House Speaker Nancy Pelosi of California has been fighting a losing battle to stem the tide of rank-and-file Democrats demanding the impeachment and removal from office of President Donald Trump.
That growing tide of impeachment-obsessed Democrats has been provided with momentum by a predominately liberal establishment media that, at times, seems even more adamant and obsessed with impeachment proceedings against Trump.
This was illustrated perfectly in a Wednesday Op-Ed in The New York Times.
That article — written by Ian Prasad Philbrick, a staffer for the paper’s Trump Derangement Syndrome-afflicted opinion section — is essentially a road map to impeachment that the Trump-hating newspaper has so graciously offered up for House Democrats to use as a model.
Philbrick noted that in the wake of special counsel Robert Mueller releasing his final report, nearly 60 elected House Democrats have signaled their support for an “impeachment inquiry.”
“If Democrats do move to impeach Mr. Trump, the articles of impeachment drafted against past presidents will probably guide them,” he wrote.
Thus, Philbrick rather presumptuously took it upon himself to not only conduct a thorough review of the articles of impeachment written up against former Presidents Richard Nixon and Bill Clinton in 1974 and 1998, respectively, but also to edit those impeachment articles — adding and removing passages as necessary — to render them more applicable to Trump.
“Impeachment is often said to be a political process,” Philbrick wrote.
“But when you assess Mr. Trump’s conduct by the bar for impeachment set by past Democratic and Republican lawmakers for past presidents of both parties, the results are striking. The pathway to a possible Trump impeachment is already mapped out in these historical documents.”
Starting with Nixon — who resigned before he could actually be impeached — Philbrick largely focused on the first and third articles impeachment, which revolved around allegations of obstruction of justice.
“Nixon interfered with a federal investigation of the Watergate break-in by refusing to turn over documents, pressuring witnesses, lying to the public and firing the special prosecutor assigned to the case,” Philbrick wrote.
“In response to Mr. Mueller’s and Congress’s inquiries, Mr. Trump has similarly stonewalled subpoenas, tried to influence witness testimony, lied and attempted to fire Mr. Mueller.”
Of course, the cases of Nixon and Trump are not quite as similar as Philbrick would like to assume.
Unlike Nixon, Trump did not commit any underlying crime which he could then obstruct an investigation into.
Moreover, Trump never actually fired the prosecutor leading said investigation.
Furthermore, any “stonewalling” from Trump has been against House Democrats, not Mueller’s special counsel team, who were provided with virtually everything they needed in terms of document and witness requests, save for an in-person interview with Trump himself.
Nor did Mueller accuse Trump of providing false information.
Moving on to Clinton’s impeachment, Philbrick similarly adapted the third article, relating to alleged obstruction of justice, to apply to Trump.
Again, this constituted little more than striking out information and terms regarding Clinton and replacing them with information and terminology specific to Trump.
And it was all based on little more than unproven allegations that Trump “encouraged” certain witnesses to lie to investigators in an alleged effort to impede or interfere with said investigation.
In the end, Philbrick presented three articles of impeachment against Trump.
“Wherefore, Donald J. Trump by such conduct, warrants impeachment and trial, and removal from office,” Article III concludes.
However, he noted these articles “don’t include other potentially impeachable offenses that lack a clear precedent in the Nixon and Clinton cases, such as hush-money payments to women or possible violations of the Constitution’s emoluments clause.”
Philbrick seems to know that impeachment is far from a given.
“An impeachment inquiry against Mr. Trump is far from guaranteed. And whether impeaching him would politically help or hurt Democrats remains an open question,” Philbrick acknowledged.
“But there is no question that by the standards for high crimes and misdemeanors applied to past presidents in living memory, Donald J. Trump has committed impeachable offenses,” he concluded.
These articles of impeachment drawn up by the pompous Trump-hating editorial staff at The Times are ridiculous and reek of delusional desperation.
And it’s ironic that these sanctimoniously self-righteous and purported paragons of journalism would try to utilize two prior failed attempts at impeachment as a solid basis for an even weaker effort against the current president who they so vehemently despise.
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