For two years the Republican Congress has defended and enabled the lies and crimes of Donald Trump. They have slow-walked and even obstructed investigations by the House and the Senate. They have leaked classified information regarding those investigations to Trump. They harassed and denigrated the FBI for investigating legitimate leads into Trump’s misbehaviors. Top FBI officials were eventually fired by Trump in clear actions of obstruction of justice and Republicans looked the other way. Some even cheered.
While the scandals and criminal behavior of Trump’s top aides, Cabinet members and personal lawyer have dominated the headlines over the last two years, the only flimsy excuse the Republicans had left for defending Trump was that he had not been directly implicated or charged in any crimes.
Well, that all ended this past week. Through a plea agreement with Trump’s personal lawyer Michael Cohen and a related grant of immunity to National Enquirer President and Trump’s friend, David Pecker as well as Trump Organization long-time CFO, Allen Wiesselberg, Donald Trump has now been directly connected to several felonies. Two involve campaign-finance law violations for the payment of over $250,000 in secret hush-money to Stormy Daniels and Karen McDougal to buy their silence for past sexual affairs. A third felony involves conspiracy to hide these payments by Trump, Pecker (below right with Cohen) and Weisselberg (below left).
Donald Trump is now clearly and directly complicit in three serious felonies — not some bullshit charges like lying about a blowjob or a “Lock Her Up” sentence for using a private email server. No, this involves over $280,000 of hush money, paid by Trump, through Cohen, two weeks prior to the election to suppress damning evidence that Trump cheated on Melania on many occasions with multiple women. It was a deliberate attempt to fraud and deceive American voters.
By Republican impeachment standards (i.e. the Lewinsky affair), Trump’s crimes should be a slam-dunk. These charges are more than sufficient to bring about impeachment proceedings. Unfortunately, while Republican legislators are clearly more nervous today about Trump’s illegalities, I hear not one of them talking about impeachment.
But 1.5 years into the formal investigation of Trump’s misdeeds, we are entering an entirely new phase in which his complicity has not only been firmly established, but is going explode onto the headlines as the investigations and indictments start to pile up. A recent news article from Wired online media reporter, Garrett Graff, listed 17 ongoing investigations into Donald Trump and his organizations (https://www.wired.com/story/mueller-investigation-trump-russia-complete-guide/).
Furthermore, the Mueller Investigation is picking up steam now that the Mid-Term elections are behind us. And finally, on Jan. 3, the Democrats took over as the majority party in the House of Representatives. This means that Congressional committee chairmanships will switch over to Democrats giving them full investigative power, including the use of subpoenas. 
No longer will the scum-bag Devin Nunes (R-CA) (right) be able to obstruct justice and leak Intelligence Committee findings to the Trump White House.
Democrats are preparing an entire array of investigations including the demand for Donald Trump’s tax returns. Buckle your seatbelt, put in your mouth-guard and strap on a helmet – things are about to get very jiggy.
The real dilemma that Republicans face in 2019 will be, how long can they continue to look the other way, continue their pathetic defense of this President, enable his criminal and mentally deranged behavior in the face of the tidal wave of charges, allegations, indictments, corruptions and scandals that are to soon come?
In 2020 all members of the House are up for reelection and in the Senate, there will be 21 Republican seats up for grabs and only 12 Democratic seats. The Senate map (below) still looks tough for Democrats to gain seats because a majority of those Republican seats are in solidly red states. However, based on the 2018 election results, it is even more important that Republicans make all the right moves over the next two years or another Blue Wave could flip the Senate.
The 2020 Senate Election Map
2019 is going to be the pivotal year of the Trump Presidency. My prediction is that there is going to be literal avalanche of bad news for Don the Destroyer. His entire criminal past is about to be revealed in the press and more importantly in the courts. Republicans up for re-election are going to have to make a tough call.
What will Republican legislators do if (and, in my opinion, when), the Mueller investigation determines that Donald Trump and the Trump campaign conspired with Russia and Wikileaks to undermine the 2016 elections in his favor? What will they do if Trump is indicted? Or when it is revealed that the Trump Organization is a criminal enterprise built on foreign laundered money? That he evaded taxes? What will they do when Trump uses his pardon power to commit obstruction of justice or witness tampering? What if he instructs his new Attorney General to fire Mueller? What about indictments of Jared Kushner, Don Jr., Ivanka and Eric for anything from conspiracy against the U.S., election fraud, money laundering, tax evasion or illegal use of funds from the Trump Foundation?
The Trump Crime Family
Republican legislators are only going to be left with two bad choices. 1) Continue to ignore, deny, obstruct and fail to uphold their constitutional duties and oath of office or 2) Do the right thing, despite the political costs, which is to stand up and hold this President fully accountable, impeach and remove him from office.
Congressional Oath of Office
If they stick with Option #1 and play to the Trump base, some of them might survive through the next election. They will be putting their political fortunes above the good of the country (in-other-words, business as usual), and calculate that in the reddest of red states, it just might work out, for now. But they will have to live the rest of their lives knowing that they sold their soul and the soul of this country to support the most criminal, corrupt, unfit man ever to be called President of the United States. In the end, there will be a price for their treachery.
Some Republicans who chose this course will either resign before 2020 or will be defeated. No sane American voter should vote for someone who has such little regard for their oath of office or so little hesitation to betray the Constitution of the United States.
Either way, and at the very least, history will judge these legislators contemptuously.
Or they can opt for #2. At some point in the next year, the evidence of criminal actions by our Liar-In-Chief is going to be so overwhelming that even the reddest of Republican legislators from the reddest of states are going to have difficulty ignoring the political suicide that is awaiting them. All we will need are 19 of 53 Republican Senators to remove Trump from office. It seems like an insurmountable obstacle, but just wait, the pressure on these Senators is going to be enormous. Do they ignore the rule of law and allow a life-long criminal and liar to remain as President of the United States? Do they send a message to all and future Americans that a Republican President, facing a multitude of very serious felony charges, is above the law and should remain in office; but a Democrat President (B. Clinton), who lied only about a consensual extra-marital sex act, should, in their opinion, be removed?
It will be the ultimate Republican dilemma. A trap that they have created and dug deeper by their own blind partisanship, selfishness and greed for political power and relevance. I for one will enjoy watching them squirm and writhe under the weight of this dilemma: ignore the law, the will of the majority of people and continue to enable a President’s felonious behavior or do the right thing and rid our country of this cancer?
In normal times, this should be an easy decision, even for Republicans. But then again, we are not in normal times and may we never consider times like this to be “normal”. We know the Republican Party has lost all credibility, all concern about the welfare of the country and all respect for constitutional law. The remaining question is: How far will they let this go before it becomes abhorrent, even to them?
If similar charges had been brought against Presidents Barack Obama or Hillary Clinton, Republicans in Congress would have already removed them from office. Hell, they would have started impeachment the moment Clinton lied about the weather at her Inauguration. Just saying……..
La Resistance American 