The impeachable offense that doesn't have to be a crime

Good article in Vox, if somewhat over-skeptical, about the Steele Dossier. It acknowledges the dossier was proven correct, in advance of general knowledge, about the extent of contact between Russia and the Trump campaign. It then says the dossier focused on six claims, none proven as of yet.

This is the key one:

4) Trump’s team knew and approved of Russian plans to deliver emails to WikiLeaks, and offered them policy concessions in exchange.

The dossier claims that Trump and his campaign team had “full knowledge and support” of Russia’s leak of the DNC emails to WikiLeaks, and that in return, Trump’s team “had agreed to sideline Russian intervention in Ukraine as a campaign issue.”

This is obviously a subject of ongoing investigation, but none of the conversations about Russian dirt on Clinton that have come to light so far demonstrate what the dossier claims.

If true, it means Trump betrayed America's interest, not to mention the Ukrainian people threatened and killed by Russian forces, in order to collaborate with a hostile authoritarian for purposes of sabotaging American democracy for Trump's personal benefit. Regardless of whether collusion is illegal, this easily satisfies grounds for removal. Republicans who think Hillary should be locked up for careless email security could hardly deny it, although they will.

I can think of two defenses for Trump: first that he was too incompetent and uninvolved to actually know about the deal, and second that he thought the revised Ukraine position was actually in America's interest.

As to the first, I think it fails when the changed campaign platform on Ukraine came to light in July. Trump should have inspected and found out what was going on. Incompetence is an impeachable offense if it's bad enough, and this hits that mark. As to the second, I find it unbelievable that Trump would actually care enough to change the GOP position, and it still involves after-the-fact collusion with potential espionage without alerting the FBI.

The political question for Democrats is whether they should get serious about impeachment, even assuming it's justified. Trump won't get removed when you need two-thirds of the Senate, so it won't actually accomplish the goal. I think it is clear that Democrats should investigate the hell out of all this, I just don't know, if they take the House and possibly the Senate, whether they should push impeachment.

My final, ironic note is that I actually agree that the US shouldn't be overtly arming Ukraine with lethal weapons - we should do it covertly, with about as much of a fig leaf as the Russians are using. That really has nothing to do with the Trump campaign motivations, however.