The Asterisk Impeachment

The House of Representatives impeached President Trump but they failed to name an actual crime and instead went for Abuse of Power and added in a second charge of Obstruction of Congress.

Taking the second part first, it's true that the White House ordered witnesses not to cooperate with the impeachment. The justification was a combination of executive authority and an objection to the rules being used by the Democrats. This should have been referred to the courts to sort out. Rather than doing that the Democrats rushed the impeachment.

The first article list several allegations about the phone call and the president of Ukraine. None of the witnesses called during the hearings had first-hand knowledge of and wrong-doing. This should have been referred to a special prosecutor. But, again, the Democrats were in a rush and that would have taken months or years. What was not included was a list of law that President Trump broke. That's because Trump did nothing outright illegal. You have to assume his state of mind in order to infer criminal intent. Was the President actually trying to get a political advantage on one of the 24 Democratic candidates or had he seen the video of Biden on Fox and sincerely thought that it merited further investigation? The House Democrat pretend to know but they lack proof.

The whole impeachment was rushed and incomplete. The House Democrats have even admitted this. They are trying to get additional evidence and have suggested filing additional articles of impeachment.

The Democrats are also trying set the rules for the Senate trial. For Bill Clinton's Senate trial, there were no witnesses, just transcripts of testimony. House Speaker Nancy Pelosi is insisting that this time there be a full trial with new witnesses. Again, this shows how rushed the House proceedings were. The House should have gone to court to get a definitive answer on how far executive privilege stretches.

It is obvious that the House Democrats do not care about following proper procedures. They already tried that with the Russian collusion investigation but the Mueller Report failed to find anything actionable. They are not willing to wait months or years for a second investigation that may also turn up nothing.

The Democrats know that there is no way they can force Donald Trump from office. That's no longer the goal of the impeachment.

Last Summer the lawyer representing Christine Blasey Ford when she testified prior to the confirmation of Justice Kavanaugh admitted that Ford's real goal was not to stop Kavanaugh from being confirmed. The real goal was to put an asterisk on the justice. "He will always have an asterisk next to his name. When he takes a scalpel to Roe v. Wade, we will know who he is, we know his character, and we know what motivates him, and that is important; it is important that we know, and that is part of what motivated Christine."

That's all the Democrats are left with President Trump: putting an asterisk on his name. WaPo columnist and Trump-hater Eugene Robinson calls it the "Asterisk of shame".

It's possible that Nancy Pelosi is holding off transmitting the Articles of Impeachment in order to stretch out the process. She knows that the President will be acquitted as soon as the case goes to the Senate.

This whole thing is likely to backfire on the Democrats. Trump's approval rating has already improved and the Republicans have raised tens of millions in donations.

The Democrats have done as much damage as they can by voting to impeach the President. If they try to go any further then they risk putting an asterisk on themselves as the Congress that used impeachment for political gain.

Impeachment Narratives

In their report to the House, the Judiciary Committee admitted that none of President Trump's actions were outright illegal but still claimed that they were improper because the committee could read the President's mind (they actually said this). This echos a judge ruling on Trump's immigration pause who admitted that it was within the President's power but still issued an injunction based on the President's motives.

But what if the Judiciary Committee got it wrong? The impeachment is all about narrative. Their narrative is that Trump was trying to hurt the Democrats' inevitable nominee by forcing a foreign power to publicly open an investigation on actions that may have benefited his son. But there are other narratives possible.

My narrative is that Trump saw a clip of Biden bragging about getting the Ukrainian prosecutor fired on Fox News and thought that there was legitimate cause for concern so he mentioned it in his phone call to the Ukrainian president. It wasn't an important point to Trump. He was more interested in Crowdstrike and who hacked the DNC in 2016 but it was a concern to him.

My narrative also says that Trump first learned about the aid to Ukraine in the Washington Examiner and put a hold on it out of concern that the US is under an unfair burden as the only country supporting Ukraine. Trump started the phone call by making that statement - that no one else is helping them. The hold on the aid was renewed a few times until Trump was convinced that it was justified and the money was released in mid-September without anyone in Ukraine knowing about it.

There is nothing remotely impeachable in my narrative and there's more evidence to support my version than the narrative the House is using.

This is not the first time that something Trump has said was given a different spin. During the election he called on any country that had hacked Hillary Clinton's emails to release the ones she had deleted. This was a joke but one with an edge. Trump was reminding us that Clinton had kept her emails on a poorly-secured server and that she had deleted more than 30 thousand of them before turning the other 30 thousand to the government. But the Clinton campaign immediately spun this as Trump asking a foreign power to hack into her emails and suggested that this was treasonous. Trump had done no such thing. Clinton's server was already offline and in FBI custody. He was suggesting it had already been hacked. Regardless, the media clutched their pearls and went with the Clinton spin.

The same thing has happened with the impeachment. You don't even have to assume the best of Trump to go with my narrative. You just have to look at how he operates (Fox News conspiracies and resentment over Europeans not contributing enough to NATO). None of the witnesses who testified could go beyond "I heard" or "I assumed". We still don't officially know who the whistle-blower who started this mess is or what his motivations are. That his name is still officially secret is telling. Supposedly they are keeping it secret for fear that his life will be threatened but at this point he would just be one of many witnesses against the President. Why should he get different treatment?

All of this smells to high heaven. The Democrats have been wanting to impeach the President since the day after election. They already had four impeachment votes over four different "offenses". When asked about the speed of the impeachment, Nancy Pelosi responded saying "We've been working on impeaching him for 22 months, two and a half years." That was the length of the Mueller investigation which was supposed to provide justification for impeachment but failed. This current effort seems too much like a last-ditch effort to impeach.

Look at how this differs from the Nixon and Clinton impeachments. Those rose out of criminal referrals by independent investigators. Both of those began with a full House vote. Both of those were of a president in his second term.

In contrast, there has been no criminal referral or independent investigation. It was all done internally in the House. And Trump is still in his first term with an election less than a year away.

The Democrats' conduct makes it appear that this is nothing but a political stunt. This is reinforced by public statements they have made. At this point the Democrats know that they have no case and no chance of having President Trump removed from office. It's nothing but a mean-spirited desire to add an asterisk to Trump's name.