Lashing out after losing a key vote to not call more witnesses in the impeachment trial of 73-year-old President Donald Trump, 80-year-old House Speaker Nancy Pelosi (D-Calif.) returned from Europe with her impeachment a failure. Placed into the shaky hands of 58-year-old Rep.Adam Schiff (D-Calif.), Pelosi watched from Europe her hopes to oust Trump disintegrate, as Schiff talked his head off but only on deaf ears to Republican senators. Only Sen. Mitt Romney (R-Ut.) and Sen. Susan Collins (R-Maine) joined Democrats in demanding more testimony. Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell (R-Ky.) delivered the goods for Trump, denying Democrats any attempt to stretch out their impeachment trial as much as possible. Democrats lost the key vote Jan. 31 [51-49], guaranteeing Trump’s acquittal on two articles of impeachment, both failing to persuade one Republican Senator.
Romney and Collin’s vote to hear 71-year-old former National Security Adviser John Bolton doesn’t mean that either of them will vote to convict Trump of abuse of power and obstruction of Congress. When McConnell calls for the final vote to acquit-or-conviction Wednesday, Feb. 5, it’s highly doubtful Romney or Collins would join Democrats to convict. It’s far more likely that a handful of Democrats, including Sen. Joe Manchin (D-W.V.), will vote to acquit Trump. What turned Republicans away from more witnesses was the fact that the House impeachment trial against Trump was a partisan, one-sided affair, suggesting at the very least, that politics, not Constitutional issues, drove impeachment. Retiring 80-year-old Sen. Lamar Alexander (R-Tenn.) said it best explaining his vote against more witnesses, saying that the impeachment articles were too vague to oust the president.
Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer (D-N.Y.) continued to blow smoke, insisting that Republican senators turned the impeachment trial into a farce. But McConnell told Schumer in clear terms that the Senate was not the place to redo what he called a “slapdash” impeachment case. McConnell said Democrat had plenty of cherry-picked witnesses to present at the impeachment trial, contradicting Schumer who insists Democrats were not allowed to present witnesses. McConnell told Schumer that if other witnesses were so important to Democrats’ case, they should have interviewed them before the impeachment trial started. Not one Republican bought Schumer’s argument that Democrats were deprived of key witnesses and evidence. Alexander made it clear in voting against new witnesses that Democrats had plenty of time to subpoena, go to court or do whatever to get new evidence.
When Pelosi talks about McConnell humiliating Chief Justice John Roberts who presided over the impeachment trial, it was actually Sen. Elizabeth Warren (D-Mass.) whose question on the Senate floor suggested Roberts wasn’t doing his job. “It is a sad day for America to see Sen. McConnell humiliate the Chief Justice of United States into presiding over a vote which rejected our nation’s judicial norms, precedents and institutions which uphold the Constitution and the rule of law,” Pelosi tweeted. Pelosi’s all about the propaganda, knowing full-well she failed to present a coherent impeachment case against Trump. White House attorneys, led by Trump’s counsel Pat Cipillone, made the case the House impeachment case was unconstitutional, making up their own grounds for impeachment, not in the Constitution. Pelosi presented numerous witnesses and copious evidence against Trump that didn’t add up.
Pelosi talks about “judicial norms” but knows the House abused its Article 1 powers, lowering the bar for impeachment to get rid of Trump. At the end of the day, Alexander, and other Republicans, didn’t buy Democrats’ case against Trump. Trump haters like Romney enjoy messing with the liberal press for the purpose of sticking it to Trump. But it’s highly doubtful come Wednesday he will vote to convict Trump. Romney already finds himself blackballed from this year’s Conservative Political Action Conference [CPAC] for voting for more witnesses. If he votes to convict Trump, he’d be run out of Salt Lake City. Siding with Democrats, Romney showed he’s willing to do practically anything to get back at Trump, showing the partisan politics driving the whole impeachment fiasco. When McConnell calls the upper-or-down vote Feb. 5, Pelosi and House Democrats will get their comeuppance.
Pelosi, Schumer and Schiff have egg on their faces, dragging the country through a 100% partisan impeachment proceeding. Bound to fail from the get-go, Democrats can only talk about how they were robbed of due process. But when Democrats decided to impeach Trump without legitimate grounds, they rolled the dice and came up snake eyes. Voters looking ahead to November won’t forget what Democrats dragged the country through for no reason. “It has also become clear some of my colleagues intend to further politicize this process, and drag the Supreme Court into the fray, while attack the Chief Justice,” said Sen. Lisa Murkowski (R-Alaska), turning her vote against calling new witnesses. Whatever final arguments on Monday, it’s clear that Democrats have lost their battle to impeach Trump. Whether they lose at the ballot box in November is anyone’s guess. One thing’s for sure, Trump’s heading for acquittal.
