Cirque d’Impeachment

Alright. Let’s talk about the impeachment of President Donald Trump. Everyone has surely heard a snippet here and there, and everyone and their mother has an opinion on it. As always, I recommend everyone doing their own research and coming to a conclusion about the impeachment process so far, but if you don’t have that much time then pay attention here.

The House of Representatives formally voted to impeach President Trump on December 18, 2019. The charges brought up against him are abuse of power (or The President’s Misconduct, per the report from the House Permanent Select Committee on Intelligence) and obstruction of Congress (The President’s Obstruction of the House of Representatives’ Impeachment Inquiry). These two fancy phrases mean that the President is alleged to have conditioned aid money to be given on the terms of an investigation into former Vice President Joe Biden and his son, Hunter Biden, who is a board member of a Ukrainian gas company named Burisma. The second article is just as it sounds, that the President is alleged to obstruct the House of Representatives in the investigation for the grounds of impeachment.

The first article of impeachment is founded on the idea that the President conducted himself in such a way as to help his own political career, since one of the targets of these investigations is Joe Biden himself. One reason being that Mr. Biden allegedly leveraged his role as the Vice President and withheld federal aid money earmarked for Ukraine in exchange for the removal of a corrupt Ukrainian prosecutor who was involved with Burisma. The prosecutor was fired for the failure of an investigation of Burisma, according to co-founder of the Ukrainian Anti-Corruption Action Center Daria Kaleniuk. From researched conducted for this article, it appears that an investigation into Burisma following the removal of the Ukrainian prosecutor has not been started (or re-started).

The second article deals with obstruction of Congress. This is a curious one that hinges on directives from the President to ignore congressional subpoenas. A congressional subpoena is not the same as a subpoena coming from a court of law. Such subpoenas coming from the courts would carry much more weight if they were ignored. Subpoenas sent to other officials who were told to not attend the impeachment hearings were voluntary congressional subpoenas. The key word in that last sentence is voluntary. Trump did not keep all of colleagues out of the hearings, and key officials did make themselves present to participate in hearings for the process. This indicates that even if Trump did make a concerted effort to keep his people out of the hearings, all members were subjected to their own free will to either attend or skip the hearings.

So what exactly are we looking at here? Is this an honest impeachment investigation into President Trump, or is it a misguided distraction to keep Joe Biden as a Democratic frontrunner by keeping attention off of the Ukrainian investigations which have happened, failed, and possibly started again? Is it a partisan reach due to the Democrats’ strange but strong dislike of President Trump since his 2016 campaign? Is the obstruction of Congress article even legitimate, or just another reach to attempt and pad the case against him? Is this total nonsense aimed at directing attention away from Jeffrey Epstein’s mysterious death and horrible past which may be implicating others in the same room as the articles of impeachment were drafted? Who knows. The articles must now be sent to the Senate for a vote which will convict or acquit the President for these allegations. Hopefully the American people will get an answer soon.

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