I’ve had it in my head to do this for a while now but I had been waiting for some momentous event like Mueller fired or Manafort pardoned...instead, I felt like today was the day, no special trigger needed: I visited all three of my Congressmen’s offices to call for the removal of President Donald Trump from office. And so it was that I made a little tour around metro Atlanta and I would implore each and every one of you in the area to do the same thing.
In lieu of giving you a play-by-play, let me give you an idea of how I handled these visits. First, I told myself that no matter how I was treated, I would be calm and respectful and that leaving was my first and best option if anything turned ugly. I went in wearing close-fitting jeans and a short-sleeve button-up shirt tucked in, in part to make it fairly evident that I wasn’t carrying a weapon. I tried as much as I could to keep both of my hands visible and relaxed. I had not made an appointment, so I expected that the offices I visited may have been closed but they weren’t; I figured that an unexpected office call, if nothing else, would put people a little bit on edge and cause them to listen to what I was saying carefully in order to evaluate whether or not I were some sort of threat (which, of course, I wasn’t).
In each case I asked to speak with the Congressman or his representative. I gave my name, said I was a constituent, and explained that I was there specifically to call for President Trump’s removal (the most general result I sought) and that I would support the Congressman in either calling for Trump’s resignation or (in the case of the senators) voting to convict if the House brings impeachment charges or (in the case of the representative, who in this instance is on the House Judiciary Committee) moving to create Articles of Impeachment and bring them to a full vote in the House. If I were challenged as to why I felt this way (I wasn’t, as it happened), I was prepared to say that while my knowledge of the facts wasn’t encyclopedic, I knew that the Trump campaign and transition team sought election help from Russians, accepted help from Russians when such help was offered, and then lied about it to the public, the press, and to Congress. That — plus Michael Cohen’s documentary evidence showing that Trump lied about having business interactions with Russia and got Cohen to agree to lie about how long the Trump Tower Moscow deal was in play — demonstrates that Russia has leverage over Trump that would compromise him, and that a president compromised by a hostile foreign power has no business remaining president. I was prepared to discuss the pro-Kremlin change to the GOP platform regarding the Ukraine (the onlychange the Trump campaign made to the platform — the act that was my own personal “Bronco chase” with respect to this entire sorry chapter), how “Russia, if you’re listening...” was followed by Russian cyber-espionage attacks directed against Democrats within hours, and how when George Papadopolous told Trump he was a Russian agent after Trump had been warned by US intelligence that Russians may try to infiltrate his campaign, Papadopolous wasn’t dragged by his nostrils à lathe Three Stooges to the FBI but was instead made a key architect of Trump’s “Mayflower speech” (his first important foreign policy speech which was made with then-Russian-Ambassador Sergei Kislyak in attendance against all diplomatic norms; background via Seth Abramson can be found here).
I didn’t want to get into the weeds about policy that could come down to matters of debate such as withdrawing from the Paris Agreement but I was prepared to talk about family separation at the border — specifically that 1) it was in fact not a mere continuation of Obama policy which, as I understood it, also performed separation (attracting the objection of immigration watchdogs, I later learned) but only in cases when officials were confident that the parents apprehended at the border were already criminals such as drug dealers; instead, the Trump administration moved the goalposts to make entry itself the separation-justifying crime 2) separation as newly justified was done for the expressly stated purpose (stated by then-DHS-Secretary Kirstjen Nielsen and also then-Attorney-General Jeff Sessions) of deterrence...deterrence in the form of psychological trauma that could reasonably be expected to scar children for life 3) the policy is a clear and indisputable affront to Christian values, particularly any Christian sense of mercy 4) the policy would — rightly — be considered by some other nations and international agencies as a “crime against humanity.”
I was prepared to talk about a clear pattern of behavior, as laid out in public statements and in the Mueller report, that a reasonable person could conclude constituted obstruction of justice and witness tampering on the part of the President with respect to investigations into his conduct regarding Russia and that the pattern of behavior demonstrated a consciousness of guilt which extended past Trump himself but also to people working closest to Trump who lied to investigators, to Congress, and/or to the public about relationships and matters involving Russians including associates of Vladmir Putin himself (some have been indicted and convicted of making false statements; some pleaded guilty to having done so).
Both our senators here in Georgia are Republicans; I expected some degree of pushback or argument but received none. A gentleman in David Perdue’s office sat with me in a conference room and took notes; Johnny Isakson’s office was less formal and accommodating and so I wound up giving my spiel to one of the ladies occupying the reception desk. Democratic Rep. Hank Johnson’s office was more accommodating as one might expect; an aide there welcomed me into her office and even put a DC-located aide of Johnson’s on speakerphone with us and offered to follow up with me at a later date.
I heartily, strongly, and forcefully recommend that all of you who are able to make these office visits during regular business hours do so. Every time a call to DC is made or a note is taken, it gives Congresspeople — Republican and Democrat — the political cover they need to make any movement at all toward Trump’s removal. I stressed to Rep. Johnson’s aide that I expect that resistance to speaking out about or taking action toward the removal of Trump may be found in the Democratic congressional leadership but that it is imperative to push back against that resistance simply because we are in a state of emergency now. I said that I want to see subpoenas flying hours, not days, after a committee finds circumstances that warrant them and that defying subpoenas should be met with contempt charges, arrest, and jail.
Sen. Purdue’s office is in a Buckhead office building near Lenox Square Mall; the address is:
3280 Peachtree Road NE Suite 2640 Atlanta, GA 30305
Expect to pay a minimum of $6.00 if you park in the building’s garage; Lenox is the nearest MARTA station. You cannot get to the 26th floor on your own via the elevator; you need to go to the security desk, tell them you are a constituent of Sen. Purdue’s and that you would like to go to his office. Expect them to call upstairs for clearance and one of them will walk you to the elevator and badge you up.
Sen. Isakson’s office is near Marietta in Cobb county; its address is:
3625 Cumberland Blvd SE Suite 970 Atlanta, GA 30339
Visitor parking in that building’s garage was free. Access to the office was not restricted but make sure you take the correct elevator for the range that includes the 9th floor.
Both of Georgia’s US senators may have offices in other parts of Georgia if you’re not located in lesser metro Atlanta. You can readily identify your US House representative and locate his or her office here. Take special note of whether or not your Congressperson is on the House Judiciary Committee for it is there that, by convention, Articles of Impeachment originate. If your Congressperson isn’t on the House Judiciary Committee, understand that he or she won’t have any actual involvement in the impeachment process unless and until the Articles come up for a vote in the full House.
Something to keep in mind if your call to remove Trump from office meets resistance is that impeachment does not work according to criminal standards of evidence; a mere preponderance of the evidence— think in terms of at least a 50.1% chance, if you will — is sufficient simply because the stakes are extremely high. The Mueller report begged off on bringing certain charges against certain individuals including Trump because either 1) since Justice Department guidelines kept the Special Counsel’s grand jury from indicting a sitting president, Mueller didn’t pursue doing so or 2) various individuals lied, asserted their 5th Amendment privilege against self-incrimination, destroyed evidence, etc. The Mueller report specifically stated that it did not find Trump innocent.
I would recommend to you that as a way of closing your appeal to whomever you speak to, you find some personal offense you take to Trump’s conduct as president. What I told all three of the representatives I spoke with was that ever since I was a little boy, I would read or see documentaries about the Soviet Union, North Korea, North Vietnam, “Red” China, Nazi Germany, and the like and I always felt that I would never have to live under anyone’s boot because I was an American and that meant that we were all protected from anything like that ever coming to pass...but I’m not so sure anymore; it seemed like a boot was coming. I didn’t know if the boot coming would be American or perhaps it would be Russian, but I felt like right now at this moment there is still time to stop it and I hoped that the Congressman would be among the people who helped stop it.
Best of luck to you with your own visits; they can’t ignore us all.