By MARSHA MERCER
Echoes of Watergate -- now
he’s building a stonewall.
You’d think the border
wall with Mexico would be wall enough for President Donald Trump, whose
promises to build it helped him get elected.
But now Trump has
erected a metaphorical wall against impeachment which, perversely, may help him
get re-elected. Trumpian defiance plays well with his base, if not with most
Americans.
Even a Fox News poll reported
Wednesday support for Trump’s impeachment and removal from office has reached a
new high of 51 percent of voters.
“One of the main things
Americans are now considering is the fact that the White House is trying to
stonewall and not provide adequate information,” former President Jimmy Carter,
still sharp at 95, said Tuesday on MSNBC.
The New York Times
summed the situation Wednesday: “The White House intends to formally stonewall
Congress, setting up a constitutional clash.”
Carter and the
newspaper were referring to the political screed in the form of a letter the top
White House lawyer sent Tuesday to House Speaker Nancy Pelosi and three
Democratic committee chairmen.
The White House will not cooperate with the
congressional impeachment inquiry, the letter said, claiming it’s an attempt to
overturn the results of the 2016 election.
Trump refuses to comply
with subpoenas from Congress for documents and testimony from government
officials about the July 25 call with the president of Ukraine.
That’s stonewalling -- “a
policy based on resistance to revelation” – a word popularized during the
Watergate investigation, according to “Safire’s New Political Dictionary.”
“As transcribed from
the Nixon tapes, White House counsel John Dean assured the president on Feb.
28, 1973: `We are stonewalling totally,’” William Safire writes.
A few weeks later, President
Nixon directed: “I want you to stonewall it, let them plead the Fifth
Amendment, cover up or anything else . . . ”
Thus Trump has latched
onto a tactic that worked so well for Nixon that he was forced to resign to
avoid the shame of impeachment. One of the three articles of impeachment the
House Judiciary Committee had drawn involved stonewalling Congress.
Safire traces the word’s roots to the First Battle of Bull Run War when
Confederate Gen. Thomas Jonathan Jackson held his position, and a Southern
officer was said to have cried, “There stands Jackson like a stone wall . . .”
Hurling verbal grenades
and threatening his adversaries are classic Trumpian business tactics, but he’s
not calling the shots from Trump Tower anymore.
The president doesn’t get
to decide if he will be impeached. The Constitution gives Congress impeachment
power.
”Despite the White House’s stonewalling, we see a growing body of
evidence that shows President Trump abused his office and violated his oath to
`preserve, protect and defend’ the Constitution,” Pelosi said in a statement
responding to the letter.
And, in case Trump
didn’t get it, Pelosi warned: “Mr. President, you are not above the law. You
will be held accountable.”
Democrats continued
pushing for documents and testimony in their evidence-gathering phase. If Trump
continues his defiance, it could lead to an article of impeachment charging
Trump with obstructing Congress.
Chinks appeared in Trump’s
stonewall almost immediately. Just a day after the letter, Trump said he would
cooperate under certain conditions, including the full House taking a vote on
beginning the impeachment inquiry and allowing his legal team access to
documents and the ability to call and cross examine witnesses.
It’s worth remembering
no vote is required under the Constitution. Trump wants a vote so Republicans
can use Democrats’ votes for the inquiry against them in their campaigns for
re-election.
Unlike the impeachment
inquiries for Nixon and President Bill Clinton, the current hearings are behind closed doors so that
classified material could be discussed.
Nixon’s stonewalling
ended in July 1974 with the Supreme Court’s 8-0 ruling to turn over the White House audio tapes. Three were
Nixon’s nominees to the court -- Chief Justice Warren E. Burger, Justice Harry
Blackmun and Justice Lewis Powell. Justice William Rehnquist recused himself.
One wonders whether
Trump nominees Justices Neil Gorsuch and Brett Kavanaugh would rule similarly and
how Trump would react.
But we can be sure even
if the House accedes to Trump’s current demands, he will make others. No one
expects Trump to live up to his word. Nor, to his peril, is he likely to listen
to sage advice from a former president.
Jimmy Carter advised
Trump: “Tell the truth . . . for a change.”
©2019 Marsha Mercer.
All rights reserved.
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