By Denny Gulino
THE WHITE HOUSE (MaceNews) – With her words Tuesday, “Politics doesn’t corrupt people, people corrupt politics,” Judge Amy Berman Jackson answered all those cynics who see the process of self government somehow an inherently flawed endeavor, a path to personal perdition, not noble public service.
It’s a sentiment that’s specially timely for the day before the House of Representatives sends its two articles of impeachment to the Senate, where in January all the sideshows will fade into the background as Mitch McConnell relinquishes control of the chamber to the chief justice.
As both sides accuse the other of violating their oaths of office – President Trump in his long angry letter during the day to House Speaker Nancy Pelosi – new oaths will be taken by both Republicans and Democrats – to fairly judge the accused as the televised trial of the decade begins.
If you missed the White House Watch of Nov. 25, and its depiction of the sweeping powers given to the chief justice by the Constitution, suffice to say he’s the man in charge of the butter.
If just four Republicans decide to vote in favor of the process pending the final vote – and there are more than four the White House see as squishy – then there’ll be enough votes to allow Democrats to summons key witnesses. That would boost ratings, no doubt, and perhaps alter history.
The words were uttered by Judge Jackson as she sentenced Rick Gates in U.S. District Court for the District of Columbia. The prosecutors did not ask for jail time in recognition of his cooperation and several of Special Counsel Robert Mueller’s investigators appeared to express their support for Gates by showing up, Yet the judge said that even drug dealers who flip often get jail time. So the sidekick who flipped on his boss, Paul Manafort, got 45 days behind bars. He can serve on weekends.
On the same day it was disclosed Manafort has been hospitalized since Thursday for a heart condition. Manafort received a 43-month sentence from Judge Jackson and another 47 months from another judge as a result of Mueller’s investigation that the president and many supporters dismissed as pointless.
President Trump’s six-page letter to Pelosi – available to anyone with a couple of keystrokes – reprised all his months of tweets on the subject of impeachment and then some. He said he wanted to lay out what he thinks are the reasons he is being unjustly accused for the history books so that, “One hundred years from now, when people look back at this affair, I want them to understand it, so that it can never happen to another president again.”
As he has at almost every real-time encounter with reporters, Trump kept up his attacks on the impeachment process during the day.
“Nobody has done as much as I’ve done in the first three years,” he said as the cameras recorded his meeting with Guatemala President Jimmy Morales, rewarded with a White House appearance for his cooperation in the effort to hold asylum seekers well south of the border. “They know it’s a hoax. It’s a witch hunt.”
The president, amid many tweets and retweets aimed at the impeachment effort during the day, did not neglect his other target, the Federal Reserve.
“Would be sooo great if the Fed would further lower interest rates and quantitative ease,” he wrote. “The Dollar is very strong against other currencies and there is almost no inflation. This is the time to do it. Exports would zoom!”
By one count, Trump has expressed his disagreements with the central bank and urged using monetary policy to weaken the dollar for an advantage in trade more than 70 times since late 2017.