After three years of trying unsuccessfully to delegitimize President Trump and overturn the result of the 2016 presidential election and then holding the threat of impeachment over his head to undermine his presidency, House Democrats have decided that they’re actually going to try to impeach Trump.
First, it was Trump’s joke about Russia finding Hillary’s emails, then Stormy Daniels, then James Comey’s firing, Robert Mueller, two years of Russiagate — on and on and on. Every one of them was supposed to be an impeachable crime, and every one turned out to be a nothingburger.
Now, Democrats expect us to believe they really think this insignificant story about a congratulatory call to newly elected Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky is going to be the tipping point, even though they must know how desperate that makes them look. The transcript of the call, released Wednesday morning, does not legally amount to anything.
Speaker Nancy Pelosi’s announcement of a “formal impeachment inquiry” underscored just how vague, absurd, and desperate this ploy truly is. Pelosi spoke in sweeping generalizations about Trump’s supposed “violations of the law” and even accused the president of “violating the Constitution,” but she didn’t offer a single concrete example of how he did so. Now that the transcript has been released, we’ll see just how far Democrats are willing to go to spin the facts.
Because Pelosi is unwilling (or more likely unable) to describe what law or provision of the Constitution President Trump is supposed to have violated, let’s use this opportunity to set the record straight.
There is nothing in the Constitution that prevents a sitting president from calling his counterpart in Ukraine to congratulate him. There is also nothing that prohibits him discussing the need to investigate someone like Hunter Biden, who stands credibly accused of serious misconduct, regardless of whether his dad is running for president.
To suggest otherwise is pure, cynical political maneuvering: yet another #Resistance fantasy based on wishful thinking and little else.
In her speech to the media Tuesday, Pelosi also accused acting Director of National Intelligence Joseph Maquire of breaking the law. Rules around whistleblowers are complex and subject to interpretation, but I can tell you one thing for certain: They don’t require the director of national intelligence to forward the private diplomatic communications of the president to Congress just because a partisan leaker eager to cooperate with Democrats wrote up a report based on rumors about a conversation he didn’t even hear.
As with the Russia collusion hoax, we know about this so-called whistleblower because (ta-da!) his or her account was leaked to the press.
Even now, Democrats aren’t actually willing to go all-in on impeachment with this garbage because they know that would be political suicide for their party. This is because there are more questions than answers. What’s the actual offense? What’s the timeline for inquiry? Why won’t Pelosi call a vote today if she really believes they have found the smoking gun?
Instead, as they have so many times before, they’ve gone for minimum commitment and maximum opportunity to keep a baseless smear in the news cycle for as long as possible.
Hence this “formal impeachment inquiry” nonsense. There will likely be no vote, just month after month of anti-climactic hearings like the ones the Democrats held with Michael Cohen, James Comey, Robert Mueller, and countless others.
The impeachment and removal process is intended to be nonpartisan and nonpolitical. There are few and narrowly defined legal bases upon which impeachment can be initiated constitutionally. Article II, Section 4 sets forth those bases: “treason, bribery, or other high crimes and misdemeanors.” So I ask Democrats, exactly which of these has Trump actually violated?
The nonpartisan constitutional answer is none. That should matter to us whether you’re a registered Democrat, Republican, or independent: We all should require our government to uphold and respect the rule of law and not abuse political power simply because the opposition party does not like the sitting president.
If the last three years of witch hunts and hysterical hyperbole aren’t enough to convince you that this is solely about politics, consider that Pelosi and her cronies jumped down this rabbit hole without even seeing the transcript of the conversation that they’re so certain violated the Constitution. Luckily, we all have the facts before us now that Trump has released the transcript of his own volition — a move that in and of itself shows his consistent transparency while the Democrats’ reach continues to exceed their grasp.
I don’t envy Pelosi’s position now that she’s left to conduct her “formal impeachment inquiry” in the absence of even the flimsy pretense she started with. But clearly none of the Democrats care about facts or truth.
Jenna Ellis Rives (@JennaEllisRives) is a member of the Trump 2020 Advisory Board. She is a constitutional law attorney, radio host, and the author of The Legal Basis for a Moral Constitution.
