Monday, December 31, 2018

Trump: The end?





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.