PERSPECTIVE FROM THE 19^TH HOLE:  This is the title I chose for my personal blog, which is meant to give me an outlet for one of my favorite crafts – writing – plus to use an image from my favorite sport, golf.  Out of college, my first job was as a reporter for the Daily Astorian in Astoria, Oregon, and I went on from there to practice writing in all of my professional positions, including as press secretary in Washington, D.C. for a Democrat Congressman from Oregon (Les AuCoin), as an Oregon state government manager in Salem and Portland, as press secretary for Oregon’s last Republican governor (Vic Atiyeh), and as a private sector lobbyist.  This blog also allows me to link another favorite pastime – politics and the art of developing public policy – to what I write.  I could have called this blog “Middle Ground,” for that is what I long for in both politics and golf.  The middle ground is often where the best public policy decisions lie.  And it is where you want to be on a golf course.

If you follow politics and know that my air travel occurred between 8:30 and 10:30 a.m. yesterday, then you would realize that Donald Trump stooped to a new low during that time period.

He placed a call to the Georgia Secretary of State, a Republican, and, incredibly, cajoled him “to find about 12,000 votes” to overturn the presidential election in that state and, thus, declare Trump the winner.

As I got off the plane yesterday, I called one of my friends and, with a huge note of disdain in his voice, he alerted me to what happened.

Since Joe Biden’s victory in the election, I have wondered how low Trump would go to avoid the stamp of loser.  Well, he went lower than ever yesterday, committing violations of law that could follow him for months.  Who knows what he’ll do in his last 15 days in office?

Is it possible to go to sleep and wake up after 15 days with America still intact from Trump’s tirades?

One thing that has amazed me is how much Trump does to stay in an office — the presidency – when he eschews so many of the normal functions of the office, preferring instead to watch right-wing “news” programs, then fire off offensive tweets.

To understand the gravity of Trump’s efforts to overturn the Georgia election, I turned to the Washington Post this morning.  One article was by Dan Balz, one of country’s best political reporters who surveyed the damage done by Trump and his sycophants.  The second article was by Jennifer Rubin in an opinion piece that displayed how Trump violated the law by his latest actions.

Both appear below.

From Dan Balz in the Washington Post

There are but 16 days left in President Trump’s term, but there is no doubt that he will use all of his remaining time in office to inflict as much damage as he can on democracy — with members of a now-divided Republican Party acting as enablers.

That there are no limits to the lengths to which he will go in this ruinous effort was made clear from a phone call he made Saturday to Georgia Secretary of State Brad Raffensperger.  In the call, Trump repeatedly urged Raffensperger to “find” enough votes to allow the secretary to recalculate the election results to show that the president, rather than President-elect Joe Biden, won the state.

Trump will never let this go, not between now and the day he is forced to give up the office and Biden is sworn in, not in the days and weeks and months after that.  That he is on a mission is evident, but to what end, other than to avoid the ignominious label of “loser” after a single term in the White House?  That, at least, is consistent with the behavior he has exhibited throughout the four years of his presidency.  He cares nothing about collateral damage to democracy.

The president, however, is not on this mission alone.  Instead, he continues to gather support from members of a party he has remade in his own image.  On Wednesday, members of the House and the Senate will meet to approve the results from the electoral college.  

From Jennifer Rubin on the Post

…pressuring a campaign official to change the vote tally is a federal offense, as former Justice Department inspector general Michael Bromwich tweeted Sunday, citing Title 52 U.S. Section 20511. That law states:   “A person, including an election official, who in any election for Federal office … knowingly and willfully deprives, defrauds, or attempts to deprive or defraud the residents of a State of a fair and impartially conducted election process, by … the procurement, casting, or tabulation of ballots that are known by the person to be materially false, fictitious, or fraudulent under the laws of the State in which the election is held” is subject to imprisonment of up to five years.

Threatening Raffensperger with criminal consequences is also arguably extortion. Title 18 Section 875 of the U.S. Code reads: “Whoever, with intent to extort from any person, firm, association, or corporation, any money or other thing of value, transmits in interstate or foreign commerce any communication containing any threat to injure the property or reputation of the addressee or of another or the reputation of a deceased person or any threat to accuse the addressee or any other person of a crime, shall be fined under this title or imprisoned not more than two years, or both.”

Alternatively, the state attorney general of Georgia might investigate and bring applicable charges under state law. That would have one clear advantage: Trump cannot receive a federal pardon for state crimes.

**********

So, there it is:  Trump committed another violation of law yesterday.  One only can hope that his illegal conduct will catch up to him after he leaves office, with no ability to pardon himself prospectively if a state violation is in view. 

We’ll see if hope can survive the next 15 days.