An Easy Choice

San Sebastian, Spain.

The only thing worse than Republicans who will say and do anything regardless of the facts to protect President Trump are the Republicans who publicly wring their hands over whether they should do the right thing for the country.

This is an easy decision to make on moral, ethical and political grounds.

The evidence clearly shows the president of the United States is guilty of misconduct that can be described as criminal and he would be charged if he were operating in any other sphere of American life and the facts became known.

Although impeachment and removal is a political decision, the president’s behavior with regard to Ukraine fits the common definition of the criminal offense of extortion, which is: To obtain a benefit through coercion. There is eyewitness testimony, written documentation and a public confession from the president himself.

To briefly review; President Trump pressured the president of Ukraine to open an investigation into Joe Biden and his son or risk losing $400 million in United States military aid that had been appropriated for Ukraine by Congress. I will point out again, the president was using U.S. taxpayer money to carry out this scheme not his own money. This makes the president’s behavior a matter of public corruption.

As the new year begins we watch as the usual moderate Republican senators are questioned by the press each day about whether they are willing to break with their party and vote against the president. We are not even at the point of asking whether they will vote - as they all should - to remove the president from office. We only ask if any Republican has the decency in the face of this criminal behavior in the Oval Office to allow for the presentation of evidence and witnesses in a Senate impeachment trial.

There is no ambiguity here. This is not about the separation of powers or an unfair process in the House of Representatives. Everyone in Washington and most people in the country know the kind of man Donald Trump is. There is no escaping the facts of the Ukraine matter - they have been fully laid out in public. The only reason to hesitate on the question of the rules of evidence for a Senate trial is to make it easier to protect the president when it comes to the final vote.

If the American people are denied a chance to hear both sides argue their case in a full, open and fair trial then it will be easier for Republican senators to look the other way and essentially pardon the president by voting against his removal. Such a vote will of course make them accomplices to the crime for all of history. It will be a sad roll call.

Democrats decided to keep the scope of their indictment against the president narrow in order to avoid being accused of overt partisanship, but it would have been easy to add to the list of crimes this president has committed and continues to commit almost daily.

The findings of the Mueller report show the president and his campaign team were more than eager to cooperate with the Russians if the Russians could help them defeat Hillary Clinton in 2016. Mueller’s report makes crystal clear that the president, once the Mueller investigation began, interfered and obstructed justice.

In the final attempt to whitewash Mueller’s findings the president has corrupted the Department of Justice by appointing an attorney general who is willing to be his Roy Cohn and put the president’s personal legal representation ahead of the good of the country.

On an almost weekly basis the president travels the country to attack his enemies, to attack the government he oversees, and to divide the American people for his own political benefit in campaign rallies made possible with taxpayer money. This behavior is an open violation of his oath of office and diminishes the institution of the presidency.

Finally, there is no doubt Trump is benefiting financially from his role as president. From the vice president, to members of the military, to foreign dignitaries from around the world; it is an unspoken fact of life in the Trump era that if you want to cover all your bases when lobbying the administration, or currying favor with the president and the first family, you stay at a Trump hotel whenever possible.

How much more evidence do you need Lisa Murkowski, Mitt Romney and Susan Collins?

Please have the guts to do the right thing and in the meantime please spare us the faux concerns over the rights of the accused, partisanship taken to the extreme, the Constitution and due process. There is only one right move here and that is to begin by allowing for a full and open trial of the president in the U.S. Senate.

The American people are entitled to know all the facts and hear the arguments on either side. In the end, 100 senators should be forced in the face of that evidence to take a public vote and explain which side they are on. Are they on the side that says a president who has admitted to extortion should be allowed to remain in office? Or are they on the side that says such a president should be punished and removed? It is really that simple.

If I’m a Democrat and I am looking at this from a political perspective I want Republicans to argue for something less than a full trial. And if Republicans lose on that point I want Republicans to argue that there is nothing wrong with a president using taxpayer money to extort a foreign leader. “Yes,” Chuck Schumer is saying, “I want to have that fight.”

Thinking Republicans have only one choice to make. Let the process play out and then make a decision that is right for the country not one that is good for Donald Trump. Stop pretending your concerns for the institution of the U.S. Senate are making the decision difficult. There are no Daniel Websters currently seated in the body. There is not even a Margaret Chase Smith.