One day after voting in two articles of impeachment against 73-year-old President Donald Trump, House Speaker Nancy Pelosi (D-Calif.) said she would not forward them to the Senate for trial. Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer (D-N.Y.) demanded that House managers be allowed in interview new witnesses and obtain more documents, even though House Intelligence Committee Chairman Adam Schiff (D-Calif.) and House Judiciary Committee Chairman Jerold Nadler insisted before voting on the articles yesterday that they had an open-and-shut case against Trump. Yet somehow Schumer has decided he needs more witness testimony and documents to conduct a fair trial in the Senate. Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell (R-Ky.) rejected Schumers demands, prompting Pelosi to withhold the impeachment articles until Democrats get what the want from McConnell.
McConnell echoes the White House view that the entire House Democrat impeachment process was biased, one-sided, designed to impeach Trump regardless of the evidence. Pelosi, Schiff and Nadler all contend that they have incontrovertible evidence that Trump committed “high-crimes-and-misdemeanors” in his July 25 phone call with 40-year-old Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky, asking the Ukrainian leader to supply information on 77-year-old former Vice President Joe Biden and his 50-year-old son, Hunter in exchange for $391 million in military aid. Trump emphatically denies Democrat charges that he withheld Ukraine’s funds until Zelensky dug up the dirt on the Bidens. Hunter Biden received a lucrative job on Ukaine natural gas company Burisma Holdings’ board while Joe ran former President Barack Obama’s Ukraine anti-corruption task force.
Schumer wants White House Chief of Staff Mick Mulvaney and former National Security Adviser John Bolton to testify but refuses offer Joe and Hunter Biden as witnesses for Republicans. “Speaker Pelosi’s House just gave into a temptation that every other House in history has managed to resist, they impeached a president whom they do not even allege has committed an actual crime known to our laws. They impeached simply because they disagree with a presidential act and question the motives behind it,” McConnell said. McConnell thinks Democrats fabricated grounds for impeachment, lacking the Constitutional requirement of “high-crimes-and-misdemeanors and other crimes.” Both articles of impeachment, one about abusing power and the other about obstructing Congress, are not criminal offenses, only controversial areas of political disagreement.
Republicans don’t believe, in the worst case scenario for Trump that asking Zelensky for information on Joe or Hunter Biden was an impeachable offense, nor do they think the president obstructed Congress by not, under his Article 2 authority, responding Congressional subpoenas. McConnell calls Democrats case against Trump “shoddy” because they identify no impeachable offenses, only vague political differences. “By the Speaker’s own standards, she has failed the country. This case is not compelling, not overwhelming, and as a result, not bipartisan. This failure was made clear to everyone earlier this week, when Sen. Schumer began searching for ways the Senate could step out of our proper role and try to fix House Democrats’ failures for them,” McConnell said. McConnell doesn’t believe Schumer can move the goalposts, forcing the Senate with more testimony and documents.
Pelosi insists she cannot supply the articles to the Senate until McConnell clarifies the parameters on a trial. “Looks like the prosecutors are getting cold feet,” said McConnell, knowing their impeachment case stands no chance of getting enough votes to oust Trump from office. Yesterday’s public statement by Federal Intelligence Surveillance Act [FISA] court judge Rosemay Collyer condemning FBI behavior led by former FBI Director James Comey throws cold water over Democrats whole reason for impeachment. After Special Counsel Robert Muller delivered his Final Report March 23, Democrats lost any grounds for impeachment. They spent several months cherry-picking Mueller’s report, before suddenly claiming a whistleblower Sept. 25 caught Trump in an impeachable offense. Serious questions remain about whether or not Schiff collaborated in writing the whistleblower’s complaint
Senate Democrats led by Schumer aren’t about to strong-arm McConnell into opening up a new fact-finding expedition on impeachment. Pelosi, Schiff and Nadler said they had an unassailable impeachment case against Trump, yet Schumer asks for more fact-finding and documents. If you listen to Schumer and House Democrats, who couldn’t get one Republican vote for impeachment, you’d think that every House and Senate Republican violated their oath-of-office and Constitution to support Trump. It was Schumer, not McConnell, who had members of the House Democrat caucus vote against impeachment. House and Senate Republicans voted against impeachment not for blind loyalty to Trump bust because Democrats did not make their case. “The Senate must do what’s right,” said McConnell. “We must rise to this occasion,” refusing to yield to Pelosi and Schumer’s demands.
