Preparing for battle in the U.S. Senate, 77-year-old Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell (R-Ky.) notified his colleagues to prepare to defeat the House articles of impeachment in the near future. McConnell expects a Senate trial could start in November, where House Intelligence Committee Chairman Adam Schiff (D-Calif.) prepares his case against 73-year-old President Donald Trump.. House Speaker Nancy Pelosi (D-Calif.), 79, said, Sept.. 24 that the House will prepare articles of impeachment based only on Trump’s July 25 phone call with Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky in which the president pressured Zelensky to dig up dirt on 76-year-old former Vice President and Democrat front-runner Joe Biden and his 50-year-old son Hunter. Schiff has been interviewing witnesses, largely anti-Trump State Department employees, to build his impeachment case.
Not one of Schiff’s witnesses has been subjected by Republicans on the Intel Committee to cross-examination. Basing their case on a “whistleblower” complaint from an intel official claiming second-or-third hand knowledge of Trump’s July 25 call. What Schiff doesn’t say is how the so-called whistleblower is strangely reminiscent of former Hillary Rodham Clinton’s paid opposition research AKA “the dossier” on Trump. Hillary didn’t have the temerity to call former MI6 agent Christopher Steele, who assembled the dossier, a “whistleblower.” But 58-year-old former FBI Director James Comey used the dossier like a whistleblower complain as “probable cause” to start a counterintelligence investigation on Trump. Comey’s fraudulent investigation led former Deputy Atty. Gen. Rod Rosenstein to appoint former FBI Director Robert Mueller as Special Counsel, spending 22-months, $30 million to investigate Trump.
When the dust settled on Mueller’s probe, he gave his findings in a Final Report March 23, essentially clearing Trump of a Russian conspiracy to win the 2016 presidential election. Trump called Special Counsel probe a “witch-hunt” and a “hoax,” built almost entirely on Hillary’s dossier. Once Mueller delivered his findings, House Democrats led by Schiff and House Judiciary Chairman Jerold Nadler (D-N.Y.) did everything possible to cherry-pick Mueller’s report, accusing Trump of obstruction of justice. When that didn’t fly, suddenly a so-called “whistleblower” complaint appears, accusing Trump of interfering with the 2020 presidential election. House Democrats insist Trump coerced Zelensky to dig up dirt on Joe Biden, something that violates U.S. campaign laws. Zelensky said Sept. 25 that he was “not pushed” by Trump to dredge up dirt on the Bidens.
Trump’s phone call with Zelensky shows that he was not interfering with the 2020 election, bit trying to find corruption in Ukraine. Because Biden was in charge of anti-corruption efforts in Ukraine, following the Feb. 22, 2014 pro-Western coup that toppled Kremlin-backed Ukrainian President Viktor Yanukovych, it’s reasonable to ask how Hunter Biden received a $50,000 a month job working for Burisma Holdings, a Ukrainian natural gas company, when Hunter had zero background in energy. House Democrats, busy working on articles of impeachment, insist Trump meddled in the 2020 election. Looking into Hunter Biden, a private U.S. citizen not running for elective office, violates no U.S. laws. Saying Trump went after Joe to sabotage his 2020 campaign defies logic. Joe Biden is one among 20 Democrat presidential candidates, not his Party’s nominee.
Since Biden’s work on behalf of the Obama administration landed Hunter a lucrative job on Burisma Holdings board, it’s reasonable to ask what happened, whether or not Joe pulled some strings. Regardless of the facts, House Democrats have accused Trump f meddling in the 2020 presidential election, something they think is an impeachable offense. McConnell’s preparation for an impeachment trial helps Republicans in the Senate prepare their cross-examination or rebuttal to House Democrats. Moving swiftly to impeachment, McConnell wants Senate Republicans to prepare to defeat the House’s articles of impeachment at trial. McConnell has more than enough votes to defeat any Democrat effort to oust Trump as president. Sen. Kevin Cramer (R-N.D.) thinks holding the vote near the holidays will motivate the Senate to get it over as soon as possible.
Building their impeachment case around anti-Trump witnesses, Democrats find themselves in hot water trying to prove their case in the Senate. House Democrats have little chance of getting the votes to remove Trump from office. But apart from that, the Senate trial would give Trump’s backers a platform for repudiating the House case, built on a so-called whistleblower, that seems more like a garden variety political snitch. When Schiff admitted Oct. 2 that he actually did meet with the whitleblower before the report was released Sept. 26, it raised doubts about the complaint’s credibility. Schiff had insisted Sept. 26 that he didn’t meet with the whistleblower, only suddenly admit he met with him or her back in July. Intel community Inspector General [IG], while saying the complaint seemed legitimate, admitted Sept. 26 the whistleblower might have had partisan motives.
