The Banality of Impeachment The hearings are a pro-forma march to a foregone conclusion.
https://www.wsj.com/articles/the-banality-of-impeachment-11573689793
House Democrats went public Wednesday with what the media are calling “historic” impeachment hearings, but what strikes us is the pre-cooked nature of the exercise. This isn’t a search for truth. It’s a set-piece production to promote a foregone conclusion. Democrats are turning impeachment into another partisan banality, and the country won’t be better for it.
House Intelligence Chairman Adam Schiff plans only five days of public hearings, and he has already heard the witnesses in secret. Mr. Schiff won’t allow most witnesses requested by Republicans, notably the whistleblower who started it all and Hunter Biden. Perhaps Democrats have some new bombshell they’ve uncovered, but that has not been the pattern. What they learn, they quickly leak to the impeachment press.
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The impeachment case—after the failure of non-collusion with Russia and the non-obstruction of Robert Mueller —now boils down to President Trump’s dealings over a few weeks this summer with new Ukraine President Volodymyr Zelensky. Readers who want to save time should read Mr. Schiff’s opening statement Wednesday because it offers the most damning interpretation of events.
Mr. Schiff’s claim is that Mr. Trump sought to “condition, coerce, extort or bribe an ally into conducting investigations to aid his re-election campaign.” He did this by having his Administration threaten to withhold U.S. military aid and deny an Oval Office meeting until Mr. Zelensky publicly announced a corruption probe. That sums up the case.
We are not defending Mr. Trump’s phone call with Mr. Zelensky or any plan to deny military aid. Sending his personal lawyer, Rudy Giuliani, to lobby Ukrainian officials outside formal U.S. diplomatic channels was dumb, ran counter to Mr. Trump’s own policy, and was ultimately self-destructive.
Mr. Giuliani was hardly quiet about his efforts, and it appears that most of the American bureaucracy had heard something about it. Mr. Trump’s former national security adviser, John Bolton, opposed it. In the end the aid was delivered and Mr. Zelensky never began a corruption investigation. Like much else in this Administration, Mr. Trump’s worst impulses were blocked.
Mr. Schiff says this is still an impeachable “abuse of power” because criminals can be prosecuted if their attempts fail. But there is no underlying crime here. Democrats have given up calling it a “quid pro quo,” which must not have played well in polling. Instead they are using “extortion” and “bribery” to suggest a crime without citing any specific statute.
The Justice Department has already dismissed the bribery claim because there was no “thing of value” exchanged. And the extortion charge is absurd regarding U.S. aid to a foreign government.
American Presidents have long asked foreign leaders for actions or policy cooperation that serve a President’s personal political interest. Recall when President Obama was caught in 2012 on a hot mic telling then-Russian President Dmitry Medvedev to ask Vladimir Putin to give him diplomatic “space” until after Mr. Obama’s re-election when he would have more room to maneuver on the issue of missile defenses. He was under fire from Republicans for being soft on Russia, so that surely was a request in Mr. Obama’s personal political interest.
Appropriate requests to foreign leaders include reducing corruption, which was one of Mr. Zelensky’s campaign planks. Joe Biden and Hunter Biden don’t have immunity from such a probe simply because Joe Biden is running for office against Mr. Trump.
If Democrats think that mentioning the Bidens is impeachable, they should also investigate the political context in which Mr. Trump made this request. That would include calling Hunter Biden, as well as Alexandra Chalupa, a contractor for the Democratic National Committee who allegedly worked with Ukrainian officials in 2016 on opposition research against the Trump campaign. If there’s nothing to Mr. Trump’s claims here, wouldn’t this boost the Democratic impeachment case with the American public?
Mr. Trump’s actions also can’t be separated from Democratic attempts in 2016 to use Russian disinformation to unleash an FBI counterintelligence operation against the Trump campaign. This was one of the dirtiest political tricks in history, yet Democrats and the impeachment press justify it to this day.
Mr. Trump’s Giuliani gambit failed amid opposition from his own government. The Clinton-financed Steele dossier worked in triggering an FBI probe that eventually morphed into the Mueller investigation that undermined the Trump Presidency for two years. When it comes to inviting foreign meddling in U.S. politics, Democrats and the impeachment press have a double standard.
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In a healthier political culture, Democrats would be using the Ukraine episode as an argument against Mr. Trump’s re-election. How can you trust his foreign-policy judgment in a second term when he won’t have the check of another re-election?
Instead Democrats have pulled out the constitutional bazooka of impeachment. They are doing so in partisan fashion, contrary to their earlier pledges, and in a political rush to beat the 2020 political calendar. On the evidence and the process to date, they are turning impeachment into a routine political weapon, and future Presidents of both parties will regret it.
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