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| Schumer, Blumenthal, Murphy |
A day prior to the “somber” vote in the U.S. House of
Representatives, now controlled by Democrats, National Review reported, “The
level of support for Trump’s impeachment and removal dipped below the level of
opposition for the first time since the inquiry was formalized in October,
according to a RealClearPolitics polling average updated just two days before
the impending House vote on impeachment. RCP’s average tipped in Trump’s favor,
47.3 to 46.7 percent on Monday following the addition of two new national
polls, NPR/PBS/Marist and USA Today/Suffolk, which found that
opposition to impeachment outweighed support by three and five percentage
points, respectively.”
What we have here is censure parading as impeachment. The nearly
three year effort by Democrats to slather President Donald Trump with pitch and
set his pants on fire might have succeeded as a censure, but impeachment,
always a gaudy show, is a bridge too far.
The impeachment drive is destined to fail in the US Senate
-- and not only because Democrats cannot summon enough votes to remove the
President from office. It will fail for lack of an underlying crime supporting
the impeachment. Bribery, which is a crime, was blown out of House’s bill of
indictment just prior to the vote.
Impeachment, no one will deny, is a punishment. Reporting on
debates in the House of Commons, Samuel Johnson referred to the Nulla
poena sine lege doctrine. “Where there is no law, there is no
transgression,” Johnson wrote, “is a maxim not only established by universal
consent, but in itself evident and undeniable; and it is, Sir, surely no less
certain that where there is no transgression [of a law], there can be no
punishment.”
Trump faces two articles of impeachment brought by
Democrats, according to an Associated Press
account: “They say he abused the power of his office by pressuring Ukraine to
investigate Democratic rival Joe Biden ahead of the 2020 election and
obstructed Congress by aggressively trying to block the House investigation
from its oversight duties as part of the nation’s system of checks and
balances.”
The charges do not point to any law that may have been broken
by Trump. How is Ukraine to investigate rampant corruption while leaving the
Bidens, father and son, out in the cold? We have it from the horse’s mouth that
Joe Biden, while Vice President in the Obama administration, traveled to
Ukraine and laid down his law to decision makers.
Real Clear Politics has produced a faithful
transcript of Biden’s appearance before the Council of Foreign Relations:
“And I went over, I
guess, the 12th, 13th time to Kiev. And I was supposed to announce that there
was another billion-dollar loan guarantee. And I had gotten a commitment from
Poroshenko and from Yatsenyuk that they would take action against the state
prosecutor, [who was investigating corruption at Barisma, a natural gas
company that had hired Biden’s son, Hunter, paying him an extravagant salary apparently for being the Vice President’s son.] And they
didn’t.
“So they said they had—they were walking out to a press conference. I said, nah, I’m not going to—or, we’re not going to give you the billion dollars. They said, you have no authority. You’re not the president. The president said—I said, call him.
“(Laughter.)
“I said, I’m telling you, you’re not getting the billion dollars. I said, you’re not getting the billion. I’m going to be leaving here in, I think it was about six hours. I looked at them and said: I’m leaving in six hours. If the prosecutor is not fired, you’re not getting the money. Well, son of a bitch. (Laughter.) He got fired. And they put in place someone who was solid at the time.”
Non-partisans may regard the boast as an admission of bribery: Investigate my son and you won’t get the dough. How long after Biden, for some time leading the Democrat presidential primary field, is elected president will Democrats in the House press for his impeachment using their new Trump impeachment standard?
In most countries, an application of pressure by the chief executive to
persuade a country to adopt a course of action would be considered, in a phrase
made famous by Otto von Bismarck, Realpolitik,
as common as table salt, and there is some indication that Trump was asking the new President of Ukraine to open an investigation of endemic corruption that necessarily must include the Bidens. The sainted President Barack Obama often engaged in Realpolitik, when he was not "leading from behind" in his foreign policy.
When New York Senator Chuck Schumer told CNN
recently that testimony from the Bidens should not be compelled in the upcoming Senate trial,
because to do so would “result in the process becoming a ‘circus’’, the clowns in
dark corners must have tittered. And when he said “This [impeachment] is an
august and solemn proceeding,” they likely gave vent to their belly laughs.
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