Ron Johnson on shampeachment

In her weekly Wall Street Journal Potomac Watch column yesterday, Kim Strassel holds out the possibility that House Speaker Nancy Pelosi has no intention of transmitting the articles of impeachment to the Senate “as long as Democrats can get away with it.” She calls the scenario she sketches “Pelosi’s rolling impeachment.” She asserts that “it’s not hard to imagine Mrs. Pelosi sitting on her impeachment articles through next fall’s election campaign.”

The thought never occurred to me, but who knows? It would give new meaning to Republicans’ disparagement of the House proceedings as “shampeachment.”

What about the original whistleblower sham? It must have everything to do with the absurd concealment of his identity by the Democrats and the media adjunct. Something is happening here.

Senator Ron Johnson is a sober and mainstream Republican who dealt with the players in the underlying events out of which the Democrats’ spun their impeachment of Trump. He has worked on Ukraine issues during his time in the Senate and is currently the chairman of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee’s European Subcommittee.

At the request of House Intelligence Committee members Devin Nunes and Jim Jordan — Senator Johnson has posted their letter here — he set forth his observations last month in a 10-page letter dated November 18. Senator Johnson’s letter is accessible online here. I have embedded a copy of the letter below.

Having been asked to share his firsthand knowledge about the U.S.-Ukraine relationship as part of the House Democrats’ impeachment proceedings, Senator Johnson set his observations in context:

I am writing in response to the request of Ranking Members Nunes and Jordan to provide my first-hand information and resulting perspective on events relevant to the House impeachment inquiry of President Trump. It is being written in the middle of that inquiry — after most of the depositions have been given behind closed doors, but before all the public hearings have been held.

I view this impeachment inquiry as a continuation of a concerted, and possibly coordinated, effort to sabotage the Trump administration that probably began in earnest the day after the 2016 presidential election. The latest evidence of this comes with the reporting of a Jan. 30, 2017 tweet (10 days after Trump’s inauguration) by one of the whistleblower’s attorneys, Mark Zaid: “#coup has started. First of many steps. #rebellion. #impeachment will follow ultimately.”

But even prior to the 2016 election, the FBI’s investigation and exoneration of former Secretary of State Hillary Clinton, combined with Fusion GPS’ solicitation and dissemination of the Steele dossier — and the FBI’s counterintelligence investigation based on that dossier — laid the groundwork for future sabotage. As a result, my first-hand knowledge and involvement in this saga began with the revelation that former Secretary of State Hillary Clinton kept a private e-mail server.

I have been chairman of the Senate Committee on Homeland Security and Governmental Affairs (HSGAC) since January 2015. In addition to its homeland security portfolio, the committee also is charged with general oversight of the federal government. Its legislative jurisdiction includes federal records. So when the full extent of Clinton’s use of a private server became apparent in March 2015, HSGAC initiated an oversight investigation.

Although many questions remain unanswered from that scandal, investigations resulting from it by a number of committees, reporters and agencies have revealed multiple facts and episodes that are similar to aspects of the latest effort to find grounds for impeachment. In particular, the political bias revealed in the Strzok/Page texts, use of the discredited Steele dossier to initiate and sustain the FBI’s counterintelligence investigation and FISA warrants, and leaks to the media that created the false narrative of Trump campaign collusion with Russia all fit a pattern and indicate a game plan that I suspect has been implemented once again.

It is from this viewpoint that I report my specific involvement in the events related to Ukraine and the impeachment inquiry.

Michael Anton has more in the CRB essay “The empire strikes back” and its American Greatness sequel, “The bribery bait-and-switch.”

Johnson to Jordan Nunes by Scott Johnson on Scribd

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