Sen. Dianne Feinstein indicated that she might vote to acquit Trump – and then recanted. By Andrea Widburg
On Tuesday, Trump’s lawyers ended their arguments before the Senate against Trump’s impeachment. In contrast to the Democrats’ 24-hour marathon of imagination, mind-reading, invective, and hysteria, Trump’s team presented tight constitutional and factual arguments of the type every lawyer loves best: Using the oppositions’ own facts and arguments against them.
On Monday, Pam Bondi revealed what the impeachment is really about: The very serious possibility that Joe Biden used his position as Vice President to obtain unreasonably lucrative jobs for his alcoholic, coke-addled son, a man without skills or morals.
In a presentation that even arch-Progressive Talking Head Jeffrey Toobin conceded was damaging to Biden, Bondi introduced mainstream media footage showing that, despite a complete lack of qualifications, Hunter got an $83,000 a month gig in Ukraine, one that required almost no work and that made no demands on his non-existent skills. At the same time, said Bondi, the average American family earned less than $54,000 a year.
Bondi’s argument underscored that the scandal isn’t that Trump was trying to investigate corruption in the American government; the scandal is that the Democrats are running a sham impeachment so that the object of that corruption investigation can become President of the United States.
Tuesday’s arguments were equally compelling – in large part Pat Cipollone relied on the really excellent arguments against impeachment that Democrats made . . . in 1998, during Bill Clinton’s impeachment:
No wonder, then, that Dianne Feinstein, after hearing the defense’s closing arguments, suddenly sounded conciliatory:
“Nine months left to go, the people should judge. We are a republic, we are based on the will of the people — the people should judge,” Feinstein said Tuesday, after the president’s team finished a three-day presentation in his defense. “That was my view and it still is my view.”
At the same time, Feinstein started waffling on about an imaginary constitution that requires Congress, rather than the citizens of the United States, to pass judgment on a president’s character:
Still, she indicated that arguments in the trial about Trump’s character and fitness for office had left her undecided. “What changed my opinion as this went on,” she said, is a realization that “impeachment isn’t about one offense. It’s really about the character and ability and physical and mental fitness of the individual to serve the people, not themselves.”
That’s not at all what the Constitution demands of Congress in an impeachment. Impeachment has a single goal, which is to remove from office a president guilty of “Treason, Bribery, or other high Crimes and Misdemeanors.”
The Founders wanted to have a mechanism to remove without waiting for an election a president who engaged in illegal acts that, were they not addressed immediately, could destroy the nation. As President Trump’s defense team wisely pointed out, what’s happening here is that the Democrats dislike Trump and disagree with the way in which he’s exercising his constitutional authority over foreign policy. Liking or disliking policy initiatives, however, is the voters’ purview, not Congress’s.
Although Feinstein hid behind constitutional wafflegab, it’s reasonable to believe that her real fear is that Biden will be shown to be corrupt. With Bernie rising in the polls, having Biden mired in a scandal is a nightmare. Worse, if Biden’s corruption is revealed, Obama too will finally stand exposed as a man who countenanced corruption in his administration.
Feinstein may also have been sending up a trial balloon that got shot down. Immediately after stating quite clearly that she was seriously thinking (correctly) that it’s the People’s job to approve or disapprove of Trump’s foreign policy, she walked her statement back:
After those remarks were published, Feinstein issued a statement saying she had been misunderstood.
“Before the trial I said I’d keep an open mind. Now that both sides made their cases, it’s clear the president’s actions were wrong. He withheld vital foreign assistance for personal political gain. That can’t be allowed to stand.”
More wafflegab. It’s probable that Feinstein either got an earful from her uber-left California constituents or from her fellow Democrats.
The important takeaway is that Democrats, rather than feeling triumphant, are nervous. Right now, a lot of them are googling “What does it mean to be hoisted on one’s own petard”?
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