Donald Trump has most deservedly earned the dubious distinction of being only the third President in the United States history to be impeached. He richly deserves it. Unfortunately, he is going nowhere. The Republican-dominated Senate is certain to reject the twin charges of abuse of power and obstruction of Congress, the grounds on which the House of Representatives impeached him on Wednesday. No other President in the recent US history has done more to bring the highest and most powerful office in the world into public ridicule. His appalling ignorance, his narcissism, an open assault on domestic and global institutions, his failure to uphold norms and obligations of national and international treaties et al, the charges are so many that long before his impeachment he ought to have been thrown out by a more responsive Congress. But thanks partly to Trump, the US polity has come to be so polarized, so embittered that a fair and independent decision-making by public institutions has become a huge casualty. It is a poor reflection on the quality of men and women who sit in the Congress that despite there being an open and shut case for impeachment, the vote in the House took place on party lines. The Democrats barring one or two voted for impeachment while the Republicans without an exception voted against it. The acrimonious debate that preceded the vote showcased once again the wide chasm between the two main parties. Both charges against Trump were well-founded and there was an overwhelming evidence to secure conviction in a regular court of law. It was a stark case of abuse of power when Trump in a near half-an-hour telephonic conversation with the newly-elected Ukraine President Volodmyr Zelensky on July 25 pressed him to investigate his potential rival in the 2020 presidential race, former vice-president Joe Biden, on cooked up corruption charges. Inviting foreign interference in a domestic election is an impeachable crime. Indeed, Trump sought President Zelensky to also probe whether it was Ukraine rather than Russia that had hacked the Democratic Party’s website ahead of the 2016 presidential poll, a red-herring, no, a falsehood, spread by none other than President Vladimir Putin to shift the blame from his own dirty-tricks department. The transcript of the telephonic exchange between Zelensky and Trump wherein the latter is heard asking a favour of the Ukraine President in return for the release of $ 400 million military aid long appropriated by the Congress led an unnamed whistleblower in the US establishment to alert the Justice Department. As per the laid-down procedure, the complaint reached the US Congress.
After a good deal of deliberation, the House Speaker Nancy Pelosi initiated the impeachment process. Here again, instead of cooperating with the House Judicial Committee, providing it the necessary official records and allowing relevant officials to testify, Trump stonewalled all requests, directing all those subpoenaed to boycott the proceedings. All the while, he kept up a rant against Pelosi and other Democrats for carrying out a witch-hunt, for conducting a kangaroo court, for trying to dishonour the people’s verdict, to oust him through illegal means. Worse, in the face of stark evidence of a quid-pro-quo deal in holding back the military aid to Ukraine, which was fighting with its back to the wall against the Russian-fuelled civil war in its eastern region, till he announced a corruption investigation against Biden, Trump played the victim card, a theme parroted robotically by all Republicans. The 12-hour debate on Wednesday highlighted the difference between the majority Democrats and the Republicans, with the former bolstering the charges with evidence on record, including testimony of well-respected diplomats in open hearings, while the latter harped on the flawed process, on the inherent unfairness of ejecting a democratically-elected president. Since they could not defeat Trump through the ballot box, Republicans, who crucially rely on his support for re-election, argued Democrats were abusing the impeachment process. The Senate will now try the President on the same two charges on which he has been impeached by the House. Founding fathers envisaged that the Senators will act as impartial and independent jurors while trying the President and with a two-thirds vote oust him if found guilty. However, led by the Senate majority leader Mitch McConnell, a number of his colleagues have said they would collaborate with Trump to throw out the charges. In short, they, and not Democrats, will abuse the impeachment process. Regardless of whether he is re-elected in 2020, which on the current reckoning cannot be ruled out, Trump has brought ignominy to the most powerful office in the world. He has lowered the bar for elective political officials everywhere.
