Tag: Ukraine
Stevenson’s army, October 4
Extra weekend reading: the Volker testimony to the House committees; the texts released by the House committee chairs.
The texts show a bureaucratic political game, as described in the first part of this Post column: twice Amb. Sondland, a political appointee who donated $1 million to the Trump inaugural committee, tries to cut off Amb. Taylor, the career official now acting ambassador [charge] in Kyiv, when Taylor raises the link between military aid and investigating the Bidens. But after Taylor raises the point a second time, Sondland very formally gets into the record “there is no quid pro quo.” You can read; you decide.
CJR has a good explanation of how hard this issue is for the news media.
I especially liked this section: The press, on the whole, does not consistently use language commensurate with overt wrongdoing. (The Times’s print headline this morning, calling Trump’s admission a “brash public move,” is a case in point; so was Jonathan Karl’s claim, on ABC, that “this is becoming less a question of what the president did than a debate over what is right and what is wrong.”) As journalists, we’ve been taught to believe that the biggest scandals are those that require intense, meticulous digging; as human beings, we’ve been taught to believe that no right-minded person would own up to wrongdoing in such a haphazard way. And so, as ever with Trump, we seek rationality in the irrational. The effect, as the Washington Post’s Ashley Parker wrote recently, is that “Trump’s penchant for reading the stage directions almost seems to inoculate him from the kind of political damage that would devastate other politicians….
When it comes to Trump and his media supporters, shamelessness and misinformation are two sides of the same coin. The more shameless Trump is, the less we can see the boundaries between right and wrong, between believable and unbelievable. If you’ll say anything, nothing is implausible, which, in turn, makes a wild conspiracy sound just as plausible as the truth. Someday, the house of cards might collapse. But not today.
Yesterday I noted the pro-oil decision that angered farmers. Today the administration made a pro-farmer announcement on ethanol.
So far only CNN seems to have the story that Trump told Xi in June that he would go easy on Hong Kong while the trade talks continued.
Earlier this week, I noted that NYT said the administration actually did a cost estimate on Trump’s suggestion of a border moat filled with snakes and alligators. We haven’t seen that estimate. Maybe it’s on the supersecret WH server. But Peter Singer, tongue in cheek, has his own estimate, roughly $2.5 billion in set-up costs, plus annual operating costs of $1.8 billion.
My SAIS colleague Charlie Stevenson distributes this almost daily news digest of foreign/defense/national security policy to “Stevenson’s army” via Googlegroups. I plan to republish here. If you want to get it directly, To get Stevenson’s army by email, send a blank email (no subject or text in the body) to stevensons-army+subscribe@googlegroups.com. You’ll get an email confirming your join request. Click “Join This Group” and follow the instructions to join. Once you have joined, you can adjust your email delivery preferences (if you want every email or a digest of the emails).
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Stevenson’s army, October 2
Not just here. Look at Peru, where the president dismissed the congress and then was impeached. Not sure who is in charge.
Daily Beast says Pompeo ousted Volker in self-defense. Reports say Volker is still slated to give testimony tomorrow.
Time has good history of US whistleblower laws: first one was in 1778!
NYT explains different NSC computer systems.
NYT details how officials work to respond to presidential whims — at one point last spring even doing a cost estimate of Trump’s demand for a border moat filled with snakes and alligators.
DOD has created a special China office; good pros and cons about such a move.
Crisis group head warns of war in the Middle East.
My SAIS colleague Charlie Stevenson distributes this almost daily news digest of foreign/defense/national security policy to “Stevenson’s army” via Googlegroups. I plan to republish here. If you want to get it directly, To get Stevenson’s army by email, send a blank email (no subject or text in the body) to stevensons-army+subscribe@googlegroups.com. You’ll get an email confirming your join request. Click “Join This Group” and follow the instructions to join. Once you have joined, you can adjust your email delivery preferences (if you want every email or a digest of the emails).
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Stevenson’s army, September 30 and October 1
I had trouble posting from home yesterday, so here are Charlie Stevenson’s news summaries for today and yesterday:
October 1
Happy New Year! [FY2020]
US News argues that the military have increasing dominance over DOD civilians. I share those concerns.
FP has a review of two new memoirs, by Samantha Power and Susan Rice.
Picking up on John Bolton’s sharp criticism of North Korea policy, John Gans notes the parallels with Al Haig, fired by Reagan.
September 30
Why did special envoy Volker resign? Politico has some background.
Will Trump actually block Chinese from Wall Street?
Double standard? Why does NYTimes seem to care more about hiding identity of a leaker than of a whistleblower who followed the law?
Is it that easy to hack US voting machines? The scary report.
How to mitigate the effects of tariffs? Sen. Cotton has another deviously clever idea.
My SAIS colleague Charlie Stevenson distributes this almost daily news digest of foreign/defense/national security policy to “Stevenson’s army” via Googlegroups. I plan to republish here. If you want to get it directly, To get Stevenson’s army by email, send a blank email (no subject or text in the body) to stevensons-army+subscribe@googlegroups.com. You’ll get an email confirming your join request. Click “Join This Group” and follow the instructions to join. Once you have joined, you can adjust your email delivery preferences (if you want every email or a digest of the emails).
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Stevenson’s army, September 27
This looks to me like an excellent case study of the interagency process, where the “deep state” of career professionals shares concerns about unsettling behaviors and someone develops a formal “medical log” like the one for Captain Queeg in the Caine Mutiny.
The whistleblower, identified as a CIA person assigned to the White House by NYT, was probably part of an interagency working group on Ukraine. They probably met regularly in NSC offices and discussed various matters. “What is Giuliani doing in this?” “What do we tell Kyiv about their request for a meeting?” “How do we follow up on the president’s phone call?” “I was really troubled by that.” “Did you see what they did with the MemCon?” “Where do we stand on the aid?” “Why did they recall the ambassador?”
NYT’s Peter Baker got more details and confirmation of the whistleblower’s narrative.
Giuliani made his case to the WSJ.
NYT has more on the US ambassador.
Amy Zegart defends the process.
Although
the congressional focus has been on Trump’s seeking political
ammunition against Biden, some lawyers note that his “favor” request
came just after Zelensky mentioned buying Javelin antitank missiles,
perhaps raising other legal questions.
BTW, Chairman Schiff has indicated his members may need to return to DC before the end of the recess.
Despite the looming impeachment fight, the committee trying to find ways to “modernize” the Congress and make it more collegial offered some suggestions yesterday.
My SAIS colleague Charlie Stevenson distributes this almost daily news digest of foreign/defense/national security policy to “Stevenson’s army” via Googlegroups. I plan to republish here. If you want to get it directly, To get Stevenson’s army by email, send a blank email (no subject or text in the body) to stevensons-army+subscribe@googlegroups.com. You’ll get an email confirming your join request. Click “Join This Group” and follow the instructions to join. Once you have joined, you can adjust your email delivery preferences (if you want every email or a digest of the emails).
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Wishful thinking
There is so much wrong with President Trump’s behavior relative to his phone call with Ukrainian President Zelensky that it begs for enumeration:
- He solicited foreign help for his election campaign.
- He used his public position to enhance his private interests.
- He suggested a connection between Ukraine’s cooperation in replying to his request for a favor and his willingness to allow Congressionally-mandated aid to go to Ukraine.
- He or his immediate subordinates attempted to cover all this up by hiding the record of the phone conversation in a highly classified computer system explicitly not intended for this type of material.
- He subsequently has threatened the life and freedom of the whistleblower who drew attention to the malfeasance.
There is little question but that this behavior merits impeachment, along with lots of other things he has done. These include the obstruction of justice that Special Counsel Mueller documented in detail and his public appeal for Russian help in the 2016 election, not to mention his preference for believing President Putin over US intelligence agencies. We haven’t even begun to see a serious investigation of Trump’s finances, which will almost surely provide more impeachment fodder.
Impeachment in the House is a foregone conclusion now. The only real questions are when will it happen and how will the Senate react thereafter?
Speaker Pelosi has a choice between early impeachment, say late this year or early next, and late impeachment, late enough so that the Senate would not be able to conduct the trial before the November 3 election. It is not clear to me what she will choose, and perhaps she hasn’t decided yet. Processes of this sort have their own rhythm, which is likely slower than some would like. But if it appears that Republicans would back impeachment and conviction, Pelosi might try to move fast to take advantage of the momentum.
How will the Republicans react? So far the members of both House and Senate are circling the wagons, trying to protect Trump. Polling confirms that choice. But that could change. The rash of Republican retirements from the House is clearly due in part to discomfort with Trump and his likely impact on members’ prospects in the 2020 election. There have been a few similar announced retirements from the Senate, but there the defensive phalanx seems much better organized and grounded. Mitt Romney is everyone’s best hope for breaking ranks, but he has so far been cautious to a fault.
Trump remains defiant and unapologetic. His phone call was “perfect” and his opponents’ claims are fake news. He is good at counter-punching, but my sense is that most Americans are getting tired of the reality show. That, of course, is wishful thinking on my part.
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L’état, c’est moi
The intel community whistleblower complaint made public today focuses mainly on President Trump’s aggressive effort to enlist Ukrainian President Zelensky’s help in the 2020 election. But the campaign law violation is the least of the issues, as Robert Litt, former General Counsel of the Office of the Director of National Intelligence, made clear on NPR this morning. The main point is that the President used the call to pressure a foreign leader to help his political campaign, using a hold on aid to Ukraine as leverage.
This is classic use of public position for private gain, the very definition of corruption. It is an abuse of power that may also rank as extortion and bribery, with the aid used as a bribe. Trump has no compunction about this, because he recognizes no distinction between his private interests and those of the nation. L’état, c’est moi is his guiding principle.
Impeachment for “high crimes and misdemeanors” is the proper response under the constitution, which provided this remedy explicitly for this problem: abuse of public office. The House of Representatives will now come up with a bill of particulars, likely to include not only this phone call but also obstruction of justice in the Russia probe, acceptance of “emoluments” from foreign governments, and use of government funds to enrich Trump’s several failing real estate ventures. The Democratic-controlled House should be able to vote impeachment well before the November 2020 election.
The Republican-controlled Senate shows some minor signs of departing from 100% loyalty to Donald Trump, but still there is no reason to believe the two-thirds vote required to remove him from office is possible, no matter the validity of the charges. Timing of impeachment is therefore an important issue: should the Democrats do it quickly, taking advantage of their current momentum, but giving the Senate ample time in which to acquit the President? Or should impeachment come shortly before the election, perhaps even making completion of a trial in the Senate impossible before the election?
Either way, the 2020 election is shaping up as a referendum on Trump. There will be lots of weighty issues: above all the domestic economy, taxes, health care, tensions with Iran, China, and Russia. But in the end the main issue will be whether the country is in good hands or not. Right now, more than half the country disapproves of the President’s performance, lots of potential Democratic candidates are polling well against Trump, and even a generic Democrat beats him on the national level. But 2016 demonstrated how little any of that matters: the presidency is decided in the electoral college, not in the popular vote, and polling more than a year out has little relevance.
Reelecting Trump would do exponentially more damage than electing him in the first place. As I’ve argued elsewhere, the tide already is turning against Trump’s ilk in other countries: Vladimir Putin, Boris Johnson, Abdul Fatah al Sisi, Erdogan, Mohammed bin Salman, and Netanyahu are all in trouble, even if they manage to cling to power. Trump’s victory would stem the tide. Trump’s defeat would demonstrate unequivocally that the age of would-be autocrats ruling by personal fiat is finished.
If Americans want to be governed as the constitution provides, by law rather than personality, they’ve got to ensure that the state is far more than a person and his interests. The opportunity will come on November 3, 2020.
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