Every time a witness testifies behind closed doors in the US House of Representatives’ methodical march toward the impeachment of President Donald Trump, Trump supporters scream “no quid pro quo” while Trump opponents breathlessly inform us that the “smoking gun” has turned up and that impeachment is now “inevitable.”

What’s with all this “smoking gun” stuff? The decision to impeach is political, but in terms of evidence, it’s already a lock. President Trump publicly confessed to multiple “high crimes” before House Speaker Nancy Pelosi (D-CA) even announced the impeachment inquiry, then threw in a corroborating White House document.

Readers, meet Article VI of the US Constitution:

“This Constitution, and the Laws of the United States which shall be made in Pursuance thereof; and all Treaties made, or which shall be made, under the Authority of the United States, shall be the supreme Law of the Land …”

And now let us consult a lesser-known document, the US government’s  Treaty With Ukraine on Mutual Legal Assistance in Criminal Matters:

“Each Contracting State shall have a Central Authority to make and receive requests pursuant to this treaty. For the United States of America, the Central Authority shall be the  Attorney General or a person designated by the Attorney General. For Ukraine, the Central Authority shall be the Ministry of Justice and the Office of the Prosecutor General. … A request for assistance shall be in writing except that the Central Authority of the Requested State may accept a request in another form in urgent situations.”

Donald Trump is not the Attorney General of the United States, nor has the Attorney General publicly produced a document designating him the US government’s requesting authority under the treaty. Volodymyr Zelensky is the president of Ukraine, not a principal of its Ministry of Justice or Office of the Prosecutor General. A request by phone is not in writing, nor are matters years in the past and already subject to substantial investigation “urgent.”

Donald Trump made a request he had no authority to make, to a person he had no authority to make it of, in a form he had no authority to make it in. That’s at least three violations of the “Supreme Law of the Land.”

So, what’s a “high crime?” It may sound like a synonym for “serious crime” — espionage, treason, assassination, that kind of thing — but it’s actually a “term of art”  more concerned with the person committing the act than the act itself.

As Alexander Hamilton put it in Federalist #65, “high crimes”  for purposes of impeachment are “offences which proceed from the misconduct of public men, or, in other words, from the abuse or violation of some public trust.”

Donald Trump’s public trust, per the Constitution, includes “tak[ing] care that the laws be faithfully executed.” Instead, he violated “the supreme Law of the Land,” then publicly confessed to doing so, then corroborated his confession with evidence.

The “smoking gun” has been there the whole time. The rest is just details and politics.

Thomas L. Knapp (Twitter: @thomaslknapp) is director and senior news analyst at the William Lloyd Garrison Center for Libertarian Advocacy Journalism (thegarrisoncenter.org). He lives and works in north central Florida.

“Let’s tell the truth,” said Walter Mondale as he accepted the Democratic Party’s 1984 presidential nomination. “It must be done, it must be done. Mr. Reagan will raise taxes, and so will I. He won’t tell you. I just did.”

That comment looms large in popular memory as the cause of Mondale’s crushing defeat that November. Of 50 states, he carried only one, his home state of Minnesota, polling only 40.6% of votes nationwide to Ronald Reagan’s 58.8%.

More than three decades later, Democratic presidential candidates continue to cower in fear of another “Mondale Moment.” They tiptoe around tax issues, generally promising to raise taxes only on “the rich” and sometimes even mulling tax cuts for important voter blocs (usually a vaguely defined “middle class”).

US Senator Elizabeth Warren (D-MA) has spent the last few weeks running from her own Mondale Moment, refusing to answer the straight-up question from debate moderators and interviewers:

“Would funding your Medicare For All proposal require a middle class tax increase?”

She bobs. She weaves. She clinches. She tries to change the subject. There’s seemingly nothing she won’t do to avoid giving a straight answer.

Why? Because the only plausible straight answer is “yes.”

This is not an “anti-Medicare-For-All” column. I’m not a fan of the proposal for various reasons, but it is obviously on offer from two of the Democratic Party’s three presidential front-runners. Over the next 13 months, Democratic primary voters will be, and the American electorate may be, asked to accept or reject it.

Since it IS on the table, the candidates supporting and opposing it owe those voters clear explanations of what it entails not just in terms of benefits, but costs.

According to the Urban Institute (generally regarded as a moderately “left”-leaning think tank) what it entails is an increase in federal government spending of $32 trillion over ten years.

That’s an average of $3.2 trillion per year. In 2018, the federal government’s total revenues came to $3.3 trillion.

So what we’re talking about here is doubling the federal budget — which means either doubling tax revenues or quintupling government borrowing.

There aren’t enough “rich” people to cover that tab, even if Warren’s other plans didn’t already tap them as a significant revenue source.

Therefore, middle class and working class Americans are going to have to pay higher taxes if Medicare For All is going to happen.

Warren claims that those middle and working class Americans are going to save money anyway. Her logic is obvious: She believes that Americans’ healthcare bills will go down more than their taxes go up.

But she refuses, presumably in abject terror of facing her own Mondale Moment, to come right out and say it that way.

Sooner or later, she’s going to have to say it that way and find out if the voters believe her.

The longer she waits to do so, the worse for her presidential aspirations. American voters like straight answers. Heck, they’ll even make do with obvious lies dressed up as straight answers if necessary. But they loathe prevarication.

Thomas L. Knapp (Twitter: @thomaslknapp) is director and senior news analyst at the William Lloyd Garrison Center for Libertarian Advocacy Journalism (thegarrisoncenter.org). He lives and works in north central Florida.

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“I’m not making any predictions, but I think [the Russians] have got their eye on somebody who is currently in the Democratic primary and are grooming her to be the third-party candidate,” said Hillary Clinton on her former campaign manager’s podcast.  “They know they can’t win without a third party candidate.”

Was Clinton referring to US Representative Tulsi Gabbard, CNN asked? “If the nesting doll fits” her spokesperson replied.

Nearly three years after losing the 2016 presidential election to Donald Trump, Hillary Clinton’s still trying to find someone other than Hillary Clinton to blame.

If it’s not women voting the way their husbands tell them to vote, it’s James Comey’s unconvincing job of “exonerating” her for her grossly negligent handling of classified information.

If it’s not the media taking too much notice of her scandals, her health problems, etc., it’s Bernie Sanders supporters staying home instead of going to the polls for a candidate who hated them as much as they hated her.

Whatever it is, it can never, ever, ever be the fact that she’s among the most disliked and distrusted politicians of the last century, or that she ran an incredibly inept campaign, or that she failed to pay sufficient attention to Rust Belt voters upon whom Donald Trump lavished attention and promises to “bring the jobs back.”

And sooner or later it always comes back around to !THEM RUSSIANS!

!THEM RUSSIANS! spent a miniscule amount of money (a fraction of a percent of what Clinton’s campaign spent, and far less than !THEM RUSSIANS! donated to Clinton’s family foundation) on cheesy Facebook ads.

Donald Trump made a secret deal with Vladimir Putin! He’s a Kremlin “asset!”

!THEM RUSSIANS! backed a third party candidate (Dr. Jill Stein of the Green Party), who “stole” enough votes from Clinton to throw the election to Trump.

And now !THEM RUSSIANS! are at it again. The long arm of the Kremlin is reaching into the very heart of the Democratic Party itself to once again wrest a  presidential election away from Hillary Clinton (or from someone, anyway).

There’s no obvious evidence that Tulsi Gabbard plans to defect from the Democratic Party and run for president as an independent or on another party’s ticket.

On the other hand, given her treatment by the Democratic National Committee — including gaming polls to try to keep her out of primary debates and out of the running — and now by Hillary Clinton, who could blame her if she did?

Furthermore, in what universe is an independent or third party presidential candidacy any less legitimate than a Democratic presidential nomination?

Votes belong to voters, not to parties. Democratic and Republican candidates aren’t magically entitled to your vote. Whether or not they’ve earned that vote is your call and no one else’s.

If Democrats are interested in winning next year, they might want to consider publicly dissociating themselves from Hillary Clinton, who’s gone in a mere three years from even whinier than Donald Trump to even loonier than Lyndon LaRouche.

Thomas L. Knapp (Twitter: @thomaslknapp) is director and senior news analyst at the William Lloyd Garrison Center for Libertarian Advocacy Journalism (thegarrisoncenter.org). He lives and works in north central Florida.

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