Russia-gate Still Matters
Our guest author today is Eric Chenoweth, director of the Institute for Democracy in Eastern Europe.
A majority of Americans support the impeachment inquiry of President Donald Trump. With each witness’s testimony, they learn the extent to which Trump risked America’s national security and betrayed his oath to the Constitution to extort Ukraine’s new leader for his own political benefit. Speaker Nancy Pelosi has described the issue as having “clarity.”
A narrow focus on “Ukraine-gate,” however, ignores another grave issue. If the U.S. Constitution demands Congressional action to prevent manipulation of a future election by an incumbent president, it similarly demands action against a foreign power’s past manipulation of a U.S. a presidential election that the incumbent used to gain power in the first place. Oddly, even as evidence has mounted of this original crime against American democracy, the media have generally ignored a connection with Ukraine-gate. But it is an issue that also has “clarity.”
Since November 2016, we have known three things: the Russian government interfered in the U.S. presidential elections; Trump and his campaign solicited and used Russian help; and Trump won his Electoral College victory by a total of 77,000 votes in three states while substantially losing the national vote to Democrat Hillary Clinton. The response (as I wrote in the Washington Post) was to look away from the inter-connection. Although, in Russia, the consensus was that “Putin has won,” here it was that Trump’s unlikely election was determined by domestic factors.