CMR’s failure to see

Rep. Cathy McMorris-Rodgers “doesn’t yet see anything that would be impeachable” in Donald Trump’s conduct in the Ukraine scandal (“McMorris Rodgers defends Trump,” Nov. 24). Let me see if I can frame the facts to help her more clearly see the situation.

For almost two months Trump held up payment of $400 million in badly needed military assistance appropriated by Congress to an ally who is being attacked and occupied by our adversary Russia. This was done without notifying Congress, in violation of the Impoundment Control Act of 1974.

In return, Trump demanded that the president of Ukraine announce an investigation of Joe Biden’s son and a cockamamie theory that it was not Russia that interfered in the 2016 election, but Ukraine. The theory that Ukraine interfered in 2016 is one that was cooked up in the Kremlin, and is unanimously contradicted by our own intelligence services.

The purpose of demanding the investigation was to aid Trump’s reelection campaign. It thus constituted a demand for a thing of personal value to Trump in return for an official act, and constitutes a bribe under the constitution and laws of the United States.

It would seem that CMR’s failure to see Trump’s wrongdoing stems less from an inability to understand the situation than from a fear of offending the Trump base and being primaried in the next election by a Trump loyalist. As Upton Sinclair once said, “It is difficult to get a man to understand something, when his salary depends on his not understanding it.”

Donald D. Lamp

Spokane