Former White House Chief of Staff John Kelly has defended Lt. Col. Alexander Vindman’s decision to report President Trump’s call with the Ukrainian president. Kelly referred to the call as an “illegal order” that had to be reported. Most of us support Vindman raising his concerns with the chain of command and hopefully Trump will not attack Kelly for stating his support for Vindman. This is a principled and reasonable view of one of our most respected military officers.
There is an interesting new controversy developing around the trial of Roger Stone. This one does not focus on the sentencing of Stone but his trial. New information has emerged that the foreperson of the trial has a long history of highly critical postings against President Donald Trump and his administration. Former Memphis City Schools Board President Tomeka Hart recently went public with her support of the prosecutors who resigned from the case. However, there are now questions of why Hart was allowed on the jury, let alone made the foreperson given her highly critical view of Trump and his associates before being called for jury service. Not only has Hart called Trump supporters like Stone racists but she celebrated a protest that projected profanities on the Trump hotel with the words “Gotta Love It.”
I recently wrote a Washington Post column explaining that, while I viewed the moves by President Donald Trump against impeachment witnesses was wrong, it was not criminal as claimed by legal analysts like CNN’s Elie Honig. Yesterday, Honig responded by arguing in a column that he and “other former prosecutors” are quite confident that the action clearly constituted the crime of witness retaliation. While Honig does not actually explain how the President’s conduct specifically violated the stated elements in the federal code, even a cursory consideration of the elements of the crime belie his assertion. Trump’s actions with regard to Vineland and Sondland would not constitute criminal witness retaliation.
We have previously discussed the efforts of the Democratic establishment and some in the media to (again) derail the presidential campaign of Sen. Bernie Sanders, including the raw bias against Sanders shown by CNN reporter Abby Phillip in a prior presidential debate. Now, with Sanders’ victory in New Hampshire and rising polls, figures from both politics and media are putting on a full-court press to stop Sanders. Everyone from James Carville to MSNBC’s Chris Matthews are sounding alarms over Sanders. His victory last night was called the “doomsday scenario” by a Democratic Super PAC. The most shocking was MSNBC anchor Chuck Todd who used a quote form a columnist to compare Sanders supporters to Nazi brown-shirted thugs. It is a technique used before by Todd who reads letters or quotes from others to preserve the patina of neutrality like his recent attack on Trump supporters.
The Chair of the Conservative Political Action Conference has made news this week by not only saying that Sen. Mitt Romney (R, Utah) was not welcomed at the annual conference, but that the former Republican presidential nominee could be in danger of being being assaulted in such venues. Matt Schlapp said that ” I’d actually be afraid for his physical safety, people are so mad at him.” I recently wrote a Washington Post column defending Romney but the attacks have continued, including an attack by President Donald Trump last night at a campaign rally. It appears that the “Big Tent” party of Ronald Reagan has become a pup tent of exclusion.
Below is my column with the BBC on the impeachment verdict and its aftermath. A new Hill/HarrisX poll shows President Donald Trump at a record high of popularity — finding the same 49 percent level of the earlier Gallup poll. In other words, people heard what they wanted to hear in the trial — and most heard nothing at all by tuning it all out. Indeed, as discussed below, it ultimately did not seem to matter what anyone actually said as opposed to what people wanted to hear.
Former Vice President Joe Biden is not just losing support at a rapid rate, but he has lost any moral high ground with a negative attack ad against former South Bend, Indiana, Mayor Pete Buttigieg suggesting that he has a problem with African Americans. The ad below focuses on the fact that Buttigieg fired an African American police chief and fire chief. It does not address the merits of those decisions but suggests that race may have been a motivator for the firings. In other words, it strongly suggests (without having the courage to state directly) that Buttigieg has a racism issue. There is absolutely no support for such a claim. It is a raw and grossly unfair ad. Buttigieg refrained from referring to Biden as the Vice President jokingly referred to a voter as “a lying, dog-faced pony solider.” Remarkably, in his interview with ABC this morning, George Stephanopoulos seemed to brush over the substance of the attack ad or the underlying decision.
Of course, such negative attacks are nothing new. John Adams’ campaign called Vice President Jefferson “a mean-spirited, low-lived fellow, the son of a half-breed Indian squaw, sired by a Virginia mulatto father.”
Below is my column in the Washington Post on the vote of Mitt Romney and how his independence is a virtue celebrated selectively by the political establishment and the media. One thing that should unite everyone is the inexcusable attack on Romney’s reference to his faith by President Trump. Romney grew emotional on the Senate floor when he dismissed the “unimaginable” attacks as paling in comparison to what he would lose by violating an oath to God. Trump responded at the National Prayer Breakfast by declaring.” “I don’t like people who use their faith as justification for doing what they know is wrong.” The one thing that I never thought would be questioned is the faith of Mitt Romney, who not only is widely known as a deeply religious Mormon but has been discussed as a possible head of the Mormon Church. I have never been a fan of Romney’s policies, particularly his environmental policies (which are in line with Trump). However, I have never heard anyone suggest that Mitt Romney’s faith is anything but genuine and heartfelt. I have no problem with Trump attacking the merits of his decision but the attack on his motivation is well beyond the pale.
I recently disagreed with North Carolina Law Professor and CNN Legal Analyst Michael Gerhardt, who declared that the entire Trump defense team would face bar charges for their defense of the President. No such bar charges have been filed but the Miami-Dade Democratic Party has filed a frivolous bar complaint against Florida Rep. Matt Gaetz(R) for his role in the storming a secure congressional facility during the closed-door hearings held in the impeachment inquiry. The complaint in my view is utterly without merit and would create a dangerous precedent for bar associations to use their authority to regulate or punish the actions of lawyers in the capacity as members of Congress.
We have discussed the growing trend of teachers being fired or disciplined for their discussions or postings on social media. These cases raise difficult free speech issues for educators who make political, religious, or social comments as private citizens but are then held accountable by their schools. The latest such case is out of Milwaukee where teacher Travis Sarandos has been put on leave over a deeply offensive and callous tweet about the cancer prognosis of conservative talk show host Rush Limbaugh. Sarandos reportedly said that he thought the advanced cancer prognosis was “awesome” and that he hoped Limbaugh’s death would be a painful one. It is hard to feel much sympathy for someone who has so little for others. However, there remains a question of free speech and who decides what is permissible or impermissible for teachers to express outside of their schools and employment.
President Donald Trump has moved against two of the most prominent witnesses at his impeachment hearings in the House with the removal of Gordon Sondland, the U.S. Ambassador to the European Union and Lt. Col. Alexander Vindman, the top Ukraine policy officer on the National Security Counsel. There is no question that the President has a right to remove them and Vindman is not being “fired” but rather being transferred to a Defense Department post. Both ignored instructions from the White House not to appear in Congress. Yet, the timing smacks of retaliation against witnesses and the White House has not offered a full explanation of the action. Previously, a Pentagon official pledged that no retaliation against Vindman would be tolerated, but that might not include a transfer. What is particularly concerning is the removal of the twin brother of Vindman who did not testify and merely went with his brother as emotional support at the hearing.
I have previously written about my fundamental disagreement with the aspects of the emoluments challenges filed by various academics. We discussed the prior denial of the challenge by the Fourth Circuit. Now, the D.C. Circuit has issued a unanimous rejection of the challenge. It is a major victory for the Trump Administration and again raises the questions over the coverage of these claims, which largely omitted discussion of the considerable barriers facing these filings. It is a rejection of the challenge brought by Senators Richard Blumenthal (D., Conn.) and 215 other members of Congress.
Below is my column in the Hill newspaper on the controversial conduct of Speaker Nancy Pelosi at the State of the Union this week. Pelosi broke with tradition on three points: changing the greeting for the President, making demonstrations of criticism from the Speaker’s chair, and ripping up the address in protest. I previously called upon Pelosi to apologize and commit to maintaining decades of tradition for the Speaker to be neutral in the State of the Union to represent the House as a whole — Republicans and Democrats. Pelosi yesterday however doubled down and declared her protests to be perfectly appropriate and liberating. Her declaration of being “liberated” is itself both confirmatory and chilling. She liberated herself from traditions of neutrality that extends back centuries to the English Parliament.
Now liberating from rules and tradition, Pelosi is free to convert the Speakership into a more partisan role at the SOTU, including the use of the position to mock, troll, or taunt a president addressing both houses. I have joined others in criticizing Trump’s failure to shake the hand of Pelosi and his highly inappropriate comments yesterday questioning Pelosi’s and Romney’s faith. However, that does not give Pelosi license to violate this important and unbroken tradition as Speaker at the State of the Union. Indeed, the silence of Democratic members in the face of Pelosi shattering decades of tradition is equally shocking. In remaining silent, Democrats of both houses have lost any moral high ground.
We recently discussed the highly inappropriate conduct of Speaker Nancy Pelosi in changing the traditional greeting of a president at the State of the Union, engaging in facial demonstrations of disapproval behind the President during the address, and ripping up the address in protest of the president from the Speaker’s chair. The outrageous conduct shattered decades of tradition of Speakers remaining neutral as representatives of the entire House, not just their own party. CNN’s chief media correspondent Brian Stelter, however, sees no pressing issue of principle or propriety. The only most pressing question for Stelter was whether it worked and he praised Pelosi for stealing the media attention at any cost. He is not alone in the coverage. This purely consequentialist view of the issues is precisely why we are living through this age of rage. The measure of Pelosi’s shocking conduct is simply whether it worked to dominate the coverage.
With the exception of one vote on one article of impeachment (by Sen. Mitt Romney), the acquittal of President Donald Trump went as predicted with a party-line vote. Notably, however, the vast majority of senators, including a significant number of Republican senators, expressly rejected the core defense offered by Professor Alan Dershowitz in their statements –rejecting the position that impeachable offenses must be based on criminal allegations and does not include allegations of abuse of power. What we did not see, as discussed in this column in The Washington Post, was a bipartisan rejection of Article II.
