Now that impeachment hearings are going to really start, I feel that the Democrats in the House need to make the White House understand that this impeachment is for real and that they mean business.
There is a great scene from the TV series “The West Wing” from the episode “On the Day Before” where Leo McGarry is teaching White House comrades something about politics and it goes something like this:
One of the big emergencies of this particular episode surrounded the President’s (Martin Sheen) veto of the “death tax” — otherwise known as the estate tax which taxes inheritances on individuals. Members of the House were organizing an override of this veto, including several of the President’s allies on the Democratic side. An override would be very embarrassing for the White House, considering at the time it was just over 2 years of the President’s first term. This could hurt their agenda for a good, long time.
At this point, Leo McGarry was with the team discussing leaking some information in order to gain an advantage politically. His plan was to leak that they would give a ton of money to representatives from the Republican side that not only would stop the veto, it would make the Democrats who were considering voting against President Bartlett look foolish. Leo needed to neuter any moves they might make. He justified making his own party look bad by using the following story.
He recalled a game from the Celtics days of old, led by the legendary Red Auerbach with its amazing, Hall of Fame center, Bill Russell. The team they were playing was hammering Russell whenever he would try to score in the paint (sound familiar?), but Russell didn’t want to retaliate in kind.
Leo McGarry : Bill Russell was getting eaten alive cuz they could never get him to throw an elbow. He didn't want to do it. So Red Auerbach told him to do it, one time, throw an elbow on a nationally televised game, you'll never have to do it again. You bet your ass they'll know the leak came from us.
“On the Day Before” words spoken by the great John Spencer, “The West Wing”
We need to start throwing elbows. And we have more tools than we think to do just that.
The best one will be to arrest Rudy Guiliani. As Barb McQuade has stated…
This alone will mean that the House means business. A very nice article on MSNBC’s Think site also shows us the way. U.S. District Attorney Mimi Rocah wrote of how he could also be indicted in violation of the Logan Act. Remember that one?
She quotes Barb, by the way.
As explained by my colleague, former U.S. Attorney Barbara McQuade, in the Daily Beast, it [The Logan Act] is a crime under the federal bribery statute for a public official to demand anything of value in exchange for performing an official act. Additionally, the Hobbs Act defines extortion as "obtaining property from another, with his consent, under color of official right." McQuade continues:
The essence of both crimes is a demand by a public official to obtain something for himself to which he is not entitled in exchange for performing an official act of his office. Here, if the reporting is correct, Trump may be similarly committing bribery and extortion by using the power of his office to demand a thing of value, dirt on Biden, in exchange for an official act, the provision of military aid. This is precisely the kind of old-fashioned corruption scheme that the bribery and extortion statutes were designed to punish."Trump won't be prosecuted for Ukraine call about Biden. But Rudy Giuliani can." by Mimi Rocah, 9/24/2019, NBCNews.com “Think”
Second, if he does not provide testimony this Thursday, arrest the acting Director of National Intelligence Joseph Maguire for contempt for not providing the transcript as directed by law. This is contempt by obstruction. As a matter of fact, the great Kurt Eichenwald has suggested a way to push this along.
Time is of the essence.
I realize that Trump will go off about how this is hostage taking. Well, it is. I said we need to show that we mean business, right?
It’s about time we did it. The rest of the country has been held hostage long enough.
It looks like the White House has started the process of throwing Rudy under the bus.
From the Washington Post as of 3 hours ago…
“Rudy — he did all of this,” one U.S. official said. “This s---show that we’re in — it’s him injecting himself into the process.”
Giuliani pursued shadow Ukraine agenda as key foreign policy officials were sidelined by Robert Costa, WaPo 9/24/2019
Read the whole thing. It’s hysterical. To paraphrase Shakespeare, “Trump is ripe for shaking.”