As one senior Republican senator candidly acknowledged, there is irrefutable proof that the President engaged in the abuse of power with which he is charged.
What that senior failed to acknowledge is that there is, likewise, overwhelming evidence that the president has engaged, and continues to engage in massive obstruction of Congress.
Multiple experts on U.S. Constitutional law have told the members of Congress and the American public that if this conduct is not impeachable, then nothing is. The members of the Senate are standing on the edge of an abyss. They can still open their eyes and step back from disaster before it is too late.
President Trump has told the public and the members of Congress repeatedly that he can do anything he wants, free of any restraint whatsoever. And President Trump has demonstrated that he is fully prepared to do so. If the members of the Senate do not act now to render impartial justice based on the evidence, they declare our Constitution null and void and hand our country over on a silver platter to a dangerous would-be dictator.
What the members of the Senate choose to do could change our country forever. Never since the founding days of our democratic Republic has the danger to our nation and to all that it stands for been so great and so imminent.
Our state and our country are watching our Georgia senators. If they abdicate their duty to render impartial judgement in the impeachment trial of Donald J. Trump and to defend our representative government, they may become the most reviled figures in the history of this state and of this country. If they surrender our democracy, they and their party may reap a political whirlwind.
Any senator who chooses to become an enabler of lawless and tyrannical conduct becomes personally responsible for all such conduct, past, present and future and will be judged accordingly by Georgians, Americans and history.
Bruce Menke,
Athens