Last updated on July 18th, 2023 at 11:35 am
Rachel Maddow dropped another article of impeachment on Donald Trump’s sinking presidency on Wednesday night.
The MSNBC host pointed out that, yes, there are two pretty clear-cut articles of impeachment that Democrats could bring up tomorrow if they wanted to.
First, Trump’s crime to extort a foreign power into giving him dirt on a domestic political opponent. Second is the cover-up of that crime.
To get more stories like this, subscribe to our newsletter The Daily.
“You could see them impeaching, you know, tomorrow, on the crime itself, and the effort to cover it up,” Maddow said. “But now it is clear that something else is evolving out of these initial claims.”
That “something else,” according to Maddow, relates to concerns coming from inside Trump’s national security apparatus that the president poses an active counter-intelligence threat to the United States.
Video:
Maddow says the Ukraine scheme cooked up by Donald Trump stretches beyond the two main articles of impeachment already being discussed. #ctl #p2 #maddow pic.twitter.com/vTsqyn0sfb
— PoliticusUSA (@politicususa) October 17, 2019
Maddow said:
In addition to that reporting, that Hill and Bolton believed the scheme involving Ukraine was criminal, according to this new report in The New York Times, Fiona Hill also believed there was a national security risk here and she brought these concerns about the counterintelligence risk of this scheme to intelligence officials inside the White House. So, this looks like a crime. It gets referred by multiple Trump-appointed officials to the Justice Department for criminal investigation. Bill Barr shuts that down. Inside the national security council, they believe it is a crime. They talk to White House lawyers about it. That doesn’t appear to go anywhere. But now we have learned that inside the national security council, they also believe this was a national security risk and a counterintelligence danger. And that was reported to intelligence officials inside the White House. And that appears to be the new plot that is opening up now. I mean, if the House wants to impeach Trump for trying to wheedle a foreign government into giving him help against his Democratic opponents in the next election, they’ve got that already, right? That is done and dusted. To the extent that there was a cover-up, an effort to cover up that crime in the White House, a lot of that evidence is already fairly clear as well. You could imagine they could very easily draw up an article of impeachment about the crime of trying to use a foreign government to help in his election. That’s one article. Another article can be the cover-up. The hiding of the notes from the president’s call to Ukraine. Hiding them in this super secret server so few people could access those notes. The effort to keep the whistle-blower’s complaint about the call from being passed on to Congress or investigated at the Justice Department. All of that stuff is fairly clear as well. You could see them impeaching, you know, tomorrow, on the crime, itself, and the effort to cover it up. But now it is clear that something else is evolving out of these initial claims.
Trump is a clear and present danger to the United States
Trump’s phone call with the president of Ukraine in which he pressured the country to investigate Joe Biden was bad enough on its own. But his efforts were more than just one phone call, and it didn’t just involve Trump alone.
The more that is revealed about this scandal – whether it’s through investigative journalism or through the ongoing impeachment inquiry – the clearer it is that this operation was far-reaching. It was in motion before the infamous July phone call and continued afterward.
It was so alarming, in fact, that people on Trump’s own national security team moved swiftly to blow the whistle about it – only to be stopped by his remaining loyalists in the White House and Justice Department.
Donald Trump’s criminal call with Ukraine and the subsequent cover-up are just part of what appears to be an emerging counter-intelligence investigation into the president.
Follow Sean Colarossi on Facebook and Twitter
Sean Colarossi currently resides in Cleveland, Ohio. He earned his Bachelor of Arts degree in Journalism from the University of Massachusetts Amherst and was an organizing fellow for both of President Obama’s presidential campaigns. He also worked with Planned Parenthood as an Affordable Care Act Outreach Organizer in 2014, helping northeast Ohio residents obtain health insurance coverage.
