Whether the senators put the trial out of its misery this week or drag it on for months, the outcome is a foregone conclusion. Here are the eight big reasons Trump won impeachment.
President Donald Trump will not be removed from office following his impeachment by the House of Representatives and a trial in the Senate. Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell has reportedly told colleagues they have the votes to finish things this week.
Whether the senators put the trial out of its misery this week or drag it on for months, the outcome is a foregone conclusion. Here are the eight big reasons why Trump won impeachment.
1. Trump Didn’t Commit An Impeachable Offense
It’s an obvious point, but the most important point.
Impeaching President Trump has been the stated goal of the Resistance since his inauguration. The main effort toward impeachment was through the investigation of a false and dangerous theory of treasonous collusion with Russia to steal the 2016 election.
Even with a limitless special counsel appointed to achieve that end, the Russia collusion hoax ended with not a single American found to have colluded with Russia, not to mention anyone close to Trump, or Trump himself. A mini-effort to get impeachment going — on the special counsel’s murky near-findings that Trump had objected too strenuously to being falsely accused of treason — also fell apart.
Other impeachment efforts for, among other things, mean tweets, went nowhere. With time running out, the Resistance cobbled together what was always a weak theory regarding a phone call with the Ukrainian president.
At first the alleged crime was supposed to be a campaign finance violation, then bribery, then extortion. It ended with two articles of impeachment, neither ofor an actual crime, and one a more or less laughable claim that the president can’t use courts to defend his rights.
The other was a complicated argument regarding abuse of power that required not just hiding all exonerating evidence but the worst possible construction on what remained. It was such a weak argument that not a single Republican in the House fell for it and three Democrats declined to go along with their own party.
The range of opinion outside the Resistance about the phone call between world leaders ranges from it being, in Trump’s words, “perfect” to merely good or fine to not good. Resistance members tried to put forth the claim that the call was none of these things but impeachably bad. Even with the help of a compliant media, there is simply not enough consensus around this extreme viewpoint to justify even censure, much less bipartisan agreement toward impeachment, much less a removal from office.
Trump’s avoidance of a crime or any real break with public trust is the single biggest factor in his acquittal.
2. Terrible Decision-Making By House Democrats
With a histrionic media and political base spending the last few years demanding impeachment, House Democrats surely had hoped that President Trump would do something justifying an impeachment inquiry. They undoubtedly were not pleased when the best they had to work with was Trump asking for help investigating Ukraine’s known 2016 election meddling or investigation into Biden family corruption in Ukraine.
So they started with a weak hand. But they failed to follow a good process. They didn’t have the House authorize an impeachment inquiry until late in the process. This decision made it unlikely that the many early subpoenas they sought would be deemed valid by a court of law if contested.
They refused to have courts validate their subpoenas, refused to let the GOP call their own witnesses, and suppressed information that was not helpful to their impeachment cause. Of the 78 days of the impeachment proceedings, they denied the president any right to counsel or due process for 71 days of them.
In general, the procedure was rushed and information that could have helped them seem more credible was never sought or acquired.
3. Democrats Failed to Get a Single Republican on Board Their Impeachment Scheme
It is nothing short of amazing that not a single Republican member of Congress joined with Democrats in their impeachment effort. There are plenty of Republican members who either dislike or even loathe the president. But even they didn’t find the impeachment to be credible.
The Resistance was also failed by its NeverTrump wing. That wing had pushed Justin Amash to dramatically leave the Republican Party earlier last year. He published his op-ed as to why and promptly lost any sway with anyone other than...
