Editor’s note: This represents the opinion of The Denver Post editorial board, which is separate from the paper’s news operation.
It is with a solemn sense of responsibility to the U.S. Constitution and a deep love of this country that we call for Congress to exercise its power of impeachment.
The Denver Post editorial board does not take this position lightly.
President Donald Trump was elected to serve this nation in a legitimate election, and to recommend that the Senate remove him from office is a severe and consequential undertaking that has only occurred two other times in U.S. history.
But we have determined — based on hours of sworn testimony, text messages, emails and the president’s own words — that Trump has so abused the power of his office that for him to remain in the White House is a threat to our democracy.
All Americans, regardless of their political affiliation, should be deeply troubled by Trump’s actions. Standing up now as a nation and declaring that this U.S. president and future presidents cannot behave with such blatant disregard for honesty and integrity is essential. We cannot tolerate this behavior.
We urge all seven members of Colorado’s congressional delegation to support the two articles of impeachment that have been approved by the House Judiciary Committee: First, that he abused the high powers of his office to solicit “the interference of a foreign government, Ukraine, in the 2020 United States Presidential election.” Second, that he obstructed Congress by directing “the unprecedented, categorical, and indiscriminate defiance of subpoenas issued by the House of Representatives pursuant to its sole power of impeachment.”
Over the course of several months beginning in late April, Trump attempted to force Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky to announce an investigation into former Vice President Joe Biden, who is one of Trump’s possible political rivals for 2020.
It’s possible that other presidents have wielded foreign policy for domestic political gains with such disregard for election integrity and the rule of law, but never have Americans been presented with such clear evidence of it.
Compromising his own stated foreign policy objectives, the interests of a close U.S. ally and our democratic process, Trump demanded that Zelensky announce an investigation into Biden’s actions and a debunked conspiracy that it was Ukraine and not Russia that interfered in the 2016 election.
This was an orchestrated and multi-pronged effort that makes us deeply uncomfortable. No number of assurances from Zelensky that he did not feel pressure can outweigh what we have learned from a whistle-blower’s accusations that a House investigation has verified and expounded upon.
A timeline of events, constructed by this board using original reporting from the hearings and a timeline created by The Washington Post, is damning. To the extent that questions remain unanswered, it is because Trump has barred key witnesses from testifying. This wasn’t one phone call or one official gone rogue.
It began with the late-April ouster of U.S. Ambassador to Ukraine Marie Yovanovitch. Rudy Giuliani, Trump’s private attorney, was working the back channels while European Union Ambassador Gordon Sondland and Kurt Volker, former special envoy to Ukraine, applied pressure directly from the U.S. government. The White House placed a freeze on congressionally appropriated aid to Ukraine as early as July 3 over the objections of employees in the Office of Management and Budget, two of whom resigned at least in part because of the aid. A Trump appointee took over the approval process to personally place the aid on hold.
Ukrainians likely knew the White House was withholding aid as officials were demanding the investigations, and we believe it has been proved that the quid pro quo was expressed to Ukraine. On July 9, Vice President Mike Pence is told that the aid is on hold to prepare him for a meeting with Ukrainian officials. On July 25 — the same day Zelensky and Trump talk on the phone — State Department officials receive an email from the Ukrainian Embassy expressing concern about the hold on security assistance. And after the phone call, days and days of explicit requests for an investigation into Biden and the 2016 election are relayed to Ukrainians.
On Sept. 1, in a meeting in Warsaw, Sondland said he pulled a Ukrainian aide aside. Sondland told Congress he said “that I believed that the resumption of U.S. aid would likely not occur until Ukraine took some kind of action on the public statement that we had been discussing for many weeks.” (It must be noted the Ukrainian official, Andriy Yermak, says this did not happen. However, a White House aide confirmed that he saw Yermak and Sondland talking and then Sondland told him the conversation was about opening the Burisma investigation.) Aid was released on Sept. 11 and Trump denied the quid pro quo to Sondland, but this is after the White House became aware of the whistle-blower complaint and a separate House investigation.
Trump’s actions, if they go unpunished, will pave the way for foreign prosecution powers to become proxy tools of aggrieved presidents seeking to secure a political victory at any cost. “This is precisely the thing that the founders feared — foreign interference in our elections. (George) Washington was strong about it in his farewell address,” Rep. Ed Perlmutter, D-Arvada, told The Post editorial board last week as we considered an editorial on impeachment. “I hesitated and I’ve been reluctant … but this goes to the heart of freedom, and independence, and fair elections.”
Indeed, President George Washington, upon retiring after two terms for the good of the fledgling nation, warned that “foreign influence is one of the most baneful foes of republican government.”
Despite Trump’s assurances that he was only interested in stopping corruption in Ukraine, that is not what the record supports. Trump and his staff were clear they wanted two things mentioned in a planned press conference: Biden and the 2016 election interference. Trump asked Zelensky directly on July 25, according to a not-verbatim transcript of the call, to look into “talk about Biden’s son, that Biden stopped the prosecution, and a lot of people want to find out about that so whatever you can do with the Attorney General would be great. Biden went around bragging that he stopped the prosecution so if you can look into it … It sounds horrible to me.”
We cannot imagine that our founders would shrug their shoulders at such a request made with the full force of the president’s official powers.
Nor can we imagine they would look kindly upon Trump thumbing his nose at Article 1 Section 2 of the Constitution, which gives the House the sole power to impeach. Trump ordered officials not to participate in the inquiry and subsequently, a host of individuals, most serving at his pleasure, refused to comply with congressional subpoenas.
We find Trump is in clear contempt of Congress, although we wish Democrats would have taken the time necessary to have the courts adjudicate the issue and determine with complete certainty that Trump’s order was unlawful.
We hope the House will send these grave charges to the Senate and that Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell will ensure there is a full and impartial trial to determine if Trump should still be trusted with the powers of the presidency.
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