This is long, but I want you to see my thinking on this impeachment business. I will not be watching a bit of it. I have better things to do today. But here are my thoughts…
Many politicians have described the President’s call to the Ukraine as “harmless” to “something they would not have done” to “treason”. For me, I would not have done what he did on this call, rather referred any desire to get to the bottom of alleged Ukrainian election meddling to the Justice Department.
But this I know. None of what the President did rose to the level of “Treason, Bribery, or other high Crimes and Misdemeanors” as stated in Article II, Section 4 of a Constitution as the founders envisioned such. (Read Madison’s notes on the Constitutional Convention.) Nor is the President’s call to the Ukraine a “violation of some public trust” or “injuries done immediately to the society itself” as Alexander Hamilton writes in Federalist 65.
The public trust “violation” is virtually unprovable because what “trust” was violated? Like it or not, Presidents have had broad discretion in dealing with foreign countries, even if it involves politics.
Remember Obama’s hot mic request when he was (verbatim) speaking of “missile defense” and asked that Putin give him more “space” until “after my election [when] I have more flexibility.” Do you—Democrats—really think that Obama wasn’t seeking a “do a favor” in the form of a political deal for his “election” even while sacrificing strong missile defense for our allies in Europe? (Something he actually did, by the way.)
Second, Democrats want you to believe that the President invited Ukraine to meddle in the 2020 election (an election he did not even reference in the call) and that the threat of that poses an injury “done immediately to the society itself”, and they, therefore, must immediately impeach him. Bovine scatology.
Here’s the truth. Were the Justice Department to have been the one to initially ask for this assistance—a request that is completely legal with joint agreements on ending corruption—we would not be talking about this. But the President did so in referring to “Crowd Strike” and the Biden duo.
Democrats hate to admit either of these issues were corruption, but they were, one about the whereabouts of the DNC server that could reveal much corruption and the other a VP’s son parlaying his relationship into a monetary advantage. Pretty corrupt, I would say…
Here’s the bottom line for me.
The Democrats have been anxious to impeach Trump from the day he won. He beat “the smartest woman in America”, the libs will tell you, and that was a “no-no.” It was completely off script and they immediately began working on the “reason” why this happened. Not because Clinton was an awful candidate? Nope. It was the Russians. That was debunked. Then it was emoluments. More nonsense. Then the Ukraine call happened, and the Democrats in Congress thought, “this is it!” They set about orchestrating the “Whistle Blower” scheme so enough condemnatory stuff could escape from the complaint to fuel impeachment, that is, until the President rained on their parade by releasing the entire transcript.
Oops.
So when there was no “quid pro quo” in the transcript, the Democrats settled on their poll-tested “bribery” idea. But their lawyers told them, “that won’t fly”. So in the end, they strained to come up with “abuse of power” and “obstructing Congress” articles of impeachment.
Both are complete bunk and I think there’s a chance the Senate may dismiss them both as empty charges, lacking any true evidence except this: pure hate.
Hamilton warned of that too when he wrote of the danger of impeachment in the same Federalist 65.
“The prosecution of them, for this reason, will seldom fail to agitate the passions of the whole community, and to divide it into parties more or less friendly or inimical to the accused. In many cases it will connect itself with the pre-existing factions, and will enlist all their animosities, partialities, influence, and interest on one side or on the other; and in such cases there will always be the greatest danger that the decision will be regulated more by the comparative strength of parties, than by the real demonstrations of innocence or guilt.”
The Democrats are putting America through political hell because of their insoluble hatred of Donald J. Trump. They will fail to remove him. But it will sure “feel good” as they vent their political spleen.
Never forget this awful political precedent they are setting.
Scott Lingamfelter is a former member of the House of Delegates and a retired colonel in the U.S. Army.