In a strange twist of fate, 79year-old House Speaker Nancy Pelosi acquiesced to her party’s call for impeachment after resisting it since the House seated its zealous majority Jan. 3, 2019. When you consider the 22-month Special Counsel investigation accusing 73-year-old President Donald Trump of Russian collusion went bust March 23 when Robert Mueller said he found no collusion, the House continued to find impeachable offences. House Judiciary Committee Chairman Jerold Nadler (D-N.Y.) and House Intelligence Committee Chairman Adam Schiff (D-Calif.) worked on overdrive to find anything in the Mueller Report to pursue impeachment. When an anonymous whistleblower, unconnected with the Mueller Report, came forward with a new allegation about Trump, Democrats found their smoking gun.: Trump allegedly asked Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky to investigate the Bidens.
Schiff plans to meet with the whistleblower Thursday, Sept. 26, to get all the details on Trump’s conversation with Zelensky. Trump promptly countered saying he would release the un-redacted phone call with Zelensky, showing that he did nothing wrong. Pelosi leaped to the conclusion that Trump used his Article 2 powers to coerce Zelensky into digging up dirt on 76-year-old Democratic frontrunner former Vice President Joe Biden and his 50-year-old son, Hunter. Hunter apparently made $50,000 a month working on the Ukrainian Burisima Holdings Group Board, a natural gas company, while his father served as VP under former President Barack Obama. Trump wanted to know whether Joe used his influence to get Ukraine’s top prosecutor Viktor Shokin fired from the case to investigate Hunter. Media reports dismiss former VP Biden playing any role in getting rid of Shokin.
Stepping into an impeachment trap, Trump and his 75-year-old attorney Rudy Giuliani apparently admitted that they spoke with Zelensky about the Bidens. Trump insists he’ll be vindicated by the transcript, once it’s released. Meanwhile, Pelosi insisted Trump committed high crimes and misdemeanors, the litmus test for impeachment. Holding nothing back after months of dithering on impeachment, Pelosi opened up both barrels. “The actions of the Trump presidency revealed the dishonorable fact of the president’s betrayal of his oath of office, betrayal of our national security, and betrayal of the integrity of or elections,” Pelosi said. “Therefore, today I’m announcing the House of Representatives is moving forward with an official impeachment inquiry. Playing judge, jury and executioner, Pelosi concluded the president committed high crimes and misdemeanors.
Trump tweeted that Pelosi and none of her pro-impeachment Democrats have seen the unedited transcript of Trump’s conversation with Zelensky. “The actions taken to date by the president have seriously violated the Constitution,” Pelosi said. “The president must be held accountable. Whatever the whistleblower or transcript says, Pelosi’s already rushed to judgment, largely because the Democrat caucus have hammered her on impeachment for months. “At this point, the bigger national scandal isn’t the president’s lawbreaking behavior, it is the Democratic Party’s refusal to impeach him for it,” said Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez [AOC] (D-N.Y.) Sept. 22. AOC and her freshman friends Ilhan Omar (D-Minn.), Rep. Rashida Tlaib (D-Mich.) and Rep. Ayanna Pressley (D-Mass.), AKA the “Quad Squad,” have been calling for Trump’s impeachment for months.
Trump complained Pelosi and the Dems never saw the transcript of his conversation with Zelensky. “They never even saw the transcript of the call,” Trump said, calling the impeachment inquiry a continuation of the “witch hunt.” Trump complained for nearly two years that Mueller’s Special Counsel investigation would find nothing in the way of Russian collusion. When Mueller found nothing March 23, Trump claimed vindication, despite attempts by Nadler and Schiff to find Trump obstructed justice during the Special Counsel investigation. Pelosi thinks the whistleblower will say Trump used his office to deny Ukraine $450 million in military aid unless he provided dirt on Joe and Hunter Biden. Acting Director of National Intelligence Joe Maguire refused to release to Congress the whistleblower’s complaint, citing department rules that the complaint does not involve agency personnel.
Trump finds himself caught in a sticky wicket, trying to explain away his decision to ask the Ukrainian president to look into Joe Biden and his son, Hunter. If the telephone transcript proves that’s what happened, Democrats will move full steam ahead with impeachment hearings. With national polls showing all three top Democrat contenders beating Trump in 2020, impeachment proceedings, whether they succeed or not, further damages the president’s chances of reelection. “This isn’t about politics. If we have to honor our oath of office to support and defend the Constitution of the United States, from all enemies foreign and domestic, that’s what we have to do,” Pelosi said. Impeaching Trump has always been about preventing him from a second term. With the Senate unlikely to convict Trump, Democrats hope to throw enough impeachment mud on Trump to stop him in 2020.
