It’s all over but for the grinding of teeth – and the
possibility down the road, if President Donald Trump is reelected to office, of
yet another impeachment debacle.
“Trump Acquitted” a Hartford paper blared on its front page –
to no one’s surprise. The impeachment indictment in the U.S. House, controlled
by Democrats, and an acquittal in the U.S. Senate, controlled by Republicans,
were both foregone conclusions because, though the trappings of the proceedings
in both chambers are quasi-judicial, the process is entirely a political
affair.
The charges hauled into the Senate by Adam Schiff, a
Democrat impeachment manager from the House, were that Trump had 1) abused the
powers of the presidency and 2) obstructed Congress by ordering members of his staff
not to testify in a House impeachment proceeding. The second charge was so
broad and amorphous that, had the president been convicted of obstruction of
Congress in the Senate, the conviction would have prevented all future
presidents from conducting business as usual in the executive office. Trump was
hardly the first President, nor will he be the last, to guard the
constitutional prerequisites of his office by refusing to allow his staff to
present in public legitimately guarded information that could not be publicized
without eroding presidential powers. The second charge was, be it noted,
obstruction of Congress, not obstruction of justice.
The second charge itself “raises some interesting questions,”
as the politicians say, none of which will be put to any of the members of
Connecticut’s all-Democrat U.S. Congressional Delegation. Can the Democrat
leader of the House be impeached on a charge of obstruction of Congress when he
or she opposes legislative measures supported in the Republican Senate? Can a
president be impeached for having obstructed Congress when he or she vetoes a
piece of legislation approved by both chambers?
No criminal activity was imputed by the House, and no criminal charges
against Trump were referred by the House to the Senate.
The abuse of power charge was difficult to prosecute
successfully for political reasons. The charge was that the President had abused
his power by forcing the newly elected President of Ukraine to investigate
Hunter Biden, the son of then Vice President Joe Biden, currently running for
president on the Democrat ticket, for having accepted a questionable salary
from a corrupt Ukranian natural gas producer, Burisma. It is difficult to demonstrate
force had been applied when the President of Ukraine indicated he was unaware
of a delay in aid until after the money awarded by Congress to Ukraine was
disbursed.
During the House proceedings, Democrats seemed to be unaware
that they were setting precedents for future impeachments. Were the House charges against Trump to be upheld in the Senate and the president to be removed from
office months before a general election, would a future Democrat House be
obliged to impeach newly installed Democrat President Joe Biden, assuming Biden’s
presidential bid were to be successful, for having threatened the President of
Ukraine that he and Obama would withhold military aid to the country until such
time as a prosecutor investigating Burisma – and, not incidentally, the Vice
President’s son -- were to be fired?
Connecticut’s
two U.S Senators, Dick Blumenthal and Chris Murphy, have not been asked such
questions. Indeed, Murphy himself traveled to Ukraine and cautioned the as yet
uncorrupted new President of the country, Volodymyr Zelensky, that
"... he should not insert himself or his government into American
politics. I cautioned him that complying with the demands of the President's
campaign representatives to investigate a political rival of the President
would gravely damage the U.S.-Ukraine relationship," according
to a story in Politico by John Solomon.
Political columnists who write stories without mentioning
the part played by the Bidens in Ukrainian corruption are setting themselves an
impossible task -- comparable to writing an exhaustive study of the Elizabethan
Age without mentioning Shakespeare. The thing cannot be done.
Speaking before the UConn School of Law, Murphy told
the group, “I would hold a Democrat to the same standard” that Democrats in the
House and Senate have applied to Trump. God willing, he may yet have a chance
to test his moral resolve.
Under the hammer blows of extreme partisanship, the accepted
meaning of words is grotesquely distorted. Blumenthal told NBC News Connecticut, “The ultimate verdict [of acquittal] is no vindication. It’s meaningless
in terms of guilt or innocence,” This from a man who was for more than two
decades the Attorney General of Connecticut.
The literal meaning
of “acquit” is to be quit or free of a charge or obligation. Blumenthal has
something else in mind. What he really
meant to say to NBC is that formal Congressional acquittal on impeachment charges will
not dissuade Democrats from their unrelenting attempts to remove Trump from
office -- even after the 2020 November elections, should Trump be reelected.
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