So says Byron York, and I think he’s right.
Why wouldn’t House Democrats impeach President Trump? Their base demands it, and impeachment proceedings are free advertising against Trump’s reelection (as if the left doesn’t get enough of that from the mainstream media).
To be sure, there’s some political risk associated with impeaching Trump. But Democrats are too convinced of their righteousness to let fear of a backlash stand in the way of appeasing the base and satisfying what must be an irresistible urge to drag Donald Trump through the mud.
Byron quotes Rep. Jerrold Nadler, chairman of the House Judiciary Committee, who claims to have the goods on Trump already. Says Nadler:
It’s very clear that the president obstructed justice. It’s very clear — 1,100 times he referred to the Mueller investigation as a witch hunt, he tried to — he fired — he tried to protect Flynn from being investigated by the FBI. He fired Comey in order to stop the Russian thing, as he told NBC News. He — he’s dangled part — he’s threat — he’s intimidated witnesses. In public.
Democrats better hope Nadler is more articulate than this when the bright lights come on during impeachment proceedings.
Nadler also says, however, that “we don’t have the facts yet.” Nadler doesn’t want “the facts” in order to determine whether Trump should be impeached. He’s already clear on that. Rather, he says:
We do not now have the evidence all sorted out and everything to do — to do an impeachment. Before you impeach somebody, you have to persuade the American public that it ought to happen. You have to persuade enough of the — of the opposition party voters, Trump voters, that you’re not just trying to … that you’re not just trying to steal the last — to reverse the results of the last election.
Good luck trying to persuade Trump voters that the president deserves to be impeached for obstruction of justice because he called the Mueller investigation a witch hunt, asked James Comey if he could go easy on Michael Flynn (but did not order him to), and exercised his prerogative to fire the highly controversial Comey (but did nothing to stop the Justice Department from conducting the Russia investigation after Comey departed).
If Nadler isn’t proceeding full steam ahead on impeachment it’s not because Democrats need to “sort out” the evidence. It’s because the evidence of an impeachable offense isn’t there. Nadler hopes that some combination of hearings, subpoenas, and the work of Robert Mueller will produce it.
But, as Byron says, “impeachment is on” whether that evidence materializes or not.
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