By
John Wojcik
Demands
that President Donald Trump be impeached grew after revelations Thursday that
he ordered his lawyer, Michael Cohen, to lie to Congress. The deceptions Trump
allegedly ordered were designed to hide talks Trump and his family held with
people in Moscow regarding the building of a Trump Tower in that city.
The
report by BuzzFeed News said that Cohen told special counsel Robert Mueller
Trump personally ordered him to lie to Congress. The Buzzfeed report relies on
information not just from Cohen but from two federal law enforcement officials
involved with investigations of the matter. The purpose of ordering the lies
was to relegate to the level of insignificance the connections between Trump
and the many individuals with which he had business in Russia. Buzzfeed also
alleged that the lies Cohen was ordered to tell Congress were designed to give
the false impression that the Trump project in Moscow had ended before it
actually did.
Lawmakers
in key positions, already hardened by two years of shocking revelations
involving President Trump, found the report released yesterday to be more
serious than many others that have come out. Rep. Adam Schiff, D-Calif., the
chair of the House Intelligence Committee, said on MSNBC last night that the
report was the “most serious to date” and promised his committee will
investigate it further.
“The
allegation that the president of the United States may have suborned perjury
before our committee in an effort to curtail the investigation and cover up his
business dealings with Russia is among the most serious to date. We will do
what’s necessary to find out if it’s true,” Schiff said.
Buzzfeed
says Mueller learned about the president ordering Cohen to lie to Congress
through interviews he had with numerous witnesses who worked for the Trump
organization. Also, according to Buzzfeed, Mueller has in his possession
internal Trump organization emails, text messages, and other types of
documents.
Emails
and text messages were not available in the Watergate days. At that time, it
was tapes. The emails and text messages of today, of course, can be as much of
a smoking gun as any tapes were in the Nixon years. It is also quite possible
that Mueller has in his possession tapes from Cohen in addition to those
already made public on national television and all over the internet.
Former
Attorney General Eric Holder said that if the Buzzfeed report is true, Congress
should start impeachment proceedings right away. “If true—and proof must be examined—Congress must begin
impeachment proceedings and Barr must refer, at a minimum, the relevant
portions of the material discovered by Mueller. This is a potential inflection
point,” Holder said.
The
bombshell report is resulting in more calls by lawmakers for Mueller to get
them additional information without further delay.
“If
Mueller has multiple sources confirming Trump directed Cohen to lie to
Congress, then we need to know this ASAP. Mueller shouldn’t end his inquiry,
but it is about time for him to show Congress his cards before it’s too late
for us to act,” said Sen. Chris Murphy, D-Conn.
Rudy
Giuliani, Trump’s lawyer, avoided dealing with the issue except to say that if
people believe Michael Cohen, then he, Giuliani, has “a Brooklyn Bridge to sell
you.”
The
report was released after Trump took away the jet plane Speaker of the House
Nancy Pelosi would have flown to visit troops in Afghanistan, citing the
government shutdown as the reason and telling her she could fly commercially if
she wanted. The move was seen, of course, as a petty response to the Speaker’s shutdown
of the president’s State of the Union.
Since
the 9/11 attacks, the Speaker of the House has had full access to a government
plane. Homeland Security continued this arrangement so that the president and
the first and second in line behind him or her for presidential succession, the
vice president and the Speaker of the House have, for security reasons, access
to safe transportation in case of an attack on the country.
After
he took away Pelosi’s plane, the president assigned that same plane to his
wife, Melania, as her personal transportation to the family’s Florida Mara-Lago
resort.
(IPA Service)
Courtesy:
People’s World
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