Dec. 31, 2018
Lawsuits, Russia probe: Is Trump on the way out?
Until the Congressional elections of last November, the idea of removal
from office of President Donald Trump was a recognized impossibility. It
needed, first, the impeachment by a Congress that had a clear Republican
majority, solidly behind the president, then a trial and conviction by
two-thirds of the members of the Senate that also had a majority of
Republicans.
The elections last November saw a flip of the majority in
Congress in favor of the Democrats. The first hurdle toward removal was thus
crossed. Talk of impeachment has actually begun in earnest.
But the elections also resulted in the Republicans
maintaining control of the Senate, indeed adding slightly to its majority. Come
January, the Senate will be divided 53 to 47 in favor of the Republicans.
Still, the probability of removal of Trump from office before the next
presidential elections in November 2020 has increased. It will require that 66
Senators vote for removal which means that, if all Democrats vote for removal,
they would still need that 19 Republican senators break with their party. Let
us look at this possibility.
To begin with, some cracks in the so far cohesive support
of Trump by Senate Republicans have begun to appear under the stress of the
incoherent Trump leadership. Last August, while Trump resisted new sanctions on
Russia, the Senate passed a bipartisan bill proposing additional sanctions that
Republican senator Lindsey Graham described as “the most hard-hitting ever
imposed.” The bill also made it mandatory to obtain two-thirds majority vote
for America in order to withdraw from the North Atlantic Treaty Organization,
“in a direct rebuke to Mr. Trump,” according to the New York Times. The bill
passed 97 to 2.
More recently, on Dec. 13, the Senate passed a resolution
asking Trump to withdraw most support to Saudi Arabia and United Arab Emirates
in their war in Yemen, contrary to Trump’s wishes. The resolution passed 56 to
41 with seven Republican senators breaking with their party. This resolution
was followed by another with even larger number of Republicans breaking with
the wishes of the president.
This crack in Republican support of Trump in the Senate
(normally no more than a couple of Republican senators break with the party) is
likely to widen in the near future.
Trump faces innumerable investigations and lawsuits from
various sources: private individuals, civil society organizations, state and
local attorneys general, federal prosecutors and members of Congress. These
investigations and lawsuits touch also Trump’s close family members, including
his son Donald Jr. and his daughter Ivanka.
The most important of the investigations is, of course, the
one undertaken by the special counsel Robert Mueller. The special counsel is
probing possible conspiracy, between the Trump campaign and the Russians, to
support the election of the president, as well as possible obstruction of
justice by the president. The investigation has been widened to include payment
of hush money to alleged Trump’s sexual partners in violation of campaign
finance laws, and illegal wrongdoings by the Trump Foundation (forced to shut
down) and the Trump’s inaugural committee. This investigation is picking up
speed, judging from the increasing number of cooperators with the Mueller team
and with the various federal prosecutors. It is also becoming more dangerous
for Trump because the latest cooperators (Paul Manafort, the former campaign
chairman, Michael Cohen, his lawyer and Allen Weisselberg, the finance officer
of the Trump Organization) are among the individuals most closely connected to
Trump and most knowledgeable of his private, business and political dealings.
The results of the Mueller investigation, that began in May
2017, are expected to be unveiled in the next three to four months; so are the
rulings in some pending lawsuits. It is expected, based on what is known so
far, that this body of legal judgments will contain impeachable offenses. More
important, it may be reasonable to assume that they will increase the crack
within the Republican Party, and that some of the Republican senators will
break with their party on this issue. This break movement may intensify if
Republican senators running for re-election in 2020 should consider that the
president has become a political burden and would negatively affect their
re-election.
Will this rising discontent, if it happens, result in 19 or
more Republican senators breaking rank, which would insure a removal decision?
It’s anyone’s guess, but this scenario cannot be ruled out. It has happened
before with President Richard Nixon’s impeachment and resignation, the latter
being to avoid humiliation in the Senate. In any case the next two years of
Trump’s term will be tumultuous and will see his power considerably diminished,
with a majority democratic congress intent on investigating him and, perhaps,
impeaching him, and a Republican-majority Senate ready to pass bills against
his will, as has already happened.
What changes are to be expected in American Middle Eastern
policy by the weakening or eventual removal of Trump?
The position of the United States in relation to Iran will
not likely change much with the rise of the Democrats. The return to the Obama
doctrine of cultivating a rapprochement between Iran and the United States for
the purpose of policing the Middle East, does not have much support, even among
Democrats, for fear that such an arrangement will end up in a sectarian
conflict between Sunnis and Shiites. The strong Trump relationship with the
Saudi Crown Prince, Mohammad bin Salman, will, of course, be shaken but the
historic strategic relationship between the two countries will remain strong,
notwithstanding some serious congressional objections. In Yemen, negotiations
have already begun toward the resolution of the conflict and the strategic
involvement of the U.S. has not been much affected by the Senate resolution on
the subject. The “deal of the century” that would resolve the Palestinian
Israeli conflict is already dead and difficult to resurrect.
As for Syria, Trump’s influence on policy seemed, until a
week ago, to be limited, and that matters were largely in the hands of the
Pentagon. Trump’s campaign promise to withdraw American troops from Syria
seemed to have been overruled by the Pentagon, so was his order to kill Bashar
Assad. Suddenly, to the surprise of the Pentagon and the State Department, the
dismay of the leadership of his own party and the objection of his European and
local allies, he ordered a quick withdrawal of the 2,000 troops operating in
Syria under the pretense that Daesh (ISIS) has been defeated. No logical
explanation for this move has been advanced, other than the usual - his legal
predicament and his friendship with Putin, especially that Daesh is still
active in Syria, and that the U.S. has at present an estimated 1.3 million
troops stationed around the world. All this serves to remind us that the
impulsiveness of Trump makes rational predictions in the arena of U.S. foreign
policy, a very risky business indeed.
Riad Tabbarah is a former ambassador of Lebanon to the
United States.
A version of this article appeared in the
print edition of The Daily Star on December 31, 2018, on page 6.
