High Crimes Against Impeachment

[Geee]

Issues & Insights

To understand just what an insult the House Democrats’ articles of impeachment are to the seriousness of the Constitution’s provision for removal of a president, all one need do is place them alongside the charges that were brought against Richard Nixon and Bill Clinton.

Remember, President Donald Trump’s opponents have been eager to impeach himfrom the onset, and sought to delegitimize his 2016 election even before it took place, even when they thought his defeat of Hillary Clinton was highly unlikely.

Remember too that today’s impeachment effort is based on one mere phone conversation in which Trump, executing the long-standing U.S. policy of backing and applying pressure to bring about anti-corruption efforts in Ukraine, said on July 25 to Ukraine’s president: “I would like you to do us a favor though … Whatever you can do, it’s very important that you do it if that’s possible … There’s a lot of talk about Biden’s son, that Biden stopped the prosecution and a lot of people want to find out about that, so whatever you can do with the attorney general would be great. Biden went around bragging that he stopped the prosecution, so if you can look into it … It sounds horrible to me.”

A smoking gun with water vapor for smoke.

It would, in fact, be impossible to investigate corruption in Ukraine’s recent past without running into energy-illiterate Hunter Biden’s lucrative employ with the Burisma energy firm.

So it’s not surprising the end result is articles of impeachment that, despite solemn language, are remarkable for their underlying frivolity.