Crowd braves cold to call for Trump impeachment
Trump ‘has no defense,’ says Renato Mariotti. ‘It’s clear what he did.’
More than 2,000 people rallied in Chicago’s Federal Plaza calling for impeachment. (One Illinois/Ted Cox)
By Ted Cox
CHICAGO — A crowd estimated at more than 2,000 people braved subfreezing temperatures to rally in Chicago’s Federal Plaza Tuesday evening to call from the impeachment of President Trump.
“There’s no question of what happened here. There’s no factual debate,” said former federal prosecutor and CNN legal analyst Renato Mariotti as he addressed the throng. “The president of the United States has no defense. There’s no legal argument to be made here. It’s clear what he did.
“It goes beyond any sort of crime that you could ordinarily imagine,” he said, calling it “far worse” than a run-of-the-mill bribery case that would remove a Chicago alderman from office.
“He abused his power. He took our tax dollars and used our tax dollars to try to bully a foreign government into interfering in this election, into investigating his political opponent,” Joe Biden, the former vice president who is now running for the Democratic presidential nomination in 2020. “You don’t need to be a lawyer to know that’s wrong.
“It’s common sense that this is an abuse of power and that’s corrupt, and that is exactly why the Framers created the impeachment power and put it in the Constitution.”
Trump admitted in a released synopsis of a telephone conversation with Ukraine President Volodymyr Zelensky in July that, while withholding U.S. military aid from the country in its undeclared war with Russia, he asked Zelensky to “do us a favor, though,” when asked about the delivery of U.S. antitank missiles. Trump went on to ask about Ukraine opening an investigation into Joe Biden and his son Hunter.
Tuesday’s rally in Chicago was part of a nationwide night of protest on the eve of what’s expected to be a vote in the U.S. House of Representatives Wednesday to formally impeach Trump — that is, accuse him of abuse of power and obstruction of a congressional investigation into that abuse — and send the case on to the U.S. Senate for a trial that could potentially remove Trump from office. Darcey Regan, executive director of Indivisible Chicago, lead organizer of the rally, said the national protest involved 200,000 people at 500 rallies across the country.
Trump also has refused to allow top staffers to testify before Congress. “He is abusing that power for his own ends,” Mariotti said. “This is about him saying, ‘I am above the law,’ that the impeachment which is written into the Constitution is unconstitutional. The law and the Constitution does not apply to him.”
“This is about him saying, ‘I am above the law,’ that the impeachment which is written into the Constitution is unconstitutional. The law and the Constitution does not apply to him.”
Legal expert Renato Mariotti on President Trump (One Illinois/Ted Cox)
Mariotti acknowledged that Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell, a Kentucky Republican, has already declared he will not vote for impeachment and has said he’s working in unison with the White House to quash the Senate trial as soon as possible. “They don’t even care about what the facts say, that they’ve already made up their minds,” in spite of language in the U.S. Constitution that demands senators be impartial to open an impeachment trial. “That is what they will be remembered, for” Mariotti added.
Most Republican congressional opposition to impeachment has concerned the process and not the facts of the abuses Trump is charged with.
“You’re out here in the cold because in this historical moment this is where you stand,” Mariotti said. “You stand for the Constitution. You stand for the principal that no one is above the law. That’s why we’re all here.
“We have to do what we can to make sure the president is held accountable in the next election.”
Regan made the same point in saying that Indivisible Chicago was already working to rally voters to knock on doors in Illinois, Michigan, and Wisconsin in next year’s election. The group, she said, would also make passage of Gov. Pritzker’s “fair tax” a top priority.
If the Senate fails to remove Trump from office, Indivisible Chicago will work to rally voters in next year’s election, along with co-sponsors of Tuesday’s protest Blue Beginning. Other sponsors included Chicago Women Take Action, Chicago NOW, Friends Who March, Schools Say Enough, Indivisible Western Front, Ottawa Indivisible, Greenly LaSalle Indivisible, Indivisible Western Springs, Indivisible IL, Indivisible Oak Park, and Illinois Handmaids.
Cook County Commissioner Brandon Johnson of Chicago said, “It’s not just about impeaching Trump. It’s about changing the trajectory of the political establishment in this country.
“The encouraging news tonight is that we’re not just standing here in solidarity,” he added. “We are standing with the hope and the belief that this country will live up to its promise to make sure that justice marches on, that makes sure that it flows like a river that never ends.”
The crowd chanted, “No one’s above the law,” before the rally started, then, “Impeachment now,” at the end while the musical group Connie Wilson and the Fantasy Band performed a short set of songs. The protest broke up after about an hour, although groups of the crowd moved on in a march to the Trump International Hotel and Tower blocks away on the Chicago River.