Why a Broad Impeachment Inquiry is a Good Idea

One criticism of the impeachment drive underway in the U.S. House of Representatives is that Democratic leadership is narrowing its focus solely to Trump's request that Ukrainian president Volodymyr Zelensky open an investigation into Joe Biden and his son Hunter. As Mehdi Hasan of The Intercept argues:

For House Democrats to wait this long and then impeach a reckless, lawless, racist, tax-dodging president only over his interactions with the president of Ukraine would be to effectively give Trump a clean bill of health on everything else. Going into an election year, Democrats would be unilaterally disarming — unable to offer further substantive criticisms of Trump’s crimes and abuses of power across the board. “Why didn’t you impeach him for it?” Republicans will ask.

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Do these Democrats take the public for fools? Few would dispute the uniqueness or seriousness of these Ukraine revelations. But are they really saying “everybody understands” Trump’s quid pro quo with the president of a foreign country, and the details of the specific case involving Hunter Biden, but not the illegal payment of hush money to a porn star? Or all of the corrupt behavior on display in front of their eyes? The brazen self-dealing? The daily violation of the emoluments clause?

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Read a history book. In 1868, Andrew Johnson became the first president to be impeached and, in his case, the House of Representatives adopted 11 articles of impeachment, ranging from his violation of the Tenure of Office Act to his attempt to “disgrace” Congress. A little over a century later, in 1974, the House Judiciary Committee passed three lengthy and detailed articles of impeachment against Richard Nixon, covering obstruction of justice, abuse of power, and contempt of Congress. The first of those articles even cited Nixon’s “false or misleading public statements for the purpose of deceiving the people of the United States” and his efforts “to cause prospective defendants, and individuals duly tried and convicted, to expect favored treatment and consideration in return for their silence or false testimony, or rewarding individuals for their silence or false testimony.” (Sound familiar?)

Andre Damon of World Socialist Web Site agrees about the folly of a narrow impeachment focus:

House Democratic leaders have made clear that they are keeping their impeachment investigation narrowly focused on the “national security” issues raised by Trump’s effort to recruit Zelensky into his factional battle with the Democrats.

They are seeking to exclude from the investigation Trump’s vicious persecution of refugees on the southern border, his misappropriation of Pentagon funds to build his border wall in defiance of Congress, and his broader moves to turn the United States into a personalist dictatorship.

“I think we need to focus on what this very clear threat to national security and to our Constitution is,” Democratic Representative Debbie Dingell told the Washington Post. “We are going to focus on this particular matter,” House Majority Leader Steny Hoyer said.

Neither Hasan nor Damon mention Yemen, which should be included as an impeachment article. U.S. involvement in the Saudi-led war on Yemen was never approved; in fact, Congress opposed U.S. involvement by invoking the War Powers Act. How can U.S. fight in a war based solely on presidential fiat? It can't.

Another fruitful line of inquiry that could be pursued in a broad impeachment investigation is the entire trip down the DNC hack rabbit hole. Both the whistle-blower complaint and the transcript of the Trump-Zelensky telephone conversation show Trump's interest in locating the holy grail DNC server in Ukraine. The conspiracy theory, as Craig Murray helpfully explains this morning in "Heroes, Villains and Establishment Hypocrisy," is that Crowdstrike, the shadowy cyber-security firm burrowed in the roots of Russiagate, spirited the hacked DNC server off to Ukraine:

As far as I am aware, the BBC have not reported at all the other thing Trump was asking Zelensky about – Crowdstrike. Regular readers will recall that Crowdstrike are the Clinton linked “cyber-security” company which provided the “forensic data” to the FBI on the alleged Russian hack of the DNC servers – data which has been analysed by my friend Bill Binney, former Technical Director of the NSA, who characterises it as showing speeds of transfer impossible by internet and indicating a download to an attached drive. The FBI were never allowed access to the actual DNC server – and never tried, taking the DNC’s consultants word for the contents, which itself is sufficient proof of the bias of the “investigation”.

Crowdstrike also made the claim that the same Russia hackers – “Fancy Bear” – who hacked the DNC, hacked Ukrainian artillery software causing devastating losses of Ukrainian artillery. This made large headlines at the time. What did not make any MSM headlines was the subsequent discovery that all of this never happened and the artillery losses were entirely fictitious. As Crowdstrike had claimed that it was the use of the same coding in the DNC hack as in the preceding (non-existent) Ukraine artillery hack, that proved Russia hacked the DNC, this is pretty significant. Trump was questioning Zelensky about rumours the “hacked” DNC server was hidden in the Ukraine by Crowdstrike. The media has no interest in reporting any of that at all.

I know it's unlikely. Pelosi and Hoyer would sooner pull the plug on the whole impeachment process than risk a runaway train. But there's still a small chance at this point that a committee chair can make a stink and demand other issues be included.

Democrats Desperately Embrace McCarthyism

The latest story alleging that Russia was behind the DNC email hack (David Sanger and Eric Schmitt, "Spy Agency Consensus Grows That Russia Hacked D.N.C.") largely regurgitates the story from the previous day by David Sanger, "F.B.I. Examining if Hackers Gained Access to Clinton Aides’ Emails." Proof that Russia is to blame boils down to some metadata in Cyrillic found on documents released prior to the WikiLeaks dump last Friday:

Preliminary conclusions were discussed on Thursday at a weekly cyberintelligence meeting for senior officials. The Crowdstrike report, supported by several other firms that have examined the same bits of code and telltale “metadata” left on documents that were released before WikiLeaks’ publication of the larger trove, concludes that the Federal Security Service, known as the F.S.B., entered the committee’s networks last summer.

The G.R.U., a competing, military intelligence unit, was a later arrival. Investigators believe it is the G.R.U. that has played a bigger role in releasing the emails.

In an essay published on Lawfare, a blog that often deals with cyberissues, Susan Hennessey, previously a lawyer for the National Security Agency, called the published evidence about Russian involvement “about as close to a smoking gun as can be expected when a sophisticated nation-state is involved.”

Mr. Assange’s threat to release documents, she wrote, “means, put simply, that actors outside the U.S. are using criminal means to influence the outcome of a US election. That’s a problem.”

One point to keep in mind here is the timeline. The DNC first announced it was hacked in June. (See David Sanger and Nick Corasaniti, "D.N.C. Says Russian Hackers Penetrated Its Files, Including Dossier on Donald Trump.") The documents with the telltale Cyrillic fingerprint (why is it that only hackers from the FSB or GRU can leave behind metadata in Cyrillic?) were not part of the WikiLeaks trove. Assange has intimated that the DNC server was hacked by more than one party. According to an interview he conducted with CNN:

Wikileaks founder Julian Assange said Tuesday his whistleblowing website might release "a lot more material" relevant to the US electoral campaign. 

Assange was speaking in a CNN interview following the release of nearly 20,000 emails stolen from the Democratic National Committee by suspected Russian hackers. 

However, Assange refused to confirm or deny a Russian origin for the mass email leak, saying Wikileaks tries to create ambiguity to protect all its sources. 

"Perhaps one day the source or sources will step forward and that might be an interesting moment some people may have egg on their faces. But to exclude certain actors is to make it easier to find out who our sources are," Assange told CNN. 

The Kremlin has rejected allegations its behind the hacking, calling suggestions it ordered the release of the emails to influence US politics the "usual fun and games" of the US election campaigns. 

"This is not really good for bilateral relations," Dmitry Peskov, the Kremlin spokesman, added.

Obama and the FBI will not make any direct allegations of Russian involvement out of fear of 1) escalation of a cyberwar when U.S. defenses are in poor shape and 2) proof possessed by the Russians of U.S. meddling in Russia's political system.

But what is really boundary crossing in all of this -- one really has to go back to days of Tailgunner Joe McCarthy -- is the accusation that a presidential nominee of one branch of the duopoly is basically an agent of Uncle Sam's great Cold War foe, the Russian Bear.

Donald Trump is being made out by the Democrats and their facilitators in the media to be the new Alger Hiss, an Alger Hiss not as a State Department bureaucrat but as the leader of a major party ticket. It is so bizarre and far fetched -- server hacks instead of microfilm in hollowed-out pumpkins -- it speaks of a power structure that is cracked beyond repair.

Its shrill desperation also points to more dirty secrets yet to be revealed.