President Donald Trump will soon (presumably) become the third president in U.S. history to be impeached following outrage over his attempt to exchange military aid for dirt from Ukraine on his Democratic rivals. However, the corruption doesn’t stop there. Issues also remain like Trump’s son-in-law and adviser Jared Kushner’s ample connections to the Saudi regime, with whom he’s palled around and to whom he’s possibly even leaked information. This week, Rep. Joaquin Castro (D-Texas) noted that as Trump harps on and on about supposed corruption involving former Vice President Joe Biden’s son Hunter, Kushner’s own corruption could also be an investigation target according to his very own metrics.
Trump might not have thought that one through before running with the line that Hunter Biden was some harbinger of corrupt doom.
In an appearance on MSNBC this weekend — following the House Judiciary Committee’s approval of articles of impeachment against Trump in preparation for a full House vote this coming week — Castro noted of Trump:
‘He abused his power by trying to trade government resources for a political favor, to knock out a political rival in Joe Biden, the guy that he thought would emerge as nominee for 2020. We can’t set a precedent where Congress says it’s okay for a president to do that, because if we do that then a few things will happen. Number one, it opens the door for Donald Trump to do it again or a future president to do it again. To ask a country to interfere in our elections and knock out a political rival by digging up dirt.’
Castro added an explanation of how Trump’s behavior poses a threat to Americans across the spectrum. He explained:
‘But the other thing is it puts a lot of Americans in danger… It means that if you’re a businessperson who’s doing work or your kids are doing work in Ukraine or in Sweden or anywhere else, that a president or a governor or somebody else can pick up the phone and ask that person, the leader of that country, to go investigate you or dig up dirt on you, and Congress would be saying, by letting Donald Trump off the hook, that that’s okay.’
And ironically enough, those that could be swept up include Jared Kushner. Castro continued:
‘If nothing happens, in ten years, somebody could ask to investigate Jared Kushner in Israel or Saudi Arabia or somewhere else, and we would be saying that’s perfectly fine.’
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Other figures in the impeachment proceedings, like House Speaker Nancy Pelosi (D-Calif.) have already noted the gravity of what’s at stake.
Through demanding that Ukraine investigate the Bidens and a debunked conspiracy theory alleging a cover-up surrounding Democratic email hacks, Trump was threatening the free functioning of American democracy, and he was threatening the whole global system that it’s a part of. Ukraine needed the U.S. military aid to combat Russian military aggression in the Crimean peninsula, where some 13,000 deaths have unfolded since Russia took over the area. Trump ignored all of that in favor of his political whims.
