NOTE: On February 5, the Republican-dominated Senate—as expected—absolved President Donald Trump from trying to extort Ukraine into smearing a possible rival for the White House. Only one Republican—Utah Senator Mitt Romney—had the moral courage to vote for conviction. 

On December 18, 2019, the House of Representatives approved two Articles of Impeachment against President Donald Trump for: 

Article 1: Abuse of Power: For pressuring Ukraine to assist him in his re-election campaign by smearing a potential rival for the White House. 

Article 2: Obstruction of Congress: For obstructing Congress by blocking testimony of subpoenaed witnesses and refusing to provide documents in response to House subpoenas in the impeachment inquiry. 

On September 9, 2019, the House Foreign Affairs, Intelligence and Oversight and Reform committees began investigating his attempted extortion of Ukraine President Volodymyr Zelensky.

On July 25, 2019, Trump had “asked” Zelensky to do him a “favor”: Find embarrassing “dirt” on former Vice President Joseph Biden and his son, Hunter.

Hunter had had business dealings in Ukraine. And Joseph Biden might be Trump’s Democratic opponent for the White House in 2020.

To underline the seriousness of his “request,” earlier in July Trump had told Mick Mulvaney, his White House chief of staff, to withhold $400 million in military aid Congress had approved for Ukraine, which is facing an increasingly aggressive Russia

Joseph Biden

Gage Skidmore from Peoria, AZ, United States of America / CC BY-SA (https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/2.0)

But then a CIA whistleblower filed a complaint about the extortion attempt—and the media and Congress soon learned of it. And ever since, the evidence linking Trump to impeachable offenses has mushroomed.

On January 16, 2020, the Government Accountability Office (GAO) announced that the Trump administration broke the law when it withheld security aid to Ukraine.

The GAO, a nonpartisan congressional watchdog, declared that the White House Budget Office violated the Impoundment Control Act, a 1974 law that limits the White House from withholding funds that Congress has appropriated.

“Faithful execution of the law does not permit the President to substitute his own policy priorities for those that Congress has enacted into law,” the GAO auditors wrote. 

As trial proceedings unfolded, the 53-majority Republican Senators consistently put their own partisan interests over those of their country.

Among their actions:

• Refusing to hear from eyewitnesses who could prove that Trump had committed impeachable offenses,
• Refusing to provide evidence on Trump’s behalf—but attacking witnesses who had testified against him in the House.
• Attacking Joseph and Hunter Biden as if they were on trial—instead of having been the targets of Trump’s smear-attempt.

But this was not the first time Republicans sought to excuse Trump’s litany of crimes. Those efforts go back to the 2016 Presidential election. 

Forgiven Crime #1: Not demanding that Trump quit the 2016 Presidential race—or demanding that he be indicted—for making a terrorist threat against his own party.    

On March 16, 2016, Trump, the front-runner for the Republican Presidential nomination, issued a warning to his fellow Right-wingers: If he didn’t win the GOP nomination at the convention in July, his supporters would literally riot. 

“I think we’ll win before getting to the convention. But I can tell you if we didn’t, if we’re 20 votes short or if we’re 100 short and we’re at 1,100 and somebody else is at 500 or 400…I don’t think you can say that we don’t get it automatically. I think you’d have riots.

“I think you would see problems like you’ve never seen before. I think bad things would happen. I really do. I wouldn’t lead it, but I think bad things would happen.”

Donald Trump

An NBC reporter summed it up as follows: “As Trump indicated, there is a very real possibility he might lose the nomination if he wins only a plurality of delegates thanks to party rules that allow delegates to support different candidates after the initial ballot.

“In that context, the message to Republicans was clear on [March 16]: ‘Nice convention you got there, shame if something happened to it.’”

Threatening his Republican and Democratic opponents with violence played a major role in Donald Trump’s campaign for President.

No other candidate—Republican or Democrat—had ever made such repeated and brutal use of threats of physical assault in pursuing the Presidency.

Forgiven Crime #2: Supporting his “dog-whistle” call for the assassination of Democratic Nominee Hillary Clinton.

On August 9, 2016, at a rally in Wilmington, North Carolina, Trump said: “Hillary [Clinton] wants to abolish, essentially abolish, the Second Amendment. If she gets to pick her [Supreme Court] judges, nothing you can do folks. Although the Second Amendment people, maybe there is, I don’t know.”

Democrats—and responsible news media—immediately saw this for the “dog-whistle” signal it was.

“Don’t treat this as a political misstep,” Senator Christopher S. Murphy of Connecticut, who has called for stiffer gun laws, wrote on Twitter. “It’s an assassination threat, seriously upping the possibility of a national tragedy & crisis.”

“Well, let me say if someone else said that outside of the hall, he’d be in the back of a police wagon now, with the Secret Service questioning him,” said Michael Hayden, former head of the CIA and National Security Agency (NSA). 

Hillary Clinton