Welcome to our weekly “Trumptastrophe” series that serves to remind us of the destructive policies, decisions, and actions we encountered during the Trump presidency and the threats that he and others in the MAGA movement still pose – and to keep those moments clear in our memory as we fight to defeat Republican extremists during the upcoming elections.
This week’s Trumptastrophe focuses on how former President Trump routinely flouted the law and defied Congress throughout his presidency. And now, with his MAGA Supreme Court issuing a ruling proclaiming actions performed as President as essentially above the law, enables him to veer even more dangerously into uncharted territory if he were to win a second term – underscoring the need to stop him, as it would put our democracy in deep peril.
On October 8, 2019, the Trump White House sent a letter to House Speaker Nancy Pelosi and several Democratic committee chairs calling a congressional impeachment inquiry “an unconstitutional exercise in political theater” and an effort to “overturn the democratic process.” The letter, full of Trumpian bluster, delivered a clear message that the president planned to stonewall the investigation.
“Breathtaking in scope, defiant in tone, the White House’s refusal to cooperate with the House impeachment inquiry amounts to an unabashed challenge to America’s longstanding constitutional order,” wrote the New York Times’ Peter Baker the following day.
While congressional oversight committees had already been conducting investigations of corruption and wrongdoing by the Trump White House, the impeachment inquiry was launched after Trump’s attempt to get a foreign government to help him win an election—not for the first time—and White House moves to cover it up were revealed to Congress by an intelligence community whistleblower.
The impeachment inquiry focused on Trump holding up urgently needed military aid to Ukraine as leverage while he tried to coerce President Volodymyr Zelenskyy into publicly digging up dirt on Trump’s likely campaign rival Joe Biden and his son. The House Intelligence Committee would later summarize Trump’s actions as having “solicited the interference of a foreign government, Ukraine, to benefit his reelection.”
Democratic congressional leaders pushed back hard on the White House obstruction.
“They say: they will not cooperate with an impeachment inquiry unless it’s on their terms. They mean: the president is above the law,” Rep. Adam Schiff tweeted. “The Constitution says otherwise.”
House Speaker Nancy Pelosi released a statement warning that “continued efforts to hide the truth of the president’s abuse of power from the American people will be regarded as further evidence of obstruction” and delivering her own direct message: “Mr. President, you are not above the law. You will be held accountable.”
Trump’s obstruction of Congress is part of a long pattern of behavior that suggests he believes he is above the law. MAGA Republicans continue to enable him, demonstrating that their proclaimed devotion to the rule of law is little more than political posturing.
When the House Judiciary Committee announced its articles of impeachment that December, Trump was charged with abuse of power and obstruction of Congress. The full House voted to impeach Trump on both charges, but Republicans in the Senate rallied around him and refused to convict him.
Trump would be impeached a second time after inciting the Jan. 6 attack on Congress as part of his illegal efforts to stay in power after losing the 2020 election; once again, Senate Republicans blocked the effort to hold him accountable.
Trump’s refusal to cooperate with the congressional inquiry into his actions is a reminder of how dangerous he would be if he returns to power. “I have an Article II, where I have the right to do whatever I want as president,” he told cheering supporters in 2019.
Since then, Trump’s former aides and political allies have made it clear in their Project 2025 manifesto that they will encourage his use of a fringe legal theory to claim virtually dictatorial power over federal agencies, including the power to turn the FBI and Justice Department into weapons of revenge against his political opponents and personal enemies.
To make matters worse, the MAGA Justices on the Supreme Court have made it clear that they’ll have his back. In a stunning ruling this summer, MAGA Justices created a vast theory of presidential immunity, a signal to Trump that he won’t be held accountable no matter how many laws he breaks in his obsessive drive for “retribution” against everyone he believes has wronged him.
Justice Sonia Sotomayor warned that the MAGA majority’s “utterly indefensible” decision has effectively made the president “a king above the law.” Justice Ketanji Brown Jackson said the consequences of the ruling were “a five-alarm fire that threatens to consume democratic self-governance and the normal operations of our Government.”
Justice Sotomayor finished the reading of her dissent by saying, “With fear for our democracy,” I dissent.
Those of us who rightly fear for our democracy if Trump takes power with the authoritarian J.D. Vance at his side must do more than dissent. We must do everything we can to help our friends, family, and fellow Americans understand how much is at stake in this election. Our freedom and our future is at stake. We have less than a month to defend them!
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These are just some of the reasons we need YOU in this fight. So, find your favorite way to unwind after reading through this week’s recap, and then make a plan for how you will fight back this week, this month, this election cycle.
