The lawyers for the defense said the Constitution grants the president the “sole and exclusive,” universal, complete, and total power to conduct foreign affairs (as many times as they repeated that claim, as if the more often you say it and the louder, the truer it becomes).
In truth, the only powers given to the chief executive in the Constitution are to make treaties (which requires a supermajority approval in the Senate, or 67 votes) and to appoint ambassadors (which requires majority approval of the Senate). In other words, what minimal power the president has to conduct foreign affairs, the Constitution assigns full and complete oversight by the Senate. Like, you think maybe the Founding Fathers didn’t trust the chief executive?
Otherwise, the Constitution states that all powers not granted specifically in the Constitution are assigned to the states. Not to the President, as his attorneys allege. To the states.
The only other direct reference to foreign affairs in the Constitution gives “Congress the power to regulate commerce with foreign nations.” (Which means Trump’s $250 billion of tariffs against China are unconstitutional because they were not approved by Congress.)
Thus goes the mantra, “ambassadors serve at the favor of the president,” giving Trump the authority to fire them at will. Implicit in the Senate’s authority to approve ambassadors, however, is the requirement that the Senate also must vote their approval to dismiss them. Hence, Trump can’t fire EU ambassador Sondland, as he just did, in clear retaliation for his testimony in the House impeachment investigation.
Of course, the House managers didn’t make this argument because Democrat presidents want that authority. They want the ability to fire all a Republican president’s ambassadors as soon as they take office. Even though, technically, according to the Constitution, presidents can only do that if their party has a majority in the Senate and if all their Senators vote as a block.
And so, the president’s attempt to lessen the severity of Trump’s actions in Ukraine, holding back $400 million in military aid until President Zelensky announced an investigation into Joe and Hunter Biden, is a complete, unadulterated fabrication. They lied, particularly in saying that the Constitution granted the president all authority regarding foreign affairs. Nothing could be further from the truth.
The actual truth is that, according to the Constitution, only Congress could withhold the funds promised to Ukraine. Congress approved them. And so, the President’s only role is to spend the money as Congress ordered him to do. The president’s refusal to do so is one more instance of contempt of Congress. (Or jealousy of Congress, which is writ large over the entirety of the President’s case.)
Implicit in all of this is the notion that American foreign policy has an intricate association with foreign aid. Who’s going to listen to you if there aren’t big dollars behind what you’re saying? Especially since China spends $400 billion a year on foreign aid, almost ten times the $50 billion spent by the US.
You might compare foreign aid’s relationship to foreign policy to the relationship between body language and the totality of what’s communicated. As such, 80% of the content in a conversation is via body language. Likewise, you might say 80% of the import or impact of our foreign policy comes from the cash money behind the words. (Another comparison could be made with campaign funding and a candidate’s success in any given election – especially when the mega-wealthy PACs get involved: the more money backing your campaign, the louder your voice.)
With these criteria in mind, VP Biden’s bid to ensure that the $1 billion in loan guarantees to Ukraine weren’t sidelined by a corrupt prosecutor can’t be shaded as corruption no matter how you pose the circumstances. Quite the contrary: he risked his reputation in order to ensure that the funds were allocated as Congress had mandated. He showed “moral courage” in this, while Trump showed “moral decadence” in trying to use it against him.
You could even portray Trump’s action, in unilaterally halting the $400 million in military aid to Ukraine (which was strongly opposed by the State Department and the Defense Department at the time, and declared a violation of law by the nonpartisan Government Accounting Office on the day the impeachment trial began), as a violation of The Budapest Agreement which was a bona fide treaty between four nations (the US, the UK, Russia, and Ukraine). In so doing, Trump violated a formal Treaty, which is the sole domain of the United States Senate.
By this same token, it was illegal for Trump to withdraw from the Paris Agreement on June 1, 2017 – the international treaty that sets carbon dioxide targets needed to slow down global warming. Congress didn’t fight him then, and they didn’t fight him when he withdrew from the Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action on May 8, 2018, to stop Iran from enriching uranium by imposing sanctions.
What’s to stop the president from pulling the U.S. out of the Montreal Protocol, the international treaty that banned Freon-11 and Freon-12, which damage the ozone layer? Going on these precedents and now reinforced by his actions versus Ukraine which were approved by the impeachment acquittal, Trump would be entirely justified in signing an executive order to stop American’s participation in the Freon Ban, allowing U.S. petrochemical corporations to start manufacturing Freon again.
“The Chinese are doing it (as of numerous media reports since May 2019). That gives them an unfair competitive edge. This here law evens up the ball game.”
President Trump has openly said he wants the U.S. to get out of the Foreign Anti-Corruption Practices Act, which prohibits American companies from using bribes to get business overseas. “Everybody else in the world does it. That puts America at a disadvantage. Let’s Make America Great Again so that our wonderful companies can bribe foreign companies again to grow American jobs.”
Of course, Trump wants to legitimize corruption. That’s how he made his billions (the proof is in his tax returns that he’s depending on a Supreme Court ruling to keep secret for all time – failing there, he’ll use a new retroactive executive privilege, as supported by his Republican sycophants in the Senate), and that’s how he did business with Ukraine.
“Corruption? What’s wrong with that? I like corruption. If they do it, we can do it. We owe that to our great American business machine. We owe it to the American people.”
Would it surprise anybody if Trump said that? You can thank the Republicans when he signs the executive order voiding the Foreign Anti-Corruption Practices Act, then blocks all efforts by Congress and the courts to stop him.
In closing this dialog, please consider one last time the “President as sole executor of foreign policy” position of the counsel for the defense. It has no legal or constitutional base, but his lawyers and constitutional experts supported it in the extreme. I doubt they did so of their own recognizance. It’s clearly a position dictated by Trump himself. That’s how he feels. Can’t you hear him screaming at his legal team to make that statement at every available opportunity? (I can just see the president gloating with an overflowing ego like an obese bullfrog every time they say it during the impeachment trial.)
The only rationale the President could possibly have for making that statement is that he has grandiose delusions and is incapable of rational judgment in the execution of his responsibilities.
His attorneys went along with Trump only because it’s the only way to distract people from the facts of the case, facts which they couldn’t dispute – because Trump gave them no access to any documents. Why? Because he’s totally paranoid. Not in a political sense, either, but in a clinical psychological sense.