As Democrats determine how to respond following the shocking news that Donald Trump – again – sought election dirt from a foreign government, former U.S. attorney Barbara McQuade said on Monday that the controversy is pretty clear-cut: The president broke the law.
According to McQuade, government officials have been convicted for doing exactly what Trump did when he got on the phone and tried to bribe the president of Ukraine into handing over damaging information about Joe Biden and his family.
“This is the kind of act that an ordinary citizen probably couldn’t commit because of his position, but it really does echo the statutory prohibition on bribery and extortion,” she said. “Unlike the kinds of crimes Mueller was investigating of obstruction, there actually is reference of bribery in the Constitution as a grounds for impeachment explicitly.”
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McQuade said:
This is the kind of act that an ordinary citizen probably couldn’t commit because of his position, but it really does echo the statutory prohibition on bribery and extortion. It’s essentially demanding a thing of value to which he is not entitled in exchange for the performance of an official act. In my district, the former mayor of Detroit was convicted of an extortion scheme that was very similar. He would withhold contracts, public works contracts, that were worth millions of dollars unless he got a demand met and received a thing of value. That was his friend getting put on all of these contracts, to cash in on some of the proceeds of those contracts. I see this in a very similar way with parallels to bribery and extortion. And unlike the kinds of crimes Mueller was investigating of obstruction, there actually is reference of bribery in the Constitution as a grounds for impeachment explicitly.
For more than two years, Democrats urged caution and said they would wait for special counsel Robert Mueller’s final report to determine – once and for all – if Donald Trump criminally colluded with a foreign government to influence the 2016 election and whether impeachment would be a necessary step.
At the end of Mueller’s investigation, it was determined that Russia interfered in the election to help Trump – and the president’s campaign welcomed that help. Not only that, but there was a heaping pile of evidence that Trump obstructed the investigation into that election interference.
Still, a combination of misinformation from the Justice Department before the public saw the report and the long, slow drip of the investigation gave Republicans plenty of time to create a both-sides narrative that essentially turned the Mueller report fallout into a political draw.
But the new Ukraine extortion scheme exposed over the past week has given Democrats a smoking gun: Trump did what he spent two years denying he had done with Russia – “no collusion!” – and he and his team have all but admitted that’s what they did.
As Barbara McQuade pointed out on Monday night, there is nothing ambiguous about what happened.
It is now up to Democrats to react with the same clarity to make sure what Donald Trump and his Republican protectors in Congress and the Justice Department don’t have time to build another false narrative around yet another crime committed by this lawless president.
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