The Democrats want you to think they are serious about impeaching President Trump. They aren’t. They are hoping they can fool you into thinking that there is an actual “impeachment inquiry” underway, but there isn’t.
The Constitution says “The House of Representatives...shall have the sole power of impeachment.” (Emphasis mine throughout.) You will note that the power of impeachment rests entirely with the House. It does not rest with the Speaker, and it most certainly does not rest with the Chairman of the House Intelligence Committee. Nancy Pelosi can’t impeach the President, and while Adam Schiff may act as if he can, he can’t.
Until a majority of the entire House of Representatives votes to conduct an official impeachment inquiry, there isn’t one. There may be individuals pompously telling us that there is one, but just because they’re saying it, it doesn’t make it so.
They are accusing the President of “obstructing” their impeachment inquiry. This is impossible, for the simple reason that THERE IS NO IMPEACHMENT INQUIRY. You can’t obstruct something that does not exist.
Every impeachment inquiry of a president has begun with a vote of the full House. That’s the way it was done in the case of Richard Nixon and the way it was done with Bill Clinton. What the Democrats are running here is a sham impeachment.
We know it’s a sham inquiry because Republicans are virtually shut out of the process altogether. They cannot call their own witnesses or issue subpoenas.
The energy for this impeachment move comes from a fake whistleblower. The “whistleblower” broke intelligence agency rules by turning in a complaint which, by his own admission, contained nothing but second-hand information. The whistleblower form he used explicitly required the complaint to consist exclusively of first-hand information. But surreptitiously the whistle-blower form was changed AFTER he came forward, and the new form was backdated a month in a transparent attempt to create the false impression that the rumor-mongering complaint was legitimate.
On top of all this, the charge against the president is manufactured and bogus. What Trump asked for in the infamous phone call was not that President Zelensky dig up dirt on Biden, but that Ukraine provide assistance to attorney general Bill Barr in his investigation of the shady origins of the whole Trump-Russia snipe hunt.
The president is absolutely right to call this a kangaroo court. What the Democrats are trying to do here is textbook: “A kangaroo court is a court that ignores recognized standards of law or justice, and often carries little or no official standing in the territory within which it resides. The term may also apply to a court held by a legitimate judicial authority who intentionally disregards the court's legal or ethical obligations.” (Wikipedia.)
This is why the Trump administration is altogether right to ignore subpoenas and summons for administration officials to testify. Such subpoenas and summonses have zero legal force. If the Dems want to issue legally binding subpoenas, they’re going to have to convene an official inquiry through a vote of the entire House. Until then, they are just posturing and pretending and play-acting and running a charade on the American people.
The truth is the smart Democrats do not want to impeach the president at all. They know that there isn’t a snowball’s chance of getting a vote to convict in the Senate. A failed vote in the Senate would be the end of all the impeachment hysteria, but that is precisely what Nancy Pelosi does not want. She’s been slow-walking the whole impeachment thing because she knows it’s an electoral loser. In fact, many Democrats in Trump-leaning districts are starting to sweat bullets that this farce will extend into the election season.
Pelosi does not want any kind of a resolution here. She believes she has the president swinging like a piñata from the rafters in the garage, while she and her merry band of political assassins take turns trying to knock the stuffing out of him with lead pipes. But once he is found not guilty, the game will be over. Following the election loss and the total bust of the Mueller Report, they already have a two-strike count. Exoneration on an impeachment charge would be strike three.
Ms. Pelosi is already backtracking, saying that she’s not even sure actual articles of impeachment will emerge out of the rubble they are creating. In fact, the smart Democrats realize that this fiasco is only going to empower the president and turbo-charge his base right as we head into an election year.
The president will be addressing the Values Voter Summit in Washington, D.C on Saturday night (an event sponsored by the Family Research Council and the American Family Association.) Gathered will be a packed house representing the very core of the president’s evangelical base. Trump is going to light that place up. The joint will be rocking. It is an utter fantasy for any Democrat to think they can go outside the law to impeach and then convict a president with that kind of evangelical support. It ain’t gonna happen.
Bottom line: the Democrats are playing the American public for chumps. Don’t be a chump.
The author may be contacted at bfischer@afa.net
