Donald Trump shakedown is real news and media deserves credit for doing a great job

A summary, and the implications, of the Trump impeachment
Thank you media!  #RealNews

Opinion echo summary from Carroll County Maryland published in the Carroll County Times by Frank Batavick:  What we’ve learned from the whole impeachment process. #IMpotus

The Trump/Ukraine affair was not a witch hunt. The president’s lawyers admitted that he withheld foreign aid and military assistance to Ukraine and dangled the opportunity of a meeting in the Oval Office to pressure President Zelensky to investigate corruption in his country. However, the only names ever mentioned were those of two American citizens, one of whom was also a potential rival for the presidency.

None of this was fake news. The presidential shakedown was a real event, and the media did an admirable job ferreting out the details, with help from Freedom of Information Act lawsuits and by reporting on a book by Trump’s former national security advisor, John Bolton.

There was a “quid pro quo.” No one now denies the “this for that” offer Trump made, though his lawyers argued the reason he did so.

Some presidents have denied foreign aid to achieve diplomatic goals, but never to assist their own upcoming election.

Donald Trump has lied throughout this whole affair. The phone call with Zelensky was not “perfect” but it only served to be his illegal means of assisting Trump’s reelection campaign.  (In my opinion, the call was Russian #Putinesque.)

Crimes were committed that violated U.S. laws regarding bribery, soliciting foreign campaign contributions, coercion of political activity, misappropriation of federal funds, and obstruction of Congress. The House distilled these down into two charges: abuse of power and obstruction of Congress. This doesn’t mean that Trump didn’t break these other laws.

Donald Trump is forever #Impotus - Impeached!

Additional witnesses could not have been called by the House because Trump blocked his staff from cooperating and told them to defy subpoenas. He also blocked the release of any written communications. That was blatant obstruction of Congress.

If no crimes were committed, Trump should have been eager for us to hear from eyewitnesses and see the full, unredacted documents that exonerate him.

Trump’s defense team knowingly lied about there not being any first-hand witnesses to his scheme. Right after Christmas, Bolton sent a draft of his book’s manuscript to the White House for the National Security Council staff to review. They briefed the White House counsel and defense team member, Pat Cipollone. Though he knew Bolton was a first-hand witness who might testify, he continued to claim there weren’t any.

Bolton’s book doesn’t qualify as sworn testimony, but its claims could have been put to the test by having him testify under oath to the House or Senate, along with Mick Mulvaney, director of the Office of Management and Budget.

According to Bolton’s book, Cipollone was also a fact witness to Trump’s corrupt scheme. Cipollone thereby violated a legal ethics tenet known as the “advocate-witness rule.” It states that “when a lawyer should be a witness at trial, [they] cannot also be an advocate in the courtroom." Cipollone had an ethical obligation to disclose the facts he knew surrounding the case to the Senate.

The president’s defense team consisted of the ethically challenged Cipollone, Alan Dershowitz, former legal counsel for serial sexual predators Jeffrey Epstein and Harvey Weinstein, and Ken Starr, who was fired from Baylor University for mishandling several sexual assaults there.

The 17 previous Senate impeachment trials pertaining to federal judges and two U.S. presidents have included witness testimony. However, Senate Republicans bought into Dershowitz’s argument that Trump committed no crime that is an impeachable offense and, even if he did, there’s no difference between his personal interest and the public interest because he’s president.

McConnell, from his blocking of a vote for President Obama’s Supreme Court nominee Merrick Garland to his collusion with the president to rig the impeachment trial, has done more to shred the Constitution than any other living leader.

Trump has been given the green light to cheat his way to victory in November with the assistance of Russian, Chinese, and Saudi Arabian intelligence agencies.

(God Fobid! Please God "Noooo!") But...If  (puke!) tRump wins in November, many will not accept the results because they will be tainted by foreign meddling and agitprop social media.

With a chief executive who has unlimited power and is deemed above the law and therefore not impeachable, the Constitution’s system of checks and balances is dead. We should rewrite the civics textbooks. We should also seek lessons from world history about the 1930s and ‘40s or kiss our constitutional republic goodbye.

Frank Batavick writes from Westminster, Maryland.