Ryan Cooper in The Week, on Trump’s (warranted, though narrow) impeachment:
It also bears mentioning that Trump is unquestionably the most personally corrupt president in American history. No previous president has continued to operate a vast business empire while in office, much less spend millions of dollars of public money at his own properties, or collect payments from dozens of foreign countries through them. Both behaviors are flagrant violations of the Constitution. Trump's protestations that his Ukraine actions were based on a genuine interest in "corruption" — the first and only time in his entire life (recall also that in his previous career in real estate, he routinely worked with mobbed-up businesses), and just so happening to involve his top political rival — are utterly preposterous.
Nevertheless, the House investigation also found multiple corroborating pieces of evidence. U.S. Ambassador to Ukraine Bill Taylor testified that "our relationship with Ukraine was being fundamentally undermined ... by the withholding of vital security assistance for domestic political reasons." U.S. Ambassador to the E.U. Gordon Sondland (who was appointed after donating a $1 million to Trump's inaugural committee) testified that he had personally communicated the scheme to Zelensky: "I said that resumption of the U.S. aid would likely not occur until Ukraine provided the public anticorruption statement that we had been discussing for many weeks." Alexander Vindman, a Ukraine specialist for the National Security Council, confirmed that there was "no ambiguity" about what Sondland was asking for — namely, an investigation into the Bidens. Another witness, State Department diplomat David Holmes, testified he overheard a phone call between Sondland and Trump discussing the demands.
Thanks in part to Democratic timidity, we haven't heard sworn testimony from several key players in the Ukraine conspiracy, including Giuliani, Mulvaney, Secretary of State Mike Pompeo, former National Security Adviser John Bolton, and Vice President Pence, because the president forbade them from testifying. Trump himself has also refused to testify. If all this Ukraine stuff was so aboveboard as they all claim, why won't Trump allow them to testify and clear everything up? The answer is obvious.
Trump should have been impeached on his first day in office for his gross violation of the anti-corruption Emoluments Clause in the Constitution, let alone since then for his: refusal to do the work necessary of the office; appointing people just as corrupt as he is who loot the government agencies they lead; etc.
Trump richly deserves impeachment, but he’s a symptom of the larger disease. It’s an indictment of both the Democratic and Republican parties that it’s taken this long to get here. Both put party over country, the Democrats only caving once they sensed there was enough grassroots pressure, and the Republicans fighting impeachment with every trick they can to defend one of the most corrupt politicians in our history.
The current political class needs to be replaced by people who will fight for the common good, not narrow elite interests. And that’s only going to happen when more of us step up, putting more time in to change this system. At the very least, that should be paying more attention to what our “representatives” are doing while in office, and getting ready to vote the bums out when better people step forward.