Senate Shouldn’t Dignify Impeachment Parody With a Trial Assuming House Democrats ever manage to produce actual articles of impeachment. American Spectator, Sep 30, 2019, David Catron
Mitch McConnell told NPR last Friday that, if the House impeaches President Trump, “the Senate immediately goes into a trial.†This is music to Democratic ears, despite the infinitesimal chance of conviction, because they desperately need the sordid spectacle into which impeachment trials inevitably devolve. The Senate, however, isn’t required to try the President. That chamber possesses the “sole power to try all impeachments,†but is under no constitutional obligation to do so. The Democrats ignored House precedent and longstanding tradition to launch their “impeachment inquiry.†Why should Senate Republicans consider themselves bound by precedent and procedural rules where the trial is concerned?
The GOP can no longer afford to be timid about such niceties. The Democrats have long since declared war on Trump, the Republican Party, and the “deplorable†voters who support them. Senator Marsha Blackburn (R-TN) pointed out on the floor of the Senate last week that the Democrats began making plans for President Trump’s impeachment well before he was inaugurated. She noted that in December of 2016 the Democrats were already at work on a Senate bill whose sole purpose was to enable Democrats to exploit spurious conflict of interest allegations involving President-elect Trump’s business dealings and his official duties. The legislation was specifically conceived as an impeachment weapon:
The bill was tailor-made to transform conflict allegations into impeachable crimes. Keep in mind this bill was conceived before President Trump became President Trump. It was the beginning of a mission toward impeachment, even if they had to fabricate the means to get there. And let me tell you, they were determined to make it happen.… Yesterday, House Democrats, supported by their friends in the Senate, gathered to announce their intention to begin formal impeachment inquiries against President Trump.
This kind of skullduggery continues apace. The secret elimination of a requirement that whistleblowers provide first-hand knowledge of alleged wrongdoings was clearly carried out so hearsay could be used to launch investigations into “scandals†like Trump’s July conversation with the Ukrainian president. Last week we all watched as Adam Schiff (D-CA), Chairman of the House Permanent Select Committee on Intelligence, waved the transcript of that conversation in the air while he literally looked into the cameras and fabricated an excerpt. This is the man who will lead the impeachment inquiry. Must the Senate take his findings seriously? Bob Bauer, former White House Counsel in the Obama administration, thinks not:
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https://spectator.org/senate-shouldnt-dignify-impeachment-parody-with-a-trial/
