January 19, 2020

“Not a Crime”: Republican Senators Try Out Their Impeachment Defenses

“People do things. Things happen.”

Supreme Court Chief Justice John Roberts swears in senators for President Trump's impeachment trial.Senate Television/AP

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President Donald Trump’s senatorial allies-slash-jurors hit the Sunday news shows to try out their best defenses of him ahead of his impeachment trial, which begins on Tuesday.

On ABC’s This Week, Sen. Richard Shelby (R-Ala.) disputed the fact that the president has encouraged foreign  interference in US elections. “Do you think it was proper to solicit foreign interference in our election?” George Stephanopoulos asked Shelby. “I don’t know if that’s actually been proven. That’s in dispute,” Shelby said. 

When Stephanopoulos pointed out that Trump has publicly called for foreign election interference, Shelby argued that those statements were only “political.” “They make them all the time…People make them. People do things. Things happen.”

Meanwhile, Sen. John Cornyn (R-Texas), denied the findings of a watchdog report from the Government Accountability Office, which found that the Trump administration had violated the law by withholding aid to Ukraine. The president’s actions were “certainly not a crime,” he asserted on CBS’s Face the Nation.

Over on NBC’s Meet the Press, Sen. David Perdue (R-Ga.) argued that testimony from Lev Parnas, an indicted associate of presidential lawyer Rudy Guiliani, should not be permitted in the Senate because it is “second-hand information.” “This is a distraction,” Perdue said.

“How is it second hand? He was in Ukraine,” Chuck Todd said. “He was doing the bidding.”

Perdue then seemed to imply that Parnas, in fact, had no reliable evidence and was only acting to “have his sentence reduced.”

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WHO DOESN’T LOVE A POSITIVE STORY—OR TWO?

“Great journalism really does make a difference in this world: it can even save kids.”

That’s what a civil rights lawyer wrote to Julia Lurie, the day after her major investigation into a psychiatric hospital chain that uses foster children as “cash cows” published, letting her know he was using her findings that same day in a hearing to keep a child out of one of the facilities we investigated.

That’s awesome. As is the fact that Julia, who spent a full year reporting this challenging story, promptly heard from a Senate committee that will use her work in their own investigation of Universal Health Services. There’s no doubt her revelations will continue to have a big impact in the months and years to come.

Like another story about Mother Jones’ real-world impact.

This one, a multiyear investigation, published in 2021, exposed conditions in sugar work camps in the Dominican Republic owned by Central Romana—the conglomerate behind brands like C&H and Domino, whose product ends up in our Hershey bars and other sweets. A year ago, the Biden administration banned sugar imports from Central Romana. And just recently, we learned of a previously undisclosed investigation from the Department of Homeland Security, looking into working conditions at Central Romana. How big of a deal is this?

“This could be the first time a corporation would be held criminally liable for forced labor in their own supply chains,” according to a retired special agent we talked to.

Wow.

And it is only because Mother Jones is funded primarily by donations from readers that we can mount ambitious, yearlong—or more—investigations like these two stories that are making waves.

About that: It’s unfathomably hard in the news business right now, and we came up about $28,000 short during our recent fall fundraising campaign. We simply have to make that up soon to avoid falling further behind than can be made up for, or needing to somehow trim $1 million from our budget, like happened last year.

If you can, please support the reporting you get from Mother Jones—that exists to make a difference, not a profit—with a donation of any amount today. We need more donations than normal to come in from this specific blurb to help close our funding gap before it gets any bigger.

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