THENEWYORKER,NOVEMBER25, 2019 21
COMMENT
IMPEACHMENT WHIRLWIND
L
ong before Alexander Hamilton
became an icon of the Broadway
stage, he glimpsed the harrowing qual-
ities of a man like Donald Trump. He
did not like what he saw. As his defini-
tive biographer, Ron Chernow, makes
clear, Hamilton was an advocate of
strong executive power, yet he also en-
visaged the rise of a demagogue who
would put liberty and the rule of law at
risk, and place his own interests before
those of the country. Writing to George
Washington, in 1792, Hamilton seemed
to anticipate our current moment and
the con on the golden escalator:
When a man unprincipled in private life
desperate in his fortune, bold in his temper,
possessed of considerable talents... is seen
to mount the hobby horse of popularity—to
join in the cry of danger to liberty—to take
every opportunity of embarrassing the Gen-
eral Government & bringing it under suspi-
cion—to flatter and fall in with all the non
sense of the zealots of the day—It may justly
be suspected that his object is to throw things
into confusion that he may “ride the storm and
direct the whirlwind.”
Hamilton also paid close attention
to the crimes and misdemeanors that
such a scoundrel might commit, and
how the country could protect itself
from them. He wrote two Federalist es-
says about impeachment, and, as Cher-
now noted recently in the Washington
Post, he would “certainly have endorsed”
the current inquiry in the House. Only
willful resistance to fact can obscure the
reality that Trump, with the help of his
lawyer Rudy Giuliani and various oth-
ers, tried to extort a vulnerable ally in
order to gain an advantage in the 2020
election campaign. The White House
finally released three hundred and ninety-
one million dollars in defense funds to
Ukraine on September 11th—not owing
to a fit of moral reconsideration but, it
would appear, because two days earlier
the House had launched its inquiry into
allegations that Trump had tried to press
Ukraine into investigating a political
opponent. Given the abundance of doc-
umentary evidence, testimony from
high-ranking public officials, and self-in-
criminating public statements by Trump,
Hamilton would have seconded the sen-
timents expressed by Adam Schiff, the
chair of the House Intelligence Com-
mittee, who gavelled open the public
hearings on impeachment on Wednes-
day, saying:
If we find that the President of the United
States abused his power and invited foreign
interference in our elections... must we sim-
ply get over it? Is this what Americans should
now expect from their President? If this is not
impeachable conduct, what is?
ILLUSTRATIONS BY JOÃO FAZENDA
THE TALK OF THE TOWN
The first day of the hearings was no-
table for the sobriety, clarity, and un-
shakable dignity of the witnesses. Wil-
liam B. Taylor, Jr., a decorated Vietnam
War veteran and the top U.S. diplomat
in Ukraine, and Deputy Assistant Sec-
retary of State George Kent, who over-
sees Eastern European and Eurasian
affairs, provided, as they had earlier in
closed hearings, detailed testimony that
the President of the United States
sought to pressure the beleaguered Pres-
ident of Ukraine to sully the reputation
of a Democratic rival, Joe Biden, in ex-
change for a meeting at the Oval Office
and the release of the defense funds.
According to Taylor, Gordon Sond-
land, the U.S. Ambassador to the Eu-
ropean Union, spoke with Trump by
cell phone from a restaurant in Kiev;
the President’s emphasis was sin-
gle-minded. After finishing the call,
Sondland told one of Taylor’s aides that
“Trump cares more about the investi-
gation of Biden” than about the fate of
Ukraine. The date was July 26th––the
day after Trump issued his now infa-
mous demand that the Ukrainian Pres-
ident do him a “favor.”
Taylor and Kent were impassive, for-
mal witnesses, but they were direct about
their sense of dismay. Essential ques-
tions emerged from the stories they
told: How could a President engage in
such brazen self-dealing? How could
he play games with the security needs
of a state that had been invaded by
Russia, first in Crimea and then in the
Donbass? “To withhold that assistance
for no good reason other than help with
a political campaign made no sense,”
Taylor said. “It was counterproductive
