The subtitle is Inside the Washington Establishment’s Never-Ending War on Trump and the author is Byron York (2020).
Depending on how you voted, you probably read the title and made up your mind about whether the book holds any value. That would be a mistake. To be clear, it is definitively a tome that is supportive of the President with respect to his impeachment ordeals. But, in reporting the first-hand accounts and reading the transcripts, the author’s narrative is definitely not some sort of revisionist history.
I admittedly ignored the news for the past 4 years, and so did not track the impeachment scandals nor have a strong view on what did or did not happen (I was generally skeptical because I did not think the media wanted to report fairly on Trump). And, after reading Mr. York’s rendition (he is a reporter for the Washington Examiner), I feel comfortable in taking the view that the accusations against the President were a whole lot of nothing.
In looking back, you had calls for impeachment before Trump was even sworn in. In addition, given recent events, I would remind everyone that 10 Democratic House members stood up to contest the electoral college certification in 2017. And within months, Representative Al Green (a Democrat from Texas) started making the call for impeachment on the floor of House. And, by October of 2017, he submitted his first resolution for impeachment – a House Resolution which got the support of 58 Democrats – and, included, I shit you not, Trump’s criticism of the NFL amongst the impeachable offenses. The moral of the story is, throughout his term, the Democrats were out to get him.
The crux of this story, of course, was supposed collusion with Russia. It started with a very sloppy and politicized investigation by James Comey – who was eventually fired because he lied to folks in the Justice Department and the Senate about what he was up to, and then leaked information to force a Special Counsel to be convened – and then came the Mueller investigation, which Democrats breathlessly hoped would be Trump’s final undoing. Lest we forget, all of this started with the Steele dossier, which we now know was funded indirectly by the Clinton campaign and the DNC, and ultimately was debunked by the CIA as internet garbage fairly quickly (and, yet, Comey, knowing this, still kept pushing it forward and leaked it to the media).
Here’s where I think the book does a wonderful job of telling the story. It has interviews with a number of the lawyers involved, brings up first-hand accounts of interactions and transcripts, and so by the end you can feel pretty confident that the right result was met – even if Mueller’s team tried to spin their report to suggest that the lack of evidence of criminal behavior was not enough to throw these allegations into the waste bin of history (rather than innocent until proven guilty, the new standard that they create is “not exonerated”).
The Mueller probe focused on 5 supposed instances of collusion:
-Carter Page supposedly went to Russia for the Trump campaign and was offered bribes to have Trump rescind US sanctions on Russia. After repeated interviews and Grand Jury testimony, no evidence suggested that was the case (including any evidence that might have come from the illegal wiretap).
-An allegation that the GOP platform on Russia vis-à-vis Ukraine was watered down to benefit Russia at Trump’s request. In fact, the exact opposite was true, both in terms of the content introduced at the GOP convention, and in practice as Trump supplied lethal and financial aid to Ukraine during his term.
-Michael Flynn. The story here is again a non-story. Obama imposes sanctions against Russia before the end of his term. Flynn, as the incoming National Security Advisor, tells the Russian ambassador not to overreact and wait for the new President to be sworn in. Comey, before being fired, suggested that no charges would be brought against Flynn. Mueller went after it again and also did not find any evidence of conspiracy.
-George Papadopoulos. A member of the Trump campaign who had allegedly told people that he knew about the Russian DNC hack ahead of time. First the FBI (under Comey) investigated it and came up dry, then Mueller’s team went through the motions and also found nothing about Russia and collusion.
-The most provocative element was the Trump Tower meeting where Don Jr., Manafort and Kushner met with a Russian lawyer who promised damaging intel on Hillary Clinton. In fact, when investigated, it turned out a music producer who knew the Trumps used that tease to get a meeting set up, only to have the lawyer show up and appeal to the Trumps that they should repeal the Magnitsky Act if elected. In real time, based on text messages and the like, it became clear the Trump side felt the meeting was a waste of time and ended it after 20 minutes.
There you have it, all five parts of the supposed Russian collusion story. And the Mueller team came to understand the lack of any there there pretty quickly as well. But, rather than shutting it down, they changed courses and pushed to figure out if there was an obstruction angle. Here’s where I point out the obvious conflicts – Mueller is a good friend to Comey (who was fired by Trump and leaked documents to force a Special Counsel investigation), and Mueller’s team was comprised not just of Democrats, but Democrats who contributed to campaigns, including Hillary Clinton in 2016.
In any event, the next saga included a push by the Mueller team to interview the President. The logic being that they needed to understand Trump’s frame of mind to determine whether he was trying to obstruct any investigations. Except there was no crime to obstruct an investigation for. And the Trump legal team had already made the concerted decision up front to provide access without claiming any Executive Privilege, thereby allowing them to say that there was nothing further that an interview with Trump could offer. In reality, the Mueller side wanted to meet with the President to set him up for a perjury trap, which the historical notes reveal was what they intended and did with Michael Flynn.
You don’t have to take my word for it. Bottom line, the Mueller special investigation brought charges against 7 Americans, and none of those charges made any reference to collusion or efforts to fix the 2016 election.
As for the actual impeachment that took place in 2019, it came after the Democrats won back the House and was a story of trying to reach a desired result by skirting transparency and due process. A conversation between Trump and the newly-elected Ukrainian leader, an overreaction by someone inside the DNI, who reports the information to someone else that runs to Adam Schiff, who advises that person on how to file a complaint, and then Schiff runs the investigation. The transcript of the call was released, and it doesn’t read like high crimes or bribery or any other criminal act. And the process under Schiff did not give the defendant any opportunity to question witnesses. The final charges consisted of “abuse of power” – which is not actually a crime or a specific violation of law, certainly not “treason, bribery, or other high crimes and misdemeanors” – and “obstruction of congress”, which is funny since Trump released the transcript, but then in invoking certain constitutional privileges with respect to other information, the Democrats decide that they couldn’t wait for the actual court system to settle it.
We know how it ends. He is acquitted. And then Joe Biden wins the election. That was always the way to get rid of Trump. But reason and logic went out the window. We will see if they ever return.
