While it’s tempting to consider the end of this presidency, we should consider the long road ahead.
This morning’s bombshell news about former National Security Advisor Michael Flynn’s guilty plea shouldn’t have surprised too many people. Flynn has always been the key figure (now star witness) in the ongoing investigation into Russian interference in the 2016 presidential election. He was on board early with the Trump campaign and was a public confidant of the president until he was fired just three weeks into the new administration. Flynn was also publicly sympathetic to Russian President Vladimir Putin, and it quickly emerged that there was plenty of evidence Flynn would turn out to be the Oliver North of this scandal: the tall, quiet man at the center who knows everything.
The freshened taint of scandal makes it tempting to wonder whether President Trump will keep the presidency. I’ve been hesitant to really chomp at the impeachment bit if only because I realized early on that Congress would do nothing until 1) Republicans got their big tax cut for the wealthy, which nowlooks like it’s finally going to get done, 2) criminal charges were filed against the sitting president, 3) Democrats retake Congress in the 2018 midterms, or 4) all of the above, plus pigs with wings.
But Flynn’s single guilty plea in exchange for cooperating with Special Counsel Robert Mueller is encouraging impeachment talk again, with U.S. Rep. Al Green, a Texas Democrat, planning to force a vote in the House of Representatives next week. Flynn, according to many news reports, is expected to testify that Trump’s transition team and possibly Trump himself directed his contacts with the Russians.
Now we know why Trump was so keen that former FBI director James Comey and congressional Republicans should give Flynn a pass. Comey has testified that Trump said he hoped Comey would consider “letting Flynn go.”
So is this the start of serious impeachment movement?
Not so fast. Putting aside the record Trump has for continually lowering the bar on what’s deemed acceptable behavior for the most politically powerful man in the world (he may well be able to shoot that figurative person on Fifth Avenue and still skate by), whether the Republican-controlled Congress will still do its job and remove him is an open question.
First, they haven’t gotten that tax cut for the rich yet. And there are still questions about its survivability now that everyone knows the Senate’s version of the bill would add $1 trillion to the national debt, lead to13 million people losing their health insurance, give Trump and his family a multimillion-dollar windfall, and constitute what may be the biggest transfer of wealth from the poor and middle class to the wealthy in the nation’s history. But as they like to say in the tech industry, those aren’t bugs, those are features, and the signs favor something getting passed soon.
Please continue this article here: http://www.yesmagazine.org/peace-justice/hear-that-its-new-impeachment-talk-as-flynn-turns-on-trump-20171201?utm_medium=email&utm_campaign=YTW_20171201&utm_content=YTW_20171201+CID_ef20847be54fa7ba0fc41d3e42961bc1&utm_source=CM&utm_term=Hear%20That%20Its%20New%20Impeachment%20Talk%20as%20Flynn%20Turns%20on%20Trump
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