RUTHFULLY YOURS

When it looked as if Democrats last year were going to try to impeach the already-impeached Donald Trump again after he left the White House, the Congressional Research Service said: “​​It appears that most scholars who have closely examined the question have concluded that Congress has authority to extend the impeachment process to officials who are no longer in office.” If so, should the Republicans take Congress as expected, they ought to impeach Hillary Clinton.

During the entire four-year Trump presidency, the American people were deluged with fake “Russia, Russia Russia” news. The mainstream media would not let up on the unfounded accusations that Trump was a stooge of Russian strongman Vladimir Putin, and there existed a dossier that proved it. It was a connection, said more than one talking head, that meant that Trump was not a legitimate president.

Of course it turned out the dossier was a literal pack of lies – and financed by Clinton and her party.

But that didn’t stop Clinton, the Democrat candidate whose “turn” it was to be president, from approving one of the dirtiest political tricks in U.S. history to, first, severely wound Trump’s election chances, then second, damage his presidency.

Last week we learned from Clinton’s 2016 campaign manager Robby Mook that she personally approved planting a false claim that Trump had Moscow connections. Mook was testifying in the trial of Michael Sussmann, who is believed to have shopped lies about Trump to the FBI as a Clinton operative though he claimed he was acting alone. Mook’s statement under oath confirms that those who’ve argued for years that Clinton has engaged in crooked behavior have been right.

Politics have been a dirty business since the founding of the American republic. But the Clinton campaign, with the aid of the now hard-left media, did its best to undermine an election that was as honest as we can expect. If the power-mad former U.S. senator and secretary of state could have used the faux scandal she and her cabal set in motion to find a way to overturn the election, she most certainly would have. It sounds a lot like … insurrection.

At worst, her conduct, including using federal agencies to do her dirty work, might be criminal and deserving of a prison sentence. Minimally, though, Clinton should be impeached by the House, then prosecuted in the Senate. If two-thirds of the chamber convicts her, then she will carry the stink of corruption on her for the rest of her life. That would be the least of her deserved punishments.

Undoing Joe Biden’s mountain of policy errors will take effort and time, and enough support among Republicans to override two years of presidential vetoes. But Clinton has to be punished for her offenses. To let her slide would be an injustice.