Impeachment fever is once again sweeping Washington, D.C., as House Democrats under the leadership of Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, I mean Nancy Pelosi, believe this time around they’ve got the goods to take down President Donald Trump.
The latest round of impeachment-palooza centers around a whistleblower complaint regarding a July phone call between Trump and Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky.
We were told by Democrats in advance of Trump releasing a transcript of the call that he had mentioned former Vice President Joe Biden eight different times on the call, specifically related to Biden’s influence in the firing of a Ukrainian prosecutor who just happened to be investigating a company of which Biden’s son Hunter happened to be on the board of directors.
“Manufacture evidence,” Democrats said Trump told Zelensky.
It was actually three times Biden was mentioned, and it only happened after Zelensky brought up Trump’s attorney Rudy Giuliani, who has been trying for months to get more information on the Biden/Ukrainian prosecutor issue.
There was no request to “manufacture evidence.”
We were told quid pro quo was committed on the call, that Trump had told Zelensky that aid to his country would be withheld unless he could deliver the goods on 2020 Democratic presidential frontrunner Biden and his admitted involvement in having the prosecutor fired — which Biden is on video bragging about in 2018.
There was no quid pro quo on the call.
We were told in the whistleblower’s complaint that the White House had tried to hide the call by moving the transcript of it to a highly classified computer server. As it turns out, this has been standard operating procedure for the White House since mid-2017 after call transcripts between Trump and leaders from Mexico and Australia were leaked to the press.
But much like the Mueller investigation, in the scheme of things the truth about what happened on the call and the White House’s alleged actions in the immediate aftermath of the call were irrelevant to Democrats anyway.
Pelosi gave her public blessing for a formal impeachment inquiry last Tuesday. This in spite of the fact that she had not seen the transcript of the call and was basing her opinion on second-hand media reporting of what was allegedly said in the call and in the whistleblower complaint — a complaint that itself was based on second- and third-hand information.
Democrats have made it clear over the last 2½ years regardless of the facts that they were going to impeach Trump one way or another as a way of revenge for losing the 2016 election.
Barely two weeks after Trump was inaugurated, Democratic Rep. Maxine Waters brought up the possibility of impeachment in media interviews. Her rationale at the time was political disagreement, not any allegations of anything impeachable.
Democratic Rep. Al Green soon followed, first calling for Trump’s impeachment in May 2017 in a speech delivered on the House floor.
In light of Pelosi’s actions last Tuesday, Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell issued a strongly worded statement of denunciation, saying “Washington Democrats have been searching for ways to reverse their 2016 election defeat since before President Trump was even inaugurated.” Democrats, he stated, were using impeachment as a weapon in ongoing attempts at “relitigating” the 2016 election.
House GOP Minority Whip Steve Scalise noted over the weekend some things that Democrats don’t want to hear. Impeaching a president so he can’t be reelected is not how the process is supposed to work, he said in an interview with NBC News’ Chuck Todd.
It’s voters who should decide. “We’ve got an election next year to deal with that,” Scalise pointed out.
Indeed.
Stacey Matthews is a veteran blogger who has also written under the pseudonym Sister Toldjah and is a regular contributor to Red State and Legal Insurrection.
