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So determined is House Judiciary Committee chairman Jerry Nadler (D-N.Y.) to impeach the president that he is breaking 200 years of precedents to do so.
Two hundred years of precedents declare that the House must first authorize its Judiciary Committee to open a formal impeachment inquiry. Only then can that committee proceed with an investigation to determine if the president has committed crimes worthy of impeachment. If such evidence is uncovered, then the full House must vote to approve one (or more) of the committee’s articles of impeachment.
If an article is (or articles are) approved, then the Senate may approve but only through a “supermajority” vote, or 67 senators.
Nadler, apparently, couldn’t care less. On Monday he is directing his Democrat-controlled committee to put the final touches on a “resolution” that would define just how his committee would conduct impeachment hearings, if given the chance. He is pushing to have his “resolution” voted on by the House on Wednesday.
That committee’s ranking minority member Doug Collins (R-Ga.) told Fox News on Sunday that “this is simply a show, a travesty, and frankly they should be ashamed.… This is really pathetic. Nothing like this has ever happened in the House before.… If they really want to do this, they have to bring impeachment to the floor. This is simply a show.”
More than 100 members of the Democratic House caucus agree with Collins, along with Democrat presidential candidate Representative Tulsi Gabbard (D-Hawaii), who said: “I don’t support impeachment.… Continuing to pursue impeachment is something that I think will only further tear our country apart.… We need to defeat Donald Trump. But I think it’s important … that the voters in this country are the ones who do that.”
And the voters, according to recent polls, aren’t interested in doing any such thing. The latest Monmouth University poll reported that barely a third of Americans polled think Trump should be impeached while 59 percent are opposed to impeachment. This squares with the results of the last three polls conducted by USAToday/Suffolk University. Its latest poll showed 57 percent opposed to 37 percent favoring impeachment.
Ford O’Connell, a professor at George Washington University and a Republican presidential strategist, thinks that as long as House Speaker Nancy Pelosi is in charge, Nadler’s efforts are going nowhere. He stated,
Nancy Pelosi is a pretty good student of history and she recognizes what a disaster this would be so close to the 2020 election.… She knows better.
That history would include the election results following the impeachment of Bill Clinton by a House Republican majority in 1998. Democrats gained seats in the House that year and another handful in both chambers two years later.
David Weinstein, a former assistant U.S. attorney, said that Nadler has “moved off of ‘do we have enough evidence? What’s the standard of proof? Is it a high crime and misdemeanor?’ and [instead] it’s become a complete political question.” He added: “There’s a lot at stake for the Democrats [if] they take a shot and miss.”
One of the committee’s aides responsible for finalizing the draft told the New York Times that, if passed by the House on Wednesday, it will allow the committee to “get around normal House rules” that presently limit its ability to accuse the president of crimes and would instead allow the committee to “speed up its work.”
Even if Nadler’s gambit fails, six other House committees are currently busy investigating the president for evidence of crimes of potentially profiting from public office, abusing his power, obstructing justice, or being under the influence of foreign governments.
For the American voter, impeachment is a dead issue. For far-left Democrats such as Nadler, efforts to impeach by circumventing 200 years of precedent sound more and more like the dying gasp of a failing effort to remove the president from office.
Photo: Kameleon007 / iStock / Getty Images Plus
An Ivy League graduate and former investment advisor, Bob is a regular contributor to The New American, primarily on economics and politics. He can be reached at [email protected].
