The process the Democrats have employed to gin up support for impeaching President Donald Trump has been almost as long as Chairman Mao’s long march. It has also been tragically absurdist. It is filled with twists and turns as the Democrats slog through the muck they have raked up in their attempt to obviate the 2016 presidential election by overthrowing the will of the American voter and throwing out President Trump.
Their march commenced with Trump’s historic election in November 2016, which prompted a Texas Democrat to announce his intention to introduce Articles of Impeachment within months of President Trump assuming office.
Democrats have tossed every piece of dirt and dung at the president hoping that something would stick. Well, nothing has. People who just throw anything in the air end up covered with the stuff they are tossing. In other words, if you ever want to know what the Democrats are doing, just observe what they are accusing everyone else of doing.
The Russia Accusations Were Proven False
Take Hillary Clinton. She was so devastated by her loss to President Trump that she joined others to claim the Trump campaign had “colluded” with the Russians to affect the outcome of the election. After 22 months of the Robert Mueller investigation, even his team of politically biased investigators concluded that there had been no “collusion,” conspiracy, coordination, or cooperation.
But we did find the Clinton campaign and the Democratic National Committee had engaged an opposition research firm with ties to Russia and the United Kingdom to dig up dirt on then-candidate Trump. The now-infamous Steele dossier was created out of whole cloth using those foreign sources to simply make up some of the most outrageous lies against Trump in the history of American politics.
And now Nancy Pelosi, who had attempted to slow down Democrats’ impeachment fantasies, has yielded to the pressure of her radical colleagues. She has spread this unauthorized “impeachment inquiry” among six different House Committees, ostensibly freezing out House Judiciary because Chairman Jerrold Nadler continues to embarrass Democrats with his pronouncements and ineffective hearings that have brought their less-than-stealthy intention to impeach President Trump to public disapprobation.
That leads us to the process Speaker Pelosi now wishes to employ—a process that betrays the precedent for these proceedings. Pelosi has gotten caught up in Trump Derangement Syndrome. During the Nixon and Clinton proceedings, the attorneys for those presidents could represent their clients, and in some cases, they were allowed to question witnesses. Not so in the 2019 political attack by Democrats.
Impeachment is “somber,” Pelosi says. If she truly believed that, then why would she select one of the most-virulent Trump attackers to lead the investigation? Of course, impeachment is a partisan process, but in the Nixon and Clinton cases there was overwhelming, bipartisan support for the investigations, confirmed by a vote of the full House to authorize them. Why so different now?
Because, in the aforementioned cases, there were allegations that many believed were, or easily could be, substantiated. Further, in the earlier proceedings, each side believed the rules of impeachment would be followed, but we haven’t even voted on such rules in President Trump’s case. And as I mentioned earlier, Democrats have hyped impeachment of Donald J. Trump since Election Day 2016.
We Don’t Need No Stinkin’ Rules
Since taking over the House, Democrats have shown a blatant disregard for the rules of the House and the committees. They already have skirted the rules in this unauthorized impeachment inquiry, meaning there will be a lack of due process for the president. That means the American people are at risk to have their votes overturned by rampant procedural sleights-of-hand, rather than legitimate evidence of a high crime or misdemeanor.
The Democrats are simply still in shock that Donald Trump was elected in 2016. Their goal is to subvert the will of the American people.
So, Rep. Adam Schiff, chair of the House Intelligence Committee, has been chosen as the face of the inquiry in spite of his promise that there would be evidence of Russian collusion, when there wasn’t; in spite of his promise to impeach the president, before his inquiry had begun; in spite of evidence of his hatred of this president (as demonstrated by his willingness to accept “evidence” from Ukrainian sources, which is what he claims is impeachable for President Trump); in spite of his blatant falsification of the telephone call between President Trump and Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky, which he later claimed was a parody. Schiff simply doesn’t have the disposition to lead the impeachment inquiry.
So Just Keep Changing the Story
Pelosi is confused. She and the Schiff team forecasted that President Trump berated, threatened, and offered a quid pro quo more than half a dozen times in the phone call with the Ukrainian President, but that was a lie.
When the transcript revealed that there was no sticks or carrots, and that the Ukrainian president introduced the subject of the 2016 electoral interference by the Ukraine, Democrats’ narrative again failed. So, they switched to saying the threat was implied, like a mob boss. That was hooted off the public stage to the accompaniment of President Zelensky and Ukraine’s foreign minister saying there was no threat.
Pelosi, Schiff, and their minions then switched to the old standby of claiming that there was a cover up. But that, too, has failed because the Trump administration has provided many documents, including the transcript, the complaint of the leaker that started this renewed impeachment episode, a legal memo from the Office of Legal Counsel, and even correspondence with the government of Australia.
Schiff does not have the disposition, gravitas, or character to lead this inquiry. Speaker Pelosi won’t even make this a formal inquiry by holding a floor vote in the House, indicating that, while the vast majority of her conference is in vocal support of an investigation or impeachment inquiry, she doesn’t have enough votes to formally authorize the process.
So, after marching in the wilderness for a couple of years, Schiff and company want to impeach President Trump by Thanksgiving. After all, we wouldn’t want Democrats to be inconvenienced at the holidays with their thoughts of attacking the president of the United States and all those who voted for him.
Rep. Andy Biggs represents Arizona’s Fifth District and is a member of the House Freedom Caucus.
