Chuck Schumer’s impeachment moan throws House Dems under the bus

House Democrats are highly unlikely to follow Larry Tribe’s suggestion that they decline to transmit their articles of impeachment to the Senate for a trial. Thus, Senate Democrats will need a trial strategy.

Byron York tell us that a major part of the strategy will be to demand more information. What information? Mainly testimony from past and present administration officials like Mick Mulvaney and John Bolton. Possibly grand jury testimony from the Mueller investigation, as well.

The House could have held off on impeaching Presdient Trump while seeking these forms of evidence in court. However, House Democrats were in a hurry.

The Senate Democrats mantra can be summed up in a comment by Chuck Schumer. He said:”To engage in a trial without the facts coming out is to engage in a cover-up.”

This statement can be turned around as follows: “To impeach a president before the facts have come out is a disgrace.”

Actually, that’s not what happened. An abundance of facts came out during the House proceedings. In my view, the only reasonable conclusion from those facts is that President Trump, for a brief time, withheld the release of aid to Ukraine pending announcement by that country of an investigation of Joe Biden.

House Democrats clearly agree. They have argued it constantly for weeks. It will be their basis for approving the primary article of impeachment.

Thus, Senate Democrats undercut the House Dems and their primary impeachment article by moaning that they need more facts. What they want is a smoking gun, something that might turn public opinion around. (They wouldn’t get it from the witnesses they want to have testify at trial or from Mueller grand jury testimony).

Mitch McConnell dismissed the whining of Schumer and other Senate Democrats with this comment: “The Senate is meant to act as judge and jury, to hear a trial, not to re-run the entire fact-finding investigation because angry partisans rush sloppily through it.”

He’s right. I think the American public will agree.

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