RESPECT EXECUTIVE PRIVILEGE AGAIN, MITT
Will Romney respect President Trump’s right to Executive Privilege as did for President Obama in 2012?
On Monday, Mitt Romney listened as President Trump’s counsel Eric Herschmann applied the charge of “abuse of power”, using the very language set out in the First Article of Impeachment, to the conduct of none other than Romney’s opponent in 2012, President Barack Obama.
Using the infamous 2012 exchange between President Obama and President Medvedev of Russia, Herschmann took Romney, his fellow Senators and America back to the 2012 nuclear security summit. There, in the midst of discussions intended to install missile defenses in Poland to protect American soldiers and our allies, Obama entered into a quid pro quo with Medvedev for “space” on missile defense until after Obama’s re-election when he would have “more flexibility”. We had abuse of power in plain sight, Mr. Herschmann argued, yet the impeachment managers were silent.
Ironically, Mitt Romney was also silent in 2012. Obama was running against Mitt Romney. Yet, Romney did not call for Obama’s impeachment. Nor did he demand that Obama waive Executive Privilege and submit his NSC Adviser Susan Rice to questioning to determine Obama’s intent in the clear quid pro quo?
Of course Romney did not lodge such accusations, even though it could easily have changed the course of the election. But Republicans and Mitt Romney understood that foreign policy and the manner by which the President conducts it was a matter that remained the realm of the Office of the President. Romney and Republicans understood that if the manner of foreign policy was inappropriate, as an exasperated Alan Dershowitz pointed out, take the President out at the ballot box.
Neither Romney nor the Republican establishment sought Obama’s impeachment for his abuse of power. Instead, they used the evidence of abuse in the election against Obama. Clearly, Romney didn’t fight the point hard enough just as he ceded the Benghazi fiasco, and so he lost the election.
Nevertheless, by Democrats’ definition, Obama’s conduct was an abuse of power that negatively impacted Romney’s election. It was perpetrated against Romney by Obama and Joe Biden. After Romney lost, Obama paid his debt to Putin. He disallowed missile defense and held the door open for Putin to move into Ukraine in 2015.
Indeed by 2015, House Manager Schiff was reduced to begging Obama to release lethal aide. Both Houses voted by unanimous resolutions for Obama to release lethal aide to protect the Ukranians under siege at the time. By 2016, Obama/Biden stood firm and continued to send only blankets, AMRAPS and Hunter Biden.
Yet, neither the House Managers nor Romney, during his campaign, demanded impeachment proceedings or sought to force the waiver of Executive Privilege regarding Obama’s open mic abuse of power. Romney should not now deny President Trump the Executive Privileges he acknowledged to President Obama back then.
More important Romney should not permit Democrats and Obama Administration officials like Joe Biden to continue to avoid accountability for their abuses of power. Abuses that victimized Romney’s own presidential aspirations.
It would be ironic if Senator Romney punished President Trump for pursuing an end to the type of corruption that sank Romney’s own campaign. The better road for Senator Romney would be to allow what should have happened in 2012…maintain his principled stand on Executive Privilege by acknowledging that President Trump had the right to expose the corruption of Obama/Biden and then allow the voters to decide.
