“The president’s actions have seriously violated the Constitution,” House Speaker Nancy Pelosi said during in a Thursday press briefing, asking the House Judiciary Committee to send articles of impeachment against President Trump to the full House of Representatives.
Pelosi told reporters that Trump “leaves us no choice but to act.”
Pelosi and the rest of the House Democratic leadership have evidently already decided that Trump should be impeached, arguing that he abused his power by allegedly withholding military aid to Ukraine in an effort to get that government to investigate the natural gas company former Vice President Joe Biden’s son, Hunter, was receiving about $50,000 per month from at the time.
Joe Biden is on videotape bragging to the Council on Foreign Relations (CFR), a globalist organization, that he pressured the Ukrainian government to fire the prosecutor who was investigating Burisma, the natural gas company that had his son on the payroll. Biden told the Ukrainians that if they did not fire that prosecutor (and thus terminate the investigation that could involve his son), the United States would cut off a billion dollars in aid to Ukraine.
Ukraine quickly fired the prosecutor at Biden’s command, and that was what President Trump asked the newly elected president of Ukraine to investigate. That seems like a logical thing to investigate, but that is why Pelosi argues Trump should be impeached.
“Sadly, but with confidence and humility, with allegiance to our founders, and our heart full of love for America, today I am asking our chairmen to proceed with the articles of impeachment,” Pelosi said. “The facts are uncontested. The president abused his power for his own personal political benefit at the expense of our national security by withholding military aid and [a] crucial oval office meeting in exchange for an announcement of an investigation into his political rival.”
After speaking for about six minutes, Pelosi declined to take any questions.
White House Press Secretary Stephanie Grisham did tweet a response to Pelosi, however, saying that the “Democrats should be ashamed,” arguing that Trump “has done nothing but lead our country resulting in a booming economy, more jobs & a stronger military, to name just a few of his major accomplishments.” Grisham added, “We look forward to a fair trial in the Senate,” clearly indicating that she did not believe the process in the House has been fair.
Trump himself weighed in shortly thereafter with his own tweet: “The Do Nothing, Radical Left Democrats have just announced that they are going to seek to impeach me over NOTHING. They already gave up on the ridiculous Mueller ‘stuff,’ so now they hang their hats on two totally appropriate (perfect) phone calls with the Ukrainian president.”
Like Pelosi, Trump appealed to the intentions of the Founders, who included a process of impeachment in the Constitution of the United States, providing that presidents could be impeached by the House of Representatives and potentially removed from office by the Senate for bribery, treason, or high crimes and misdemeanors, noting that the “seldom used act of impeachment will be used routinely to attack future presidents. That is not what our Founders had in mind.”
Since both Trump and Pelosi appealed to the Founders and the Constitution they crafted in order to reach opposite conclusions of how to proceed, it is pertinent to ask who is being more faithful to the Founders’ intentions in this particular case.
First of all, it is rather laughable that Nancy Pelosi would make an appeal to the intentions of the Founders, considering that she laughed and said, “Is that a serious question?” when someone asked her in 2009 just what part of the Constitution authorized Congress to enact a mandate for citizens to purchase health insurance.
Her argument that she is expressing “allegiance” to the Founders’ Constitution in this present instance is just as ludicrous. Asking a foreign leader to check into the Biden situation is hardly one of the four grounds to impeach a president. Biden very specifically threatened the termination of military aid unless a foreign government (Ukraine) fired a prosecutor who was investigating possible corruption into a company on which his son occupied a seat on its board, pulling down $50,000 per month. As chief law enforcement officer of the U.S. government, it would seem quite appropriate to ask the president of Ukraine to check into a situation in which a high-ranking U.S. government official (the vice president, who actually claimed that he was acting upon the approval of President Barack Obama) interfered with a criminal investigation by firing the prosecutor. (As an aside, perhaps some enterprising journalist should ask Obama if he approved of Biden’s actions).
Trump’s actions certainly were not a high crime or a misdemeanor, treason, or bribery, but Biden’s actions are highly questionable.
By tradition, the speaker of the House is supposed to be above the political parties, leaving partisanship more to the House majority leader. In fact, speakers have historically refrained from even voting, except in case of a tie vote. By publicly urging the House of Representatives to impeach Trump, Pelosi has certainly shed any pretense of objectivity. It reminds someone of the old western movies when the sheriff would say we need to have a fair trial first, then hang the criminal.
In obedience to Pelosi’s directive, however, House Judiciary Committee Chairman Jerrold Nadler announced Thursday that his committee will conduct a hearing on Monday morning on the evidence gathered during the impeachment inquiry. It is hard to imagine that the Founders would approve of what the House has done so far. It is also probable that they would be horrified that one political party is using an impeachment process for partisan purposes, simply because they do not like the president and his policies.
Trump expressed confidence that even if the House Democrats impeach him in an act of raw partisanship, “The good thing is that the Republicans have NEVER been more united. We will win!”
Photo: AP Images
Steve Byas is a university instructor of history and government and the author of the book, History’s Greatest Libels. He can be contacted at [email protected]
