Statement by Former Congressman Tom Coleman on Impeachment of Donald Trump

December 18, 2019

Statement on Impeachment
By Former GOP Rep. Tom Coleman (Missouri)

As the first former or current Republican member of congress to call for Trump’s impeachment, I am extremely pleased the House fulfilled its constitutional responsibility by impeaching the president. I commend Speaker Pelosi, Intelligence Committee Chairman Adam Schiff, Judiciary Committee Chairman Jerold Nadler and Rules Committee Chairman Jim McGovern for their exceptional leadership on this matter.

In an op-ed in the Kansas City Star submitted on May 3, 2019 and printed twenty days later, I called for impeachment of both Trump and Vice President Pence.

The Mueller Report had stated Trump’s campaign colluded with a Russian intelligence agent by sharing sensitive polling data and strategy with the agent. Trump called for and welcomed the Russian interference. Since both Trump and Pence ran as a team, they were both, in my view, illegitimate officials. That was enough for me.

I noted in my piece that the polls in May reflected a majority of voters did not favor impeachment. I wrote: “But critical times require exceptional leadership. Lawmakers of both parties should not blindly follow the polls but instead follow the evidence and their conscience. Politics should not rule the day. Partisan politics is what got us to this dangerous place — so dangerous, I believe, that the survival of our democracy is at risk.”

I was concerned that failure of the House to impeach and the Senate to convict, would have serious consequences:

“Contemplate the possible behavioral problems of Trump untethered from the law and who is frequently untethered from reality. Would we be surprised if he were to repeatedly brandish his get out of jail card (the DOJ legal memo that exempts sitting presidents from criminal charges) while breaking, at will, democratic norms, presidential precedents and criminal statutes?“

My May op-ed concluded with the following:

“Failure to pursue impeachment is to condone wrongdoing. To condone wrongdoing is to encourage more of it. To encourage wrongdoing is to give up on the rule of law and our democracy. To give up on the rule of law and democracy invites autocracy and eventually dictatorship. History has taught us this outcome. In my lifetime, it has occurred in other places including the Soviet Union and Germany, as well as in Russia and Venezuela today.”

While the Mueller Report laid out hundreds of pages of presidential wrongdoing and criminal behavior, it was the Ukrainian scandal that was the basis for the House’ passage of Articles of Impeachment listing Abuse of Power and Obstruction of Congress as the “high Crimes and Misdemeanors.”

What is different about the Ukrainian scandal? I believe it is something most Americans can understand. They don’t have to rely on a flawed president and his minions to tell them what they should think. In the past, Trump directed his followers not to believe what they see and hear but only believe what he tells them. He is finding this is no longer operative. Truth now is understood with a large dose of common sense and what most Americans have learned at their parents’ knee — right from wrong.

The White House released the transcript of Trump’s call with the President of Ukraine. To me, it described the elements of criminal extortion.

Under federal law, it is ‘extortion’ for a government official acting ‘under color of official right’ to make a request for something that would benefit the official personally. The very making of the request while acting in an official capacity, is itself, the making of a threat to use official power and is extortionate and an abuse of official power. There is no requirement that the target of the threat produce the intended extortionate payoff. There is no need for a quid pro quo.

Today, a majority of the members of the House of Representatives agreed with me that Trump had abused the power of the presidency.

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Tom Coleman is a former Republican Member of Congress from Missouri and has served as an adjunct professor at New York University’s Robert F. Wagner Graduate School of Public Service and at American University.