If this weren’t so serious and placed the fiber of the Republic in jeopardy, it would be hilarious.
Source: Georgette
It’s always interesting to see the machinations of liberals, and the impeachment ‘report’ just released is a prime example. In fact, if it weren’t for the seriousness of the situation, it would be extremely amusing to see the childish, muddled, and ridiculous accusations this democrat-led, partisan process has engendered.
Keep in mind that history indicates that everything a liberal accuses someone else of doing… is exactly the crime they have already committed.
Basically, the vague accusations released by Adam Schiff center on obstruction of justice and abuse of power. But, voters are supposed to forget all the evidence that proves such actions did not occur.
“The impeachment inquiry into Donald J. Trump, the 45th President of the United States, uncovered a months-long effort by President Trump to use the powers of his office to solicit foreign interference on his behalf in the 2020 election. As described in this executive summary and the report that follows, President Trump’s scheme subverted U.S. foreign policy toward Ukraine and undermined our national security in favor of two politically motivated investigations that would help his presidential reelection campaign,” the report stated.
“The President demanded that the newly-elected Ukrainian president, Volodymyr Zelensky, publicly announce investigations into a political rival that he apparently feared the most, former Vice President Joe Biden, and into a discredited theory that it was Ukraine, not Russia, that interfered in the 2016 presidential election. To compel the Ukrainian President to do his political bidding, President Trump conditioned two official acts on the public announcement of the investigations: a coveted White House visit and critical U.S. military assistance Ukraine needed to fight its Russian adversary,” the report continued.
The letter comes after House Republicans released their report on Monday on the impeachment inquiry into Trump.
The 123-page report, which was written by Republican staffers of the House Intelligence, Oversight, and Foreign Affairs panels, says that the evidence provided by Democrats is not enough to impeach the president and called the Democrats’ continued efforts to impeach Trump “an orchestrated campaign to upend our political system,” Roll Call reported.
The White House told House Democrats on Sunday that they will not take part in the House Judiciary Committee’s first impeachment hearing, after being invited by House Judiciary Chairman Jerry Nadler.
The news comes after Nadler asked Trump on Friday if he would be sending his lawyers to the impeachment hearing scheduled for Dec. 4. Nadler also asked Republicans on the House Judiciary Committee which witnesses they plan to ask permission to subpoena for the hearings in letters sent to Trump, the Associated Press reported.
Despite House Speaker Nancy Pelosi’s early reluctance to push for impeachment, there are currently 228 Democrats who support impeachment or an impeachment inquiry. Pelosi has said she believes Trump is “goading” Democrats to impeach him because he thinks it will help him fire up his base.
The Republican National Committee (RNC) raised approximately $1 million dollars the day after Pelosi came out in favor of the impeachment of Trump for the first time after meeting with her caucus.
Democrats have continued to send congressional subpoenas to those close to Trump for documents related to the ongoing scandal regarding Trump’s phone call with the President of Ukraine and whether Trump asked him to investigate former Vice President Joe Biden in exchange for U.S. military aid to Ukraine. The House Intelligence, Foreign Affairs, and Oversight committees are all investigating Trump, his cabinet members, and closest allies.
Many of Pelosi’s Democratic colleagues previously pushed for impeaching Trump, including Democratic Texas Rep. Al Green, who broke with Pelosi when he vowed to force a vote to impeach Trump in late March. Green, who previously had several bills to impeach Trump overwhelmingly rejected by the House of Representatives, called for a third impeachment vote. Pelosi said impeachment was “just not worth it” in a March interview.
Breitbart News reported on the substance of the Schiff-drafted accusations:
The full report was initially unavailable on the House Intelligence Committee website, which was overloaded. However, the executive summary laid out the broad outlines of the Democrats’ case.
One part focuses on the substance of the allegations against the president; the other claims that he obstructed the committee’s investigation.
There is no mention of “bribery,” nor any crime except witness intimidation (see below). The report never spells out any precise grounds for impeachment, though it appears to argue that Trump abused his power.
(As former Obama administration official Cass Sunstein wrote in 2017, “abuse of power” is an insufficient basis for impeachment, because it would apply to every president, all of whom arguably overstepped the bounds of their authority.)
In the first part of the report, Schiff and his committee use the term “political favor” to describe President Trump’s request to Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky that he investigate possible interference in the 2016 election, as well as possible corruption by former Vice President Joe Biden and his son, Hunter, who was appointed to the board of Burisma, a Ukrainian company suspected of corrupt practices.
The report appears to ignore the fact that Democrats’ own witnesses acknowledged that Ukraine “bet on the wrong horse” in 2016, and that the Obama administration itself had been concerned about Joe Biden’s self-evident conflict of interest.
The report claims that the first step in the president’s “scheme” involved removing U.S. Ambassador Marie Yovanovitch, whom it describes as an “anti-corruption champion.”
The report does not acknowledge that she had already lost the confidence of President Zelensky, or that she testified that she had done nothing to investigate Burisma’s alleged corruption, even though it was the only private company she had been briefed about in advance of her confirmation hearings.
The report goes on to describe the president’s “hand-picked agents” in sinister terms, even though most of these — particularly Secretary of Energy Rick Perry and Special Representative Kurt Volker — were described in positive terms by the witnesses.
The report implies that there was something wrong with the president conducting foreign policy through an “irregular channel,” though there is nothing in the Constitution preventing him from doing so, and some witnesses said it was not unusual or objectionable.
The Democrats’ report states, falsely, that President Trump halted “vital military assistance” to Ukraine. As several witnesses testified, the aid that was held did not include Javelin anti-tank missiles, which Ukraine considered most vital to its defense. And as nearly every witness also testified, President Trump provided lethal military aid — unlike President Barack Obama, who denied it.
The report claims that the president made a White House meeting conditional on the investigations he requested, even though several witnesses claimed otherwise, and the only witness to claim that “quid pro quo,” Ambassador to the E.U. Gordon Sondland, admitted that he never heard the president make that condition, and merely presumed it.
In one section, the report declares ominously, “The President’s Agents Pursued a ‘Drug Deal’.” That term was used by former National Security Adviser John Bolton — though as key Democrat witness Dr. Fiona Hill testified, Bolton had been using the term as “an ironic and sarcastic statement,” not a serious description of an actual negotiation.
The report goes on to declare that Trump “pressed” Zelensky to “do a political favor,” though Zelensky has repeatedly said that there was no pressure and no “quid pro quo” in his dealings with the Trump administration.
The Democrats also place great evidentiary weight on vague testimony that the Ukrainian embassy in Washington was aware of the hold on the aid, ignoring clear testimony from a variety of witnesses that the Ukrainians were not aware of the hold on U.S. aid until Politico reported it on August 28. And even then, according to several witnesses and the Ukrainian government, there was never any link between the hold on the aid and the investigations.
The report goes on to quote White House Chief of Staff Mick Mulvaney — who did not testify — as having said in October that aid was conditioned on investigations. In fact, Mulvaney later clarified: “Let me be clear, there was absolutely no quid pro quo between Ukrainian military aid and any investigation into the 2016 election.”
In the second part of the report, Democrats accuse Trump of obstructing the impeachment inquiry, without noting that it began without congressional authorization, was largely handled in closed-door sessions, and departed from well-established precedent by denying the White House legal representation.
Schiff’s report claims that the White House tried to stop witnesses from testifying, though there were several members of the administration who did so, and who testified that no one had told them not to. The report also accuses Trump of witness intimidation through public criticism of several witnesses, as well as tweets criticizing some of those who testified against him, including claims that they were “Never Trumpers.”
Further, Schiff investigated Nunes as part of his impeachment inquiry, the committee report states. “The revelation that Schiff had obtained telephone records related to Nunes was the only new revelation in the report, which otherwise re-hashed Democrats’ arguments in favor of impeaching Trump for allegedly asking Ukraine to interfere in the 2020 election,” Breitbart News reported.
Republicans released their own dissenting report Monday. They were allowed to see the committee majority’s report on Monday evening — with a Democrat “minder,” behind closed door, in the Sensitive Compartmentalized Information Facility (SCIF) in the basement of the U.S. capitol.
Following a vote in the committee, which will be along party lines, the Democrats will present their report to the House Judiciary Committee, which is to consider articles of impeachment against the president.
