Donald Trump got away from special counselor Robert Mueller’s investigation without a scratch, apparently. He did not face any consequences for obstructing justice or consorting with the Russians’ to strategically release dirt on Hillary Clinton in 2016. POTUS seems to have burst through any political norms and laws without any sense of restrictions. Then, this happened.
The Republicans have tried to cancel out the three men who have said they will challenge Trump in 2020. The GOP has been eliminating as many primaries as possible.
Nonetheless, the media has been guarding the country. Presidential candidate and former Massachusetts governor Bill Weld accused POTUS of treason live on MSNBC’s Morning Joe. He said that Trump’s scheme to force the Ukrainian leader to investigate former vice president Joe Biden and his surviving son amounted to treason.
Trump seemed to think that Biden was the likely Democratic candidate in the 2020 presidential election. The president called Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky and brought up the investigation he wanted eight times and withheld millions of approved and much-need for the Ukraines to fight Russia.
Weld appeared on MSNBC’s Morning Joe this week in a joint interview with the other Republicans running for president, former congressman Mark Saniford (R-SC) and Joe Walsh (R-IL). Weld said, according to The Washington Post:
‘Talk about pressuring a foreign country to interfere with and control a U.S. election. It couldn’t be clearer, and that’s not just undermining democratic institutions. That is treason. It’s treason, pure and simple, and the penalty for treason under the U.S. code is death. That’s the only penalty.’
Weld continued:
‘The penalty under the Constitution is removal from office, and that might look like a pretty good alternative to the president if he could work out a plea deal.’
When Trump spoke to reporters on Sunday he talked about Biden and his son Hunter Biden. He said that he called Zelensky but claimed he had not done anything wrong.
The president has been getting out in front of Biden by framing the investigation he wanted into Hunter’s tour of serving on a Ukrainian gas company board.
As the story about a whistleblower complaint unfurls, acting director of national intelligence (DNI) Joseph Maguire broke with the established law and refused to send a valid whistleblower complaint to the House Intelligence Committee. Instead, he conferred with Attorney General William Barr, who put a halt to it.
Weld was not the first person to call Trump’s actions treason. However, he was the first to do so on live TV. The president’s primary foe said the Constitution states that presidents can be removed once they meet the serious bar:
‘[For] treason, bribery or other high crimes and misdemeanors.’
Trump said:
‘We don’t have to worry about bribery any more, although I think he’s committed that. We don’t have to worry about other high crimes and misdemeanors, although I think he’s committed many. He’s such a lawless man. We’ve got treason, and we don’t have to dribble around the court. We can go right for the hoop. It’s well past time for this guy … to be carted off to save us all.’
The Mueller Report Adventures: In Bite-Sizes on this Facebook page. These quick, two-minute reads interpret the report in normal English for busy people. Mueller Bite-Sizes uncovers what is essentially a compelling spy mystery. Interestingly enough, Mueller Bite-Sizes can be read in any order.
