The Ever-shifting Goal of Impeachment
In their twenty-four seasons of competing in the NFL, the Baltimore Ravens have had…get this…three place-kickers. Only three talented men, Matt Stover, Billy Cundiff and Justin Tucker, have lent their legs to the Ravens’ scoreboard in two dozen years- quite an amazing feat for a franchise in today’s free-agency NFL.
Yet, how successful would Messrs. Stover, Cundiff and Tucker have been if the leagues’ goalposts shifted back and forth following the snap from the Ravens’ center to the Ravens’ holder?
In that same way, the Democrats have been completely absorbed with the impeachment of President Donald Trump since the very afternoon of his inaugural on 20 January 2017, and they have been changing the goalposts of impeachment ever since.
Consider their supposed grounds for the illegitimate impeachment of President Trump:
- First, there was Trump’s alleged collusion with the Russian government, except for the fact of a $40 million dollar, two-year investigation by Democrat lawyers who, under the supposed purview of Robert Mueller, failed to find any evidence that Trump or his campaign colluded with the Russian government to steal the 2016 election away from Hillary Clinton.
- Second, there were charges of obstruction of justice on the part of the President, except for the fact that Trump turned over all of the one million plus documents to the Mueller investigation and ordered that his staff provide complete co-operation with Mueller’s team, as well as co-operating with …count ‘em…four investigations into his campaign, all of which produced not a single iota of obstruction of justice.
- Then there were attempts to have the President removed from office for accusations of racism, misogyny, mental dysfunction and worse, all of which failed to produce a reason for evoking the 25th Amendment to have the President removed from office.
- Now, we have a so-called impeachment of President Trump on charges that the President made a quid pro quo threat to withhold military funding for the Ukraine, while talking to their newly-elected president in a July telephone call, unless that country assisted Trump in digging up dirt on former Vice-President Joe Biden. These accusations stem from a so-called “whistle-blower” who was not even a party to the phone call, but who was nevertheless a Democrat activist once in the service of Hillary Clinton’s campaign.
The only problem with this latest tactic is that the official transcript of the call was turned over within twenty-four hours of House Speaker Nancy Pelosi’s (D-CA) announcement of an official impeachment investigation of the President- a transcript that refutes all of the charges that the President offered any quid pro quo to the Ukrainian president.
Worse, Rep. Adam Schiff (D-CA), in whom Pelosi entrusted this latest investigation of the President, has already lied about his involvement with both the whistle-blower and the actual complaint weeks before the story went public. Additionally, Schiff lied to his committee’s hearing about what the President actually said on the July phone call, prompting House Republicans to draft articles of censure against Schiff, requesting that the California congressman be expelled from the committee he chairs. Predictably, Speaker Pelosi has tabled the resolution and refused to call an actual vote on the measure.
It’s bad enough that this so-called “impeachment inquiry” has been launched without securing a floor vote from the House. Add to this the facts that the hearings are being held in secret, that Republican committee members are not allowed to call witnesses, that Republicans not on Schiff’s committee are not allowed to witness the hearings, that the accused (President Trump) is not afforded the right to legal representation, and that the public is only entitled to the selective leaks coming from Democrats on the committee. Essentially what all of this describes is a “kangaroo court,” typical of third-world totalitarian governments but most assuredly not in keeping with a representative democracy governed by constitutional law and the due process it requires.
So while the Democrats and their ever-shifting goal posts persevere in their attempts to undo the election of 2016, ensure that a tarnished President won’t be re-elected, and cause an ever-increasing breach in the divide that they have created with the help of the media, Americans will have to decide whether the President who has accomplished so much deserves removal from office or re-election in a 2020 race that will only grow nastier with each passing month.
May they choose wisely!
-Drew Nickell, 22 October 2019
© 2019 by Drew Nickell, all rights reserved.
author of “Bending Your Ear- a Collection of Essays on the Issues of Our Times”