Although Nancy Pelosi announced today a formal impeachment inquiry against President Trump, Democrats have been pressing for impeachment ever since the president’s election in 2016. They claimed on the surface that he stole the election by “colluding” with Russia to influence the electorate against the Democratic nominee, Hillary Clinton. But in reality, they couldn’t care less about collusion or whatever any country tries to do with our elections because said countries really cannot do anything substantive to derail them. In fact, if Russia did anything at all, it simply told the truth about Hillary and her minions. Telling the truth, in Democratic-speak, is blasphemy, so Trump has to pay with his political life.
In truth, the real source of Democratic angst against the president is his commitment to border integrity and originalist judges. Democrats see a golden opportunity to secure their political hegemony by creating a coalition of outsiders via an open border policy that will once and for all sweep conservatism from the American political lexicon. The president’s commitment to the rule of law and judges who are not liberal sycophants threaten their takeover, so in their view the president must be destroyed. They cannot oppose him on logical or legal merits, so they’ve got to accuse him of treason, racism, sexism, climate change-ism, homophobia, transphobia, etc., etc. ad nauseam. You see, the president doesn’t simply have a different point of view; he is evil incarnate. That legitimizes his removal under any pretext.
The latest foaming-at-the-mouth crisis is Trump’s urging Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky to investigate Joe Biden and his son Hunter for their “activities” in Ukraine. It has yet to be explained why urging an investigation into possible criminal behavior amounts to high crimes and misdemeanors, but remember, the only thing that makes sense to Democrats is their hatred of Trump.
Officially, however:
Pelosi specifically charged that the administration had violated the law by not turning over a whistleblower complaint concerning Trump’s July call with Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky. Citing testimony that the director of national intelligence was blocking the release of that complaint, she said: “This is a violation of law. The law is unequivocal.”
Sure, Nancy. As Rich Lowry observes:
The contours of the Russia story had become very familiar over time, whereas Ukraine is still new and the details unknown. Pelosi has at least partially committed herself without seeing the transcript of the Trump–Zelensky call that’s been such a focus, and without seeing the whistleblower complaint. The White House is now reportedly ready to release both, presumably a sign that it doesn’t consider the contents as explosive as advertised. We’ll know more soon, but if the transcript isn’t damning as expected, impeachment will be off to a disappointing first day. As a general matter, Pelosi has to hope for the worst case for Trump, because it’s going to be difficult to climb down from impeachment now.
There had better be something very juicy in the soon-to-be-released transcripts. That said, what’s the hullabaloo about? Democrats clearly think that their contacting Ukrainian officials to report on the Trump administration is permissible, so they should applaud efforts to get at the truth, right?
Washington (CNN)Three Democratic senators have written a letter to Ukraine’s prosecutor general to “express great concern” over reports that Ukrainian officials had looked to potentially hinder special counsel Robert Mueller’s Russia investigation.
Sens. Bob Menendez of New Jersey, Dick Durbin of Illinois and Patrick Leahy of Vermont wrote in the letter to Yuriy Lutsenko that a recent New York Times report said his office “effectively froze investigations into four open cases in Ukraine in April, thereby eliminating scope for cooperation with the Mueller probe into related issues.”
[…]The May 4 letter requests that Lutsenko answer three questions, which include inquiries about whether the office did attempt to “restrict cooperation” with Mueller’s probe and “if so, why?”It also asks if anyone from the Trump administration encouraged “Ukrainian government or law enforcement officials not to cooperate” with Mueller’s investigation, and if that probe was “raised in any way during discussions between your government and US officials, including around the meeting of Presidents Trump and Poroshenko in New York in 2017,” a reference to Ukrainian President Petro Poroshenko.
“This has all the hallmarks of the Russia hoax,” Nunes said. “Something leaks out. … and then it’s the same reporters that report on it, the same reporters that reported on the Russia hoax. Then you move forward, and what happens? Then supposedly they come and testify — and the night before they testify, the whistleblower who supposedly doesn’t want anybody to know who this person is, or what information they have, well, it’s spilled all over the pages of the Washington Post” the day before Congress was briefed on the matter.“Whoever came up with this scheme — it looks like somebody was trying to deflect what Biden did back in 2015,” Nunes said. “This scheme seems to have backfired on Biden. I mean, Biden’s already dropping in the polls.”
DNI Inspector General Michael Atkinson said in a Sep. 9 letter to the House Intelligence Committee that the whistleblower complaint “appeared credible” and related to an “urgent” matter. But the DNI general counsel said days later that, after consulting with the DOJ, the matter did not meet the legal definition of an “urgent concern,” and was not subject to mandatory disclosure to Congress.
“Furthermore, because the complaint involves confidential and potentially privileged communications by persons outside the Intelligence Community, the DNI lacks unilateral authority to transmit such materials to the intelligence committees,” Jason Klitenic, the DNI general counsel, wrote.
It’s common for people to allow their emotions to blind them to reality. Democrats have been detached from reality for decades. One can only hope that this will turn out to be the catastrophe that it appears to be so that the Republic can continue to focus on important matters.
