The ‘most deadly adversaries of republican government,’ wrote Alexander Hamilton, arise ‘chiefly from the desire in foreign powers to gain an improper ascendant in our councils. How could they better gratify this, than by raising a creature of their own to the chief magistracy of the Union?’ Hamilton’s warning against ‘intrigue, and corruption’, published in 1788, speaks eerily to the Washington of today, where Donald Trump’s enemies imagine he is a Russian ‘agent of influence,’ bought or blackmailed by the Kremlin. The new chief magistrate himself is in full Nixon mode, at war with the media, the intelligence community, the ‘establishment’ and the ‘rigged system’, even as he takes his place behind the desk in the Oval Office for the first time. The scandal — if that’s what it is — has now inevitably been titled ‘Watersportsgate’. Is it conceivable that, like Nixon, Trump might eventually be forced from office?
It seems absurd to ask this question in the week of the new President’s inauguration. Still, the Senate Intelligence Committee has already announced hearings into ‘links between Russia and individuals associated with political campaigns’. The committee’s Republican chairman issued a statement saying the inquiry would be ‘bipartisan’ and would rely on ‘the issuance of subpoenas if necessary to compel testimony… The Committee will follow the intelligence wherever it leads.’ If Trump’s staff or friends did meet with Russian officials to co-ordinate hacking the US presidential election, there is a word for that: treason, the first and most important of the ‘high crimes and misdemeanours’ set out in the constitution as grounds for impeachment. But Trump’s people have denied that any such meetings took place. And even if there were meetings, what was discussed? And if there were any discussions that would trouble a Senate committee, was Trump even aware? What did the President know and when did he know it?
If, if, if — a long chain of ifs. Importantly, there is almost no public discussion in Congress — from either party — of impeaching Trump. One of the very few to talk openly about the possibility was Congresswoman Maxine Walters, a Democrat, as you would expect. She told the cable news channel MSNBC that Trump had ‘wrapped his arms around Putin so tight… I don’t buy it, I don’t think the American people buy it, and he’s not going to get away with it. We’re going to investigate him and find out what is this real connection he’s got.’ She concluded: ‘Let’s find out… whether we’re putting a man in the most important office in the free world who may be held hostage by Putin and Russia.’ I was told by a senior Congressional aide that other House Democrats were keeping quiet until after the inauguration for tactical reasons. They recognised there was no support for hearings among the majority Republicans on the House Judiciary Committee, the place where any move to impeach would have to originate. This is not (yet) 1974.
