
Would anyone convict Judge Swayne for alleged foot-dragging, hebetude or reluctance to move to Pensacola?
But who doubts it might constitute a "high crime and misdemeanor" to treat a private railway car as his own, twice, or refusing to recuse himself in his wife's case?
Swayne was acquitted February 27, 1905 by a Republican-controlled Senate (another party-line vote).
Did the Democratic-controlled House over-try/overstate its case? What If it brought a concise case, instead of hiding its light under a bushel-basket? (12-count, 3217-word charges, 34-day trial). Some allegations were perhaps overwrought/overstated, but some were undisputed. Swayne contended some actions were "inadvertent." Swayne remained a federal judge until his death in 1907.
Trump impeachment articles must focus, like a laser-beam, on one word: "bribery" -- one of two specific crimes in our Constitution, Article II, Section 4, before the words "high crimes and misdemeanors." (The other specifically-named impeachment-crime is "treason," defined as "levying War against [the United States], or in adhering to their Enemies, giving them Aid and Comfort.")
Does holding up $391,000,000 in Congressionally-appropriated Ukraine military/foreign aid constitute "bribery?"
Trump abused his office to bribe Ukraine's President. Why? Trump abused his office to solicit a bribe from Ukraine's President. Why?
Corruptly using foreign relations to bolster Trump's re-election campaign. How many Ukrainian soldiers and civilians died because of Trump's arrogant, illegal, unconstitutional aid holdup?
Trump lawyer Rudolf William Louis Giuliani's father was an armed robber, serving time in prison for armed robbery of a milkman. At least Giuliani, Sr. looked his victims in the eye,. Holdup artists Trump and Giuliani hustled the Ukraine, an Eastern European nation, withholding Congressionally voted military and foreign aid to a nation facing facing Russian aggression. Without encrypted communications technology purchased by the aid, Ukrainian soldiers faced more preventable deaths caused by Russian hacking of their radios.
Enough dupery. Enough Trumpery.
Judge John Noonan documented the 6000 year history of bribery. There is no more sinister example than Trump's Ukraine chicanery -- a provable egregious example of corruption by the President of the United States of America, causing death and destruction.
Senate committee counsel Robert F. Kennedy once said he'd jump off the capitol dome if Teamster leader James Riddle Hoffa was acquitted of bribery. Hoffa was acquitted in a jury trial and his counsel,Edward Bennett Williams, offered to send RFK a parachute. Senators voting to acquit Trump can expect no parachutes.
It's time for Trump to go. Have faith. Our system will work, once again.
Ed Slavin, B.S., Foreign Service, Georgetown U., J.D., Memphis State U.,, was founding editor of the Appalachian Observer in Clinton, Tennessee and won declassification of the largest mercury pollution event in world history at Y-12 Nuclear Weapons Plant, Oak Ridge,Tenn.
No comments:
Post a Comment