Crimes And Misdemeanors Quotes

You will notice that what we are aiming at when we fall in love is a very strange paradox. The paradox consists of the fact that, when we fall in love, we are seeking to re-find all or some of the people to whom we were attached as children. On the other hand, we ask our beloved to correct all of the wrongs that these early parents or siblings inflicted upon us. So that love contains in it the contradiction: The attempt to return to the past and the attempt to undo the past.

We're all faced throughout our lives with agonizing decisions, moral choices. Some are on a grand scale, most of these choices are on lesser points. But we define ourselves by the choices we have made. We are, in fact, the sum total of our choices. Events unfold so unpredictably, so unfairly, Human happiness does not seem to be included in the design of creation. it is only we, with our capacity to love that give meaning to the indifferent universe. And yet, most human beings seem to have the ability to keep trying and even try to find joy from simple things, like their family, their work, and from the hope that future generations might understand more

I'm supposed to be guilty of all sorts of crimes and misdemeanors, but when you get right down to it, I'm really only guilty of one: wondering. The road to Hell, you say, is paved with good intentions. Charming. But actually it's paved with intriguing questions. You want to know. Man do you want to know.

To those who will decide if he should be tried for 'high crimes and misdemeanors' -the House of Representatives- And to those who would sit in judgment at such a trial if the House impeaches -the Senate- And to the man who would preside at such an impeachment trial -the Chief Justice of the United States, Warren Burger- And to the nation... The President said, 'I want you to know that I have no intention whatever of ever walking away from the job that the American people elected me to do for the people of the United States.' - Carl Bernstein, Bob Woodward

The essence of religious feeling does not come under any sort of reasoning or atheism, and has nothing to do with any crimes or misdemeanors. There is something else here, and there will always be something else - something that the atheists will for ever slur over; they will always be talking of something else.

Listen, Parfyon, a few moments ago you asked me a question, and this is my answer: the essence of religious feeling has nothing to do with any reasoning, or any crimes and misdemeanors or atheism; is is something entirely different and it will always be so; it is something our atheists will always overlook, and they will never talk about THAT. But the important thing is that you will notice it most clearly in a Russian heart, and that's the conclusion I've come to! This is one of the chief convictions I have acquired in our Russia. There's work to be done, Parfyon. Believe me, there's work to be done in our Russian world!

it’s not that certain cruel actions are committed because the perpetrators are self-consciously and deliberatively evil. Rather it is because they think they are doing good. They are fueled by a strong moral sense. As Pinker puts it: “The world has far too much morality. If you added up all the homicides committed in pursuit of self-help justice, the casualties of religious and revolutionary wars, the people executed for victimless crimes and misdemeanors, and the targets of ideological genocides, they would surely outnumber the fatalities from amoral predation and conquest.

Plagiarism is the silliest of misdemeanors. What harm is there in writing what's already been written? Real originality is a capital crime, often calling for cruel and unusual punishment in advance of the coup de grâce.

Most crimes and misdemeanors by slaves were dealt with by their masters; they could even hang a slave if he killed another slave, but that would have been like throwing money down a well after the slave had already thrown the first load of money down, as William Robbins once told Skiffington.

The President of the United States would be liable to be impeached, tried, and, upon conviction of treason, bribery, or other high crimes or misdemeanors, removed from office; and would afterwards be liable to prosecution and punishment in the ordinary course of law.

Willful and repeated violation of the Constitution is the textbook example of high crimes and misdemeanors.

When we think about “high Crimes and Misdemeanors,” we must ask: Will we survive this presidency, and, if we do, what kind of nation will we have become?

[O]ffenses like disorderly conduct, obstruction, and resisting arrest are easily alleged, they effectively give police the power to arrest based on violations of their own sense of authority.

There are,' said Curval, 'but two or three crimes to perform in this world, and they, once done, there's no more to be said; all the rest is inferior, you cease any longer to feel. Ah, how many times, by God, have I not longed to be able to assail the sun, snatch it out of the universe, make a general darkness, or use that star to burn the world! oh, that would be a crime, oh yes, and not a little misdemeanor such as are all the ones we perform who are limited in a whole year's time to metamorphosing a dozen creatures into lumps of clay.

Anything that doesn't fit this mode has been shoved into an area of lesser solemnity called 'genre fiction,' and it is here that the spy thriller and the crime story and the adventure story and the supernatural tale and the science fiction, however excellently written, must reside, sent to their rooms, as it were, for the misdemeanor of being enjoyable in what is considered a meretricious way. They invent, and we all know they invent, at least up to a point, and they are, therefore, not about 'real life,' which ought to lack coincidences and weirdness and action-adventure, unless the adventure story is about war, of course, where anything goes, and they are, therefore, not solid.

That day was also the first time a case of COVID-19 was diagnosed in South Korea, which promptly began an orderly regime of testing that limited the immediate impact of the virus. In contrast, Trump that night addressed the growing threat with his customary salesman’s patter. “We have it totally under control,” he said. No, they didn’t, and Trump’s feckless indifference in those early days cost thousands of American lives.

The prelude involves a series of vilenesses and delusions, from the seduction of Lot by both his daughters to the marriage of Abraham to his stepsister, the birth of Isaac to Sarah when Abraham was a hundred years old, and many other credible and incredible rustic crimes and misdemeanors.

Trump had been lying for his entire adult life, and far from being brought down by this pervasive dishonesty, he had been elected president of the United States. Why change what was working so well? And in any event, what man in his eighth decade changes such a fundamental aspect of his character? Not Trump.

Johnson had unleashed the political equivalent of an act of war against Congress. Retaliating against the president’s violation of the Tenure of Office Act, the House introduced a resolution to impeach Andrew Johnson for high crimes and misdemeanors. Three days later, the resolution passed by an overwhelming 126 to 47

The world has far too much morality. If you added up all the homicides committed in pursuit of self-help justice, the casualties of religious and revolutionary wars, the people executed for victimless crimes and misdemeanors, and the targets of ideological genocides, they would surely outnumber the fatalities from amoral predation and conquest.

privacy invasion and incidence of cyber crimes and misdemeanors. To be able to effectively respond to internet intrusion incidents, me

Certainly, Mueller found abundant evidence that Trump and his campaign wanted to collude and conspire with Russia, but they hadn’t been able to close the deal.

Mueller had uncovered extensive evidence that Trump committed the crime of obstruction of justice—repeatedly.

By 2018, the world had become largely inured to Trump’s tweets—even with their racism and misogyny, their mindless belligerence, norm-shattering impropriety, and constant lies.

In the trial and throughout Trump’s presidency, there was never any doubt about his character or his conduct—his dishonesty, his arrogance, his ignorance, and his narcissism.

In the early 1990s, Trump made a disastrous foray into the gambling business in Atlantic City, and his empire nearly collapsed in multiple bankruptcies.

The Trump of The Apprentice—steely, decisive, well versed in the ways of business and of the world—was a creation of the producers of the program.

As a presidential candidate, Trump continued working on a plan to build in Russia.

It was the clearest evidence so far, according to many in the Mueller office, that the president had committed a crime in office—obstruction of justice.

I just fired the head of the F.B.I. He was crazy, a real nut job,” Trump told the Russians. “I faced great pressure because of Russia. That’s taken off.

Violating the presidential oath, in whatever fashion, constitutes a “high crime and misdemeanor”—according to the founding generation’s definition.

Trump did, in short, exactly what Mueller said he did. The two men—president and prosecutor—were like photo negatives of each other. Trump could not tell the truth, and Mueller could not tell a lie.

In 2013, Trump’s son Eric told the sportswriter James Dodson, “We don’t rely on American banks. We have all the funding we need out of Russia.” (On Twitter, Eric Trump denied having made the remark.)

It wasn’t that Mueller was unable to reach a conclusion about whether Trump committed a crime but that under the circumstances he chose not to do so. In other words, Quarles said, Mueller could reach a determination, but he would not.

I told Seven the Bartender that true love is felonious. "Not if they're over eighteen," he said, shutting the till of the cash register. By then the bar itself had become an appendage, a second torso holding up my first. "You take someone's breath away," I stressed. "You rob them of the ability to utter a single word." I tipped the neck of the empty liquor bottle toward him. "You steal a heart." He wiped up in front of me with a dishrag. "Any judge would toss that case out on its ass." "You'd be surprised." Seven spread the rag out on the brass bar to dry. "Sounds like a misdemeanor, if you ask me." I rested my cheek on the cool, damp wood. "No way," I said. "Once you're in, it's for life.

It was the job of Trump’s lawyer to tell him not to do it. But that’s not what Giuliani did. To the contrary, Trump sent Giuliani to Ukraine, and he went. Together, the two men didn’t just advocate for collusion with Ukraine; they executed it.

From the day he declared his candidacy, through the Russia scandal and his endless solicitude toward Vladimir Putin, and on into his cruel manipulation of the struggling democracy in Ukraine, Trump didn’t give a shit about anyone or anything but himself.

The White House released the military aid to Ukraine after allegations of the link to the Biden investigation became public. In other words, the Trump administration released the aid only because it was caught linking the aid to the quest for political dirt.

Trump received his first four deferments from the Vietnam-era draft because he was a college student. In 1968, after he graduated from Penn and thus became ineligible for more educational deferments, he received a fifth—a medical deferment because of bone spurs.

The president and first lady arrived a few minutes later, and Trump immediately walked up to Hutson, ogled her up and down, and said to Giuliani, “Great job, Rudy!” (Melania Trump, disgusted by her husband’s leering, walked off and refused to pose for photographs.)

This harkens back to the eighteenth-century philosopher and reformer Cesare Beccaria, whose 1764 work On Crimes and Punishments—a high-water mark of the Italian Enlightenment—launched the movement to apply rational principles to criminal reform, such as adjusting the punishments to fit the crimes (proportionality) instead of, as was the custom of the day, the death penalty for such offenses as poaching, counterfeiting, theft, sodomy, bestiality, adultery, horse theft, being in the company of Gypsies, and two hundred other crimes and misdemeanors.

On June 18, 2013, just after Trump announced that the Miss Universe pageant would take place in Russia, he tweeted, with a kind of desperate giddiness, “Do you think Putin will be going to The Miss Universe Pageant in November in Moscow—if so, will he become my new best friend?

But Comey and company came to realize—as others would soon learn in the crucible of Donald Trump’s presidency—that they had no idea of the magnitude of his flaws, of his narcissism, sociopathy, and ignorance. Trump’s only concern was his feral self-interest, his only belief was that those around him existed to serve him.

Instead, Giuliani pressed ahead, with Trump’s encouragement, to begin a full-scale investigation about Joe and Hunter Biden in Ukraine. If Giuliani had done anything else, Donald Trump would not have been impeached. For this reason, Giuliani’s work must rank among the most disastrous pieces of advocacy in the history of American lawyering.

This was especially true in the months leading up to the 2016 election, when the FBI conducted two politically explosive investigations: the first, about Hillary Clinton’s email practices at the State Department, became widely known, while the second, about possible Russian infiltration of the Trump campaign, never became public before Election Day.

Anger over Garner’s death is understandable. No one should die for selling untaxed cigarettes or even for resisting arrest, though the officers certainly did not intend to kill Garner, and a takedown may be justified when a suspect resists. Protests initially centered on the officer’s seeming use of a choke-hold, which is banned by NYPD policy. But critics of the NYPD expanded the campaign against the police to include misdemeanor enforcement itself. This is pure opportunism. There is no connection between the theory and practice of quality-of-life enforcement, on the one hand, and Garner’s death, on the other. It was Garner’s resistance to arrest that triggered the events leading to his death, however disproportionate that outcome, not the policing of illegal cigarette sales. Suspects resist arrest for all sorts of crimes. The only way to prevent the remote possibility of death following an attempted arrest, beyond eliminating the use of choke-holds (if that is indeed what caused Garner’s heart attack), is to make no arrests at all, even for felonies.

The biggest threat facing minority New Yorkers now is not “over-policing,” and certainly not brutal policing. The NYPD has one of the lowest rates of officer shootings and killings in the country; it is recognized internationally for its professionalism and training standards. Deaths such as Eric Garner’s are an aberration, which the department does everything it can to avoid. The biggest threat facing minority New Yorkers today is de-policing. After years of ungrounded criticism from the press and activists, after highly publicized litigation and the passage of ill-considered laws—such as the one making officers financially liable for alleged “racial profiling”—NYPD officers have radically scaled back their discretionary activity. Pedestrian stops have dropped 80 percent citywide and almost 100 percent in some areas. The department is grappling with how to induce officers to use their lawful authority again to stop crime before it happens. Garner’s death was a heartbreaking tragedy, but the unjustified backlash against misdemeanor enforcement is likely to result in more tragedy for New Yorkers.

But Trump responded to the coronavirus with the same belligerent dishonesty that characterized his treatment of Mueller and impeachment. In the critical early days of the pandemic, when it might have been contained, he behaved with characteristic self-obsession, preferring to hound his enemies on Twitter rather than to learn the facts about the virus and protect the American people.

In the eyes of the Church,’ said he, ‘adultery is a crime; in those of your tribunals it is a misdemeanor. Adultery drives to the police court in a carriage instead of standing at the bar to be tried. Napoleon’s Council of State, touched with tenderness towards erring women, was quite inefficient. Ought they not in this case to have harmonized the civil and the religious law, and have sent the guilty wife to a convent, as of old?

Trump had never served in government, or the military. He had no experience with national security or terrorism issues. He had only ever worked for his own family business, where he consorted with the seediest of characters in New York real estate and earned a reputation for sharp practices, and worse. In other words, Comey realized, Trump was boss, stranger, novice, witness, possible security risk, potential subject of criminal investigation, and president-elect of the United States. How was the FBI director supposed to navigate all that?

One of the most effective remedies against urban anarchy over the past two decades is under attack. Proactive policing—also called Broken Windows policing—calls for the enforcement of low-level misdemeanor laws regulating public order. Manhattan Institute fellow George Kelling and Harvard professor James Q. Wilson first articulated the Broken Windows theory in 1982 as a means of quelling public fear of crime and restoring order to fraying communities. William Bratton embraced the thinking in his first tour as commissioner of the New York Police Department in the 1990s, with great benefit to public safety.

It must be noted that Congress also has another power that it has rarely used—impeachment. Many people are under the mistaken impression that impeachment can only be used to remove the president or vice president. But the impeachment power given to Congress in Article II, Section 4 of the Constitution provides Congress the authority to remove “all civil Officers of the United States” for “high Crimes and Misdemeanors.” That means, for example, that Congress has the ability to use impeachment to remove individuals who refuse to provide Congress with the information it needs for oversight, or who, like John Koskinen, President Obama’s head of the IRS, withheld information from Congress concerning the destruction of records that had been subpoenaed for the Lois Lerner investigation. As James Madison said, impeachment was a necessary power to defend the nation against “the incapacity, negligence or perfidy” of officials within the government. Of course, if an administration were truly transparent, none of this would matter. Truth fears no inquiry. Crafty, corrupt politicians realize that transparency and accountably go hand in hand. If the Obama administration truly had nothing to hide, it would not have gone to such extraordinary lengths to keep information on what it was doing and its internal machinations from the public. What is needed is a commitment to transparency that cuts across partisan, political lines.

Officers approached the 43-year-old Garner on July 17 in a high-crime area near the Staten Island Ferry Terminal and accused him of illegally selling untaxed cigarettes—the kind of misdemeanor that Broken Windows policing aims to curb. Garner had already been arrested more than 30 times, mostly for selling loose cigarettes but also for marijuana possession and other offenses. As captured in a cell-phone video, the 350-pound man loudly objected to the charge and broke free when an officer tried to handcuff him. The officer then put his arm around Garner’s neck and pulled him to the ground. Garner repeatedly stated that he couldn’t breathe, and then went eerily stiff and quiet. After a seemingly interminable time on the ground without assistance, Garner was finally put on a stretcher to be taken to an emergency room. He died of cardiac arrest before arriving at the hospital. Garner suffered from severe asthma and diabetes, among other ailments, which contributed to his heart attack.

In Classical mythology, righteous wrath was the province of old women. Three very specific old women, in fact: the Furies (or the Erinyes, in Greek). Fragments of myth featuring the Furies are found in the earliest records of ancient Greek culture. These sisters were much more ancient than any of the Olympian deities, indicating the persistence of an older, female-dominated tradition which endured here and there even when later, more patriarchal, mythologies set in. The role of the Furies was to preside over complaints brought to them by humans about behavior that was thought to be intolerable: from lesser misdemeanors such as the insolence of the young to the aged, of children to parents, of hosts to guests — to crimes that were very much worse. It was their role to punish such crimes by relentlessly hounding their perpetrators. The Greek poet Hesiod names the three sisters as Alecto — “unceasing in anger,” the punisher of moral crimes; Megaera — “jealous one,” the punisher of infidelity, oath-breaking, and theft; and Tisiphone — “avenger of murder.” They were, he said, the daughters of Gaea (the goddess who personified the Earth), who conceived them from the blood of her spouse, Uranus, after he had been castrated by his son, Cronos. They lived in the Underworld, and like other chthonic deities, like seeds that lie buried beneath the Earth, they were also identified with its fertility. The wrath of the Furies manifested itself in a number of ways: a tormenting madness would be inflicted on the perpetrator of a patricide or matricide; murderers usually suffered a dire disease, and nations which harbored such criminals could be stricken with famine and plague. The Furies could only be placated with ritual purification, and the completion of a task specifically assigned by them for atonement. It’s important to understand that although the Furies were feared, they were also respected and perceived to be necessary: they represented justice, and were seen to be defenders of moral and legal order. The Furies were portrayed as the foul-smelling, decidedly haggish possessors of bat-like wings, with black snakes adorning their hair, arms, and waists, and blood dripping from their eyes. And they carried brass-studded scourges in their hands. In my menopausal years, I certainly had days when I could have gone with that look. I’m happy to admit that the existence of seriously not-to-be-messed-with elder women like the Furies in our oldest European mythology gives me great pleasure. And it’s difficult not to see them as the perfect menopausal role models, because sudden upwellings of (mostly righteous) anger are a feature of many women’s experience of menopause

The two impeachment articles charged President Clinton with perjury and obstruction of justice.16 The charges satisfied the “high crimes and misdemeanors” threshold, for it is perfectly reasonable to conclude that a president who corruptly impedes the administration of justice is not fit for office. After all, his responsibilities include ensuring the administration of justice and otherwise faithfully executing the laws. Clinton, moreover, was clearly guilty.

Every time you criticize someone, you condemn yourself. It takes one to know one. Judgmental criticism of others is a well-known way of escaping detection in your own crimes and misdemeanors.

The delegates to the Constitutional Convention were adamant that impeachment not reach to errors of judgment, or what Edmund Randolph described as “a willful mistake of the heart, or an involuntary fault of the head.” On the other hand, betrayals of the constitutional order, dishonesty in the executive’s dealing with Congress, and concealment of dealings with foreign powers that could be injurious to the rights of the people were among the most grievous high crimes and misdemeanors in the Framers’ estimation.

Proving “high crimes and misdemeanors” is necessary to make the case for presidential removal, but it is not sufficient. The politics takes precedence: The public must reach the conclusion that the constitutionally subversive nature of the impeachable offenses renders it intolerable to permit the president to continue in power; and the public must make its representatives understand that failing to act on that conclusion will shorten their cherished Washington careers.

This is likely to bring about an increase in privacy invasion and incidence of cyber crimes and misdemeanors. To be able to effectively

disparity between Louie and Woody is most pronounced. In Woody Allen comedies, the Woody protagonist or surrogate takes it upon himself to tutor the young women in his wayward orbit and furnish their cultural education, telling them which books to read (in Annie Hall’s bookstore scene, Allen’s Alvy wants Annie to occupy her mind with Death and Western Thought and The Denial of Death—“You know, instead of that cat book”), which classic films to imbibe at the revival houses back when Manhattan still had a rich cluster of them. In Crimes and Misdemeanors, it’s a 14-year-old female niece who dresses like a junior-miss version of Annie Hall whom Woody’s Clifford squires to afternoon showings at the finer flea pits, advising her to play deaf for the remaining years of her formal schooling. “Don’t listen to what your teachers tell ya, you know. Don’t pay attention. Just, just see what they look like, and that’s how you’ll know what life is really gonna be like.” A more dubious nugget of avuncular wisdom would be hard to imagine, and it isn’t just the Woody stand-in who does the uncle-daddy-mentor-knows-best bit for the benefit of receptive minds in ripe containers. In Hannah and Her Sisters, Max von Sydow’s dour painter-philosophe Frederick is the Old World “mansplainer” of all time, holding court in a SoHo loft which he shares with his lover, Lee, played by Barbara Hershey, whose sweaters abound with abundance. When Lee groans with enough-already exasperation when Frederick begins droning on about an Auschwitz documentary—“You missed a very dull TV show on Auschwitz.

Despite the fact that a Supreme Court Justice can be impeached for treason, bribery and other high crimes and misdemeanors, apparently being delusional doesn’t make the cut. Maybe the problem is that 58% of Americans also believe in the devil. I guess it’s tough to recognize insanity when you’re living in the asylum. But

At this time, thirty-eight states and the District of Columbia have religious exemptions for civil claims of medical neglect, fifteen states for criminal misdemeanors, and seventeen states for felonious medical neglect.112 To be clear, these exemptions are not benign grants of religious liberty with no victims. They mean that religious parents and caretakers may not be charged with the crimes specified when they withheld readily available medical treatment from their child.

Examples of common misdemeanors include trespassing, petit larceny, prostitution, possession of marijuana, vandalism, disorderly conduct, and speeding. 

In 2010, the FBI reported that the “highest number of arrests were for drug abuse violations,” followed by arrests for driving under the influence and larceny-theft. Even if the analysis is limited to felonies—thus excluding extremely minor crimes and misdemeanors—nonviolent offenses predominate. Only about a quarter of felony defendants in large urban counties were charged with a violent offense in 2006, the most recent year for which prison

Once people understood that wrongful convictions were occurring regularly in homicide and rape cases, a widespread consensus developed that innocent people should not be convicted of serious crimes. Dozens of innocence projects sprang up around the country, while some prosecutors’ offices established conviction integrity units to identify and prevent wrongful convictions. But that consensus does not yet extend to petty offenses. Many individual judges and lawyers already realize that innocent people are routinely pleading guilty to petty crimes, but the system nevertheless proceeds apace. Innocence projects almost never take misdemeanor cases, and there are scarcely any exonerations. All this even though the risks to accuracy are obvious and extreme. We know that innocent people are being convicted. It is an essential and defining aspect of misdemeanor culture that almost no one cares.

Since the coat has absolutely no intrinsic value, Inspector, I must regretfully conclude that the choice lies between an outbreak of gesture politics or the damage being the work of a mind deranged.’ Sloan tried another tack. ‘And which would you think the more likely?’ ‘Malice or madness? I’ve no idea at all, Inspector.

I’m sure trying to blackmail the president of a foreign nation qualifies as high crimes and misdemeanors.

The device itself was not entirely the problem, so much as the fact that it held incontrovertible evidence of the series of bad relationship decisions I’d made over the past few years. It was like carrying around a court transcript of my personal crimes and misdemeanors, proof of a person I didn’t want to be but had been . . . repeatedly.

Trump’s behavior was so wildly and obviously inappropriate—pressuring a foreign leader to help the president’s reelection—that two listeners that very morning went to John Eisenberg, the National Security Council lawyer, to complain.

The story of American policy in Ukraine over the next four months, from May to September 2019, demonstrated this tectonic struggle in action. Trump and Giuliani’s goal in this period was straightforward—to use every lever of government policy to force Ukraine to help Trump win reelection.

Military aid to Ukraine represented a rare point of bipartisan consensus in Trump’s Washington—supported by liberals who disdained Putin’s reactionary authoritarianism and by conservatives who wanted to check, as in Soviet days, Russian expansionism. Trump saw the military aid in a different way—as the most compelling form of leverage to use on Zelensky.

It was notable, in light of subsequent defenses of Trump’s behavior on the call, that he made only two demands of Ukraine: to investigate CrowdStrike and the Bidens. Trump said nothing about the need for Zelensky to fight corruption in Ukraine or to defend his country against Russia. All Trump cared about was extorting this vulnerable nation for his personal electoral advantage.

Trump finally had what he had wanted all along—an attorney general who put Trump’s personal political well-being ahead of the national interest, the traditions of the Justice Department, and the rule of law.

All the president cared about was using Ukraine—this battered, vulnerable, embattled nation—to help him get reelected.

Mueller’s report, if read carefully, establishes that Trump committed several acts of criminal obstruction of justice. The impeachment proceedings against both Nixon and Clinton were rooted in charges of obstruction of justice, and Trump’s offenses were even more extensive and enduring.

Barr neglected to mention that the investigation that was under way when Trump took office took place because the Russian government engaged in a systematic attempt to help Trump win the election, which Trump and his staff encouraged.

For two years, in response to the Mueller probe of foreign involvement in the 2016 election, Trump had made his mantra “no collusion.” And here was his personal attorney heading overseas to collude with Ukraine to help Trump in the 2020 election.

In other words, by early July, Zelensky knew the price for continuation of American military aid to his country: the announcement of a Ukrainian investigation of Trump’s political rivals.

On Monday, July 22, Giuliani, Volker, and Yermak had a three-way call for thirty-eight minutes where Giuliani received assurance from Yermak that Zelensky understood what was expected of him in a phone call with Trump. The investigation of the Bidens—not burden sharing with the West, not corruption in Ukraine, not saving lives from Russian bullets and bombs—was all that mattered.

So?” Weissmann asked the agent when Manafort was gone. “That man is evil,” the agent said.

Yovanovitch’s testimony was an act of tremendous honor and importance.

The SCIF had strict rules against the possession or use of cell phones, and there were cubbyholes for members to place their devices before they entered. But the Republican demonstrators refused to surrender their phones and marched into the hearing room, some of them transmitting photos of the action. This, of course, was a grievous security violation.

He concluded by addressing his father directly: “Dad, my sitting here today in the U.S. Capitol talking to our elected officials is proof that you made the right decision forty years ago to leave the Soviet Union, to come here to the United States of America in search of a better life for our family. Do not worry. I will be fine for telling the truth.

We should entrust to the people the most fundamental decision of a democracy; namely, who should lead their country.” This Republican argument, which was made so often, was political cowardice dressed up as democratic deference. Impeachment existed precisely because the Framers believed that sometimes Congress should not wait for the voters to make a change. To pass the buck to their constituents, as so many Republican senators did, was to shirk their constitutionally mandated duty.

The Mueller Report spelled it out clearly. Trump told Comey to lay off Michael Flynn; when Comey didn’t, Trump fired Comey. Trump tried to undermine Mueller, and then he ordered McGahn to oust the prosecutor; then Trump told McGahn to lie about it. These were illegal acts—in conception and execution. These were crimes, even if Mueller stopped short of saying that they were.

On the other hand, Trump’s abuse of power regarding Ukraine had more grave consequences. He put Ukrainian lives at risk; he rewarded Russian aggression; he jeopardized American national security; he misled our allies; he undermined Congress’s power of the purse; and he lied to everyone about what he was doing and why.

The Framers created impeachment precisely to thwart this kind of conduct, which was, in Hamilton’s words, “the abuse or violation of some public trust.

As for his news conferences about the virus, Trump boasted, as thousands of his fellow citizens were dying, that “the ratings are through the roof according to, of all sources, the Failing New York Times, ‘Monday Night Football, Bachelor Finale’ type numbers.

For Trump, his presidency was more about him than what he could accomplish. For this reason, the only verdict that has ever mattered to Trump is the one rendered on Election Day.

Still, the whistle-blower served Trump’s need for an enemy—a target for his wrath and blame. If Trump had accomplices—people like Nunes who were willing to sanction his lying and bullying—that was so much the better.

The brief devoted little attention to defending Trump’s actual conduct. Nor, really, did Trump’s lawyers deny what he was alleged to have done.

The emails spoke for themselves. They showed that a close adviser to a leading Russian oligarch family offered the help of the Russian government to Trump in the 2016 election. The candidate’s son welcomed that assistance.

The Trump Tower meeting told the Russians a great deal about the Trump campaign, and it told the Mueller investigation a lot, too.

Trump sometimes bantered about Vietnam with radio host Howard Stern. He referred to trying to avoid sexually transmitted diseases on the dating scene as “my personal Vietnam.” “It’s pretty dangerous out there,” he said in 1993. “It’s like Vietnam.

At every turn, Mueller chose public service over private gain; Trump did the opposite.

After that time, he was not in the real estate business as much as the Donald Trump business. He licensed his name to an enormous number of products—including clothing, wine, water, jewelry, steak, vodka, and a university (of sorts)—though none lasted very long or made much or any money for his partners.

Crossfire Hurricane was a counterintelligence operation—to find out what Russia was doing, not to find out what the Trump campaign was doing. In other words, in the summer of 2016, the FBI was investigating Russian efforts to manipulate individuals within the Trump campaign, but not the Trump campaign itself.

Mueller and his team were disciplined, restrained, and orderly; they avoided publicity, and their presentations to the public—especially the Mueller Report, which closed their work—hewed scrupulously to provable facts. Trump was in every way their opposite, and his public statements were medleys of invective and falsehood.

With regard to Ukraine, Giuliani steered Trump to disaster, in probably the greatest failure of lawyering in the history of presidential scandals. In other words, no Giuliani, no impeachment.

Still, for someone who lied as much as Trump did, he was a remarkably transparent figure. He never really pretended to be anything other than what he was—a narcissistic scoundrel. Yet he survived.