'Everybody Knows the [President] Lied'

Remember
Leonard Cohen's classic song "Everybody Knows" (Everybody Knows
the Captain Lied)? Well, everybody knows that our president lied (more than
10,000 times to date) and should be impeached. Also, everybody knows
that Donald Trump will eventually be impeached. There is no reason to wait to
do it.

More than 1,000 bipartisan former federal
prosecutors, after reading the Mueller report, concluded that: "in the
case of any other person not covered by the Office of Legal Counsel Policy
against indicting a sitting President, [they would face] multiple felony
charges for obstruction of justice." In reaching this conclusion they
cited the president's efforts to fire Mueller and falsify evidence about that
effort; limit the scope of the Mueller investigation to exclude the president's
conduct; and his working to prevent witnesses from cooperating with
investigators probing his behavior.

Checks & Balances (C&B), a group of
conservative lawyers that assisted the Trump administration in selecting
appointees for the federal courts, after reading the Mueller Report, called for
the president's impeachment. Their reasons: "[W]e believe the President's
conduct demonstrates a flagrant disregard for the rule of law … in direct
conflict with his constitutional responsibilities, including his commitment under
oath to preserve, protect and defend the Constitution of the United
States."

While the Mueller Report clearly lays out
grounds for impeachment, people haven't read it. Seeing Mueller say that
"if we had confidence that the President clearly did not commit a crime, we
would have said that," caused critical mass which should lead to
impeachment proceedings now.

The 56 House Democrats, plus one Republican,
and eight presidential candidates calling for the president's impeachment noware correct in so doing. I understand that the president would not be convicted
by a Republican-controlled Senate, and that Speaker Pelosi fears that therefore
impeachment without a record sufficient to support a bipartisan consensus could
produce a backlash leading to Trump's re-election. However, I think her
calculus misses the critical point that impeachment proceedings would be educationaland that the audience in need of this education are the swing voters in the
battleground states.

Trump's base (40 percent) will not desert him
regardless. Anti-Trumpers are not
going to change their minds regardless. Congressional Republicans have gone so
far down the Trump primrose path they cannot turn back. That leaves roughly the
77,000 swing voters, in the battleground states who gave Trump the White House,
as the audience in need of being educated about the High Crimes and
Misdemeanors that warrant the president's
impeachment. A televised impeachment proceeding would do this.

It's critical that this education process
include Trump's failure to protect us from Russia attacking our
electoral process. Mueller emphasized this in both his opening and closing
remarks: ("Russian intelligence officers … launched a concerted attack on
our political system … designed … to interfere with our election and … damage a
presidential candidate … [T]here were multiple, systematic efforts to interfere
in or election. That allegation deserves the attention of every American."

Robert Mueller was not just speaking to us, he
was talking to President Trump, whose oath of office requires him to protect us
from such attacks from a hostile foreign power. Instead, we all witnessed our president,
in Helsinki, stand next to Vladimir Putin and say that rather than believe our
own intelligence agencies, which reached the same collusion as the Mueller
Report, he chose to believe Vladimir Putin's denial — because it was strong.

With all of Donald Trump's yelling "no
collusion" (with Russia) it's easy to forget that the Mueller
investigation was initiated to investigate Russia's interference in our
democracy and those who colluded with them. Russia interfered. Russia
will do it again. Our president has done nothing to stop them. Impeachment?
What are we waiting for?