Munk Debates – David Frum: Trump committed a crime. And it wasn't victimless

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The following was adapted from remarks recently delivered on a Munk Debates podcast: “Be it resolved, Donald Trump has committed high crimes and misdemeanours.” David Frum argued in support of the resolution.

At the convention in Philadelphia in the summer of 1787, many of the authors of the Constitution were unsure whether to include an impeachment possibility at all. The argument that carried the day was that the United States shared the continent with other states, richer and more powerful: Great Britain, France, Spain. What if one of those richer and more powerful states bribed the president of the United States to get him to derelict his duties, as the French King Louis the 14th had bribed the English King Charles the second in the memory of many of those founders? That argument wobbled the founders and they agreed that merely removing the president at the next interval, the next election, would not suffice if you had a president who was engaged in receiving bribes.

That is the core evil that the impeachment power addressed. Donald Trump has been receiving foreign payments since the day he became president. He has never stopped. What happened in the summer of 2019, however, was different. Instead of merely putting out his hand to receive the bribes, the president extorted a bribe, or attempted to, from the government of Ukraine, a vulnerable democracy invaded by a foreign power. He delayed payment to the country approved by Congress in February of 2019. President Trump himself signed the bill to give money to Ukraine. If he had objections, he had ample opportunity to raise those objections back in February. The president instead signed the bill, allowed the aid to go into the system, but himself surreptitiously stopped it.

The president … allowed the aid to go into the system, but himself surreptitiously stopped it

For the president to refuse to spend money already provided by Congress is itself illegal. Not criminal, but illegal. But for the president to do so for his own selfish purposes in order to extract the benefit from self-person is the essence of what the impeachment power was designed to head off. It all happened in the light of day and indeed the president has boasted of it and repeated it on a television camera on Oct. 3, 2019, where for good measure, he also demanded that China provide him with dirt on a political opponent as well. This is not a matter of a president negotiating with a foreign power on behalf of the United States. The president was looking for a benefit to himself personally. And this was an extortion.

President Trump was able to delay aid to Ukraine until September of 2019 when the scheme became public. At that point, the money began to flow, but in the months the money was delayed, Russia stepped up its violence against Ukraine. This was not a victimless crime. The months in which the aid was delayed, August and September, were two of the bloodiest months in the history of the Ukraine- Russia war.

Exactly how all of this will play out, I can’t predict. But we as individuals, whatever the Senate does, should name wrong is wrong and should acknowledge that extortion for a bribe for the president’s selfish political advantage had real world costs for identifiable human beings.

In the 1990s I endorsed the impeachment of president Clinton for a crime relating to perjury in his private life. But what we are now being asked to believe is that what Donald Trump did by extorting Ukraine and putting lives at risk was less serious than what Bill Clinton did and that I don’t think anybody can reasonably accept.

David Frum is a staff writer at The Atlantic and a frequent guest on television in the United States, United Kingdom, Germany and Canada. From 2001 to 2002 he served as a speechwriter and special assistant to U.S. president George W. Bush. Frum is the author of nine books, most recently New York Times bestseller “Trumpocracy: The Corruption of the American Republic.” His latest book, “Trumpocalypse,” will be published by Harper Collins May 5, 2020.

For more on the Munk Debates podcast visit Munkdebates.com/podcast