Atlantic Council Chief Insists Trump Must Resign, Impeachment a Poor Second

Jan. 11 , 2021 (EIRNS)—In a CNBC op-ed Jan. 9, Frederick Kempe, CEO of the Atlantic Council, appeared, speaking for the British Atlanticist intelligence establishment in saying that President Donald Trump’s resignation, not his impeachment, is what is wanted. Kempe claims Democrats plan to impeach Trump on a crime of insurrection, and, “a lawyer friend tells me there’s a powerful prima facie case ... that President Donald Trump at the very least violated federal law on insurrection and rebellion. That U.S. code reads:

‘Whoever incites, sets on foot, assists, or engages in any rebellion or insurrection against the authority of the United States or the laws thereof, or gives aid or comfort thereto, shall be fined under this title or imprisoned not more than ten years, or both, and shall be incapable of holding any office under the United States.’ ”

But here the Atlantic Council joins the Wall Street Journal in demanding that Trump resign instead, because of NATO’s immediate agenda for Joe Biden. “Biden hopes to convene a summit of democracies during his first year in office to ‘get the band back together,’ in the words of one of his top advisors,” and impeachment would distract him, says Kempe, in part quoting the Journal. He doesn’t have to add that this would be an anti-China, anti-Russia, essentially a NATO heads of state “emergency” summit—a disastrous parody of President Putin’s five-power UN Security Council emergency summit, or the four-power “New Bretton Woods” summit which Schiller Institute President Helga Zepp-LaRouche has been urging for the past year.

Biden imagines that he, too, has immediate plans including that “summit of democracies,” but also a useless fifth or sixth pandemic “relief” handout bill and a big COVID vaccination drive (which in fact is already well underway). So he, too, is not happy about February being spent impeaching the President after he’s left office.

And if Kempe’s “lawyer friend” were right that Trump’s conduct fell under the law (Constitutional 14th Amendment Section 3) on insurrection, then there have been dozens and dozens of insurrections in the past few years in Congressional office buildings, federal buildings around the country, and so forth. According to this claim the Capitol somehow is “the authority of the United States” whereas those other buildings are not.

Pelosi did send a letter to the Democratic Caucus members on Jan. 10 setting Jan. 12 for impeachment and referencing the 14th Amendment among other things; but the Democrats don’t seem to know what they want to do. Her leadership colleague James Clyburn (D-SC) proposed not sending the article of impeachment to the Senate for months so as not to “distract” Biden; but other Democrats jumped to oppose a delay like that.