What Now Exactly Are Impeachable Offenses? Victor Davis Hanson
https://victorhanson.com/what-now-exactly-are-impeachable-offenses-part-one/
We know that Donald Trump was once impeached for calling up his Ukrainian counterpart and complaining that the Ukrainian government had been too involved with the corrupt Biden family. Trump then warned that if Ukraine did not clean up its quid-pro-quo act, he would delay approved military aid.
And while Trump eventually sent offensive weapons to Ukraine that the Obama-Biden administration had vetoed, he was still impeached. Apparently, his sin was that he had anticipated Biden as a future 2020 Democratic rival candidate for president, and thus was intermingling politics and foreign policy to his own benefit and the nation’s detriment.
As such, it did not matter that his phone call did not affect U.S. policy because Ukraine got its weapons, and better ones than those approved by the prior administration.
Nor did it apparently matter that Trump was correct, as we know from the later Hunter Biden laptop revelations, that the entire Biden family syndicate was corrupt. Indeed, Joe Biden himself—known to the family as the “Big Guy” and “Mr. Ten-percent” and “pedo”—cannot explain his sudden wealth, lavish pre-presidential lifestyle, or various estates without some source of extra (non-taxed?) income.
Nor does it matter apparently that Trump’s call was listened to by partisan Ukrainian American Lt. Col. Alexander Vindman who relayed it—although initially denied doing so—to the technically still “anonymous” whistleblower. The latter filed a complaint with the congressional intelligence committees, based on hearsay (from Vindman no doubt), and then coordinated with Adam Schiff to set the stage for impeachment proceedings. That fact was denied by the prevaricating Schiff, who also lied about several elements of the impeachment proceedings.
So, what then is the new bar for impeachment for warping U.S. policy for perceived political advantage?
Why was not Barack Obama impeached for his hot-mic revelations in Seoul, South Korea in early election year 2012?
After all, Obama was caught:
a) trying to alter U.S. policy to the nation’s disadvantage (by cancelling preapproved missile defense systems with Poland and the Czech Republic) in exchange for advancing his own political interests in getting reelected (asking Vladimir for “space” so that Obama would not be embarrassed by Russian adventurism during his “last” election).
b) And unlike Trump, who did send aid to Ukraine, Obama did not go forward with missile defense. And, unlike Trump’s call that did not affect events on the ground, Putin did, as promised, not invade Ukraine until 2014 after Obama was reelected.
Would missile defense have helped Eastern Europeans in 2022 in the face of Putin’s nuclear weapons threats?
Had Obama done more to punish Putin for his 2014 invasions of Crimea and Eastern Ukraine, would his subsequent 2022 invasion of Ukraine have been less disastrous? Would Obama have been reelected had Putin invaded Ukraine and Crimea in 2012?
2) Joe Biden also seems to have fulfilled the Left’s new impeachment requirement during his visit to and recent remarks about Saudi Arabia. After slashing new federal energy leases, cancelling ANWR and the Keystone Pipeline, and hectoring banks and investment firms not to finance fossil-fuel exploration and development, Biden kept his prelection promise of curtailing carbon fuels.
But he did not anticipate the backlash over his near doubling of gas prices, especially as the midterms loomed.
As a result, Biden went on a desperate hunt for global oil, given he would not produce oil and gas at home, but only tap what others had banked for natural disastrous emergencies in the strategic petroleum reserve.
What followed was tragicomedy, as Americans between 2021–22 variously begged the Russians, Iranians, Venezuelans, and Saudis to pump more oil before the midterms, given that we ourselves, for ourselves, would not.
In other words, Biden begged and then threatened a former ally of the United States because he wished to use it to produce oil that he would not—and to produce more oil and gas immediately to enhance his party’s chances in the midterm through falling gas prices at the pump. Was Biden worried about U.S. consumers strapped to pay for their escalating fuel cost, or his political interests in November?
Was it in Biden’s interests or U.S. interests to insult Saudi Arabia for not increasing its own petroleum production? Remember, was not the kingdom the very country Biden had earlier smeared as a “pariah” at a time when it was partnering with the U.S. to forge common alliances with Israel to combat Iranian aggression? Was it in U.S. interests or Joe Biden’s to meet the Venezuelan dictator Maduro’s demands for pumping more oil for U.S. consumption?
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