Close encounters of the Trump-Harris kind

Consider me unsurprised. Trump and Harris are hardly strangers. Before the start of this presidential race, Harris and Trump — though not face to face — had important interactions that inform where we find them today.

In early 2020, Harris sat in the Senate chamber with her colleagues, who held the fate of President Trump in their hands. The scene was Trump’s first impeachment trial on charges of abuse of power and obstruction of justice.

Like the other Senate jurors, Harris sat muted like a potted palm. But she posed a written question to the House impeachment managers, read aloud by Chief Justice John G. Roberts Jr., who was presiding over the trial. “President Nixon said, ‘When the president does it, that means that it is not illegal.’ Before he was elected, President Trump said, ‘When you’re a star, they let you do it. You can do anything.’ After he was elected, President Trump said that Article II of the Constitution gives him ‘the right to do whatever [he] want[s] as president.’

“These statements suggest that each of them believed that the president is above the law — a belief reflected in the improper actions that both presidents took to affect their reelection campaigns. If the Senate fails to hold the president accountable for misconduct, how would that undermine the integrity of our system of justice?”

Harris’s question went to the heart of Trump’s abuse of power. He had been accused of violating the law and the Constitution by making it known to Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky that U.S. military aid and a White House invitation were contingent on Ukraine’s announcing an investigation into Trump’s political opponent Joe Biden and his son Hunter. Harris emphasized the point when given a chance to speak at the trial’s conclusion. Harris said Trump’s actions constituted a misuse of the presidency aimed at advancing his own political interests.

Harris, a former prosecutor, also charged that Trump obstructed justice when he issued an order forcing administration officials to ignore lawfully issued congressional subpoenas, thus preventing the House from seeing crucial documents and hearing from key witnesses while preparing articles of impeachment

All this happened in real time on TV, which for Trump is arguably more powerful than face-to-face meetings. Thanks to the Senate’s Republican majority at the time, which cooperated in blocking witnesses and evidence from coming forward, the impeachment effort fell short of the two-thirds threshold needed for a guilty verdict.

Harris and Trump had already interacted through the former president’s toxic social media. A few hours after Harris dropped out of the 2020 Democratic presidential primary race, Trump tweeted sarcastically, “Too bad. We will miss you Kamala!” To which she quickly replied, “Don’t worry, Mr. President. I’ll see you at your trial.”

Never interacted with him?

Harris was again in the Senate, now as vice president, on Feb. 13, 2021, when the members voted 57-43 to convict Trump of inciting insurrection at the Capitol on Jan. 6 in the worst assault on the seat of the federal government since the War of 1812. The tally fell 10 votes short of the two-thirds majority required by the Constitution, but with seven Republicans and two independents supporting it, it was the largest bipartisan vote for a presidential impeachment conviction.

Though they were not in the same room when it happened, they both must have heard then-Majority Leader Mitch McConnell (R-Ky.) declare — after voting to acquit Trump on the argument that an ex-president is beyond the impeachment power — that, “Jan. 6 was a disgrace. American citizens attacked their own government. They used terrorism to try to stop a specific piece of democratic business they did not like. Fellow Americans beat and bloodied our own police. They stormed the Senate floor. They tried to hunt down the speaker of the House. They built a gallows and chanted about murdering the vice president. They did this because they had been fed wild falsehoods by the most powerful man on Earth – because he was angry he’d lost an election. Former president Trump’s actions preceding the riot were a disgraceful dereliction of duty.

“The House accused the former President of, quote, ‘incitement.’ That is a specific term from the criminal law. Let me put that to the side for one moment and reiterate something I said weeks ago: There is no question that President Trump is practically and morally responsible for provoking the events of that day.”

The upcoming presidential debate, to be hosted by ABC on Sept. 10, will provide a chance for Trump and Harris to recall and discuss those momentous encounters face to face. But make no mistake: The two presidential candidates have interacted and know each other all too well.