Six months after House Judiciary Democrats started investigating President Trump, they’re making closing arguments in their case for impeachment.
Actually, they’re hoping the special counsel, Robert Mueller, makes the case for them. With no foundation for impeachment, Chairman Jerry Nadler and his colleagues have their fingers crossed that Mr. Mueller didn’t really mean it when he concluded no Americans “coordinated or conspired with the Russian government in its election-interference activities.”
Judiciary Democrats have built their investigative strategy around this hearing. By making Mr. Mueller’s testimony the cornerstone of their impeachment arguments, though, Democrats are tipping their hand. Their emphasis on this event reveals they’ve got no other card to play than the one Attorney General William Barr handed them on April 18 — the report itself, which Mr. Mueller said was his “testimony.”
The special counsel conducted a supersize investigation that included about 2,800 subpoenas, nearly 500 search warrants, 500 witnesses and 13 formal requests to foreign governments. It wasn’t curtailed in any way. Moreover, Mr. Mueller’s team was full of seasoned investigators with experience in finding and revealing wrongdoing. Sign up for David Leonhardt's newsletter
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Yet these investigators didn’t conclude that the president conspired or obstructed justice. So why are Democrats bringing in a reluctant witness to answer questions about work he prefers to let “speak for itself”? Because they’ve wasted six months trying to establish a conspiracy even the special counsel’s team couldn’t find. Now their only hope is that Mr. Mueller will go rogue on C-Span.
Knowing Democrats wouldn’t accept the report’s conclusions until they heard from its author, on April 8 I asked Chairman Nadler to bring Mr. Mueller in to testify later that month. The report has been publicly available for three months, and a poll released last week shows that only 21 percent of Americans and 39 percent of Democrats favor impeachment hearings. Democrats claim Americans don’t support impeachment because they haven’t read the Mueller report and only process information when it’s available on Netflix.
People haven’t read the book, but they’ll watch the movie, explained a Democratic aide. Democrats are giving Americans too little credit. Chairman Nadler’s team has made its arguments — they’re just not compelling.
On March 4, Chairman Nadler started a letter-writing campaign to 81 people and organizations requesting documents intended to uncover “alleged obstruction of justice, public corruption, and other abuses of power by President Trump.” Almost five months have passed, and Judiciary Democrats have apparently unearthed nothing new. The big takeaway from the chairman’s news release summarizing written testimony from Annie Donaldson, who was the chief of staff to Donald F. McGahn II, the former White House counsel, was that her answers were consistent with the report that showed no conspiracy, meaning there was no underlying crime to motivate the president to obstruct justice. To date, the most novel thing Judiciary Democrats have brought out in their investigation remains a bucket of Kentucky Fried Chicken.
In the lonely absence of new evidence against President Trump, Democrats will try to shift the burden of proof from prosecutors to the president. Yet Americans understand our democracy keeps government officials in check by maintaining that everyone is innocent until proven guilty. They understand it’s fair and right that every American — including the president — be allowed to carry out their lives and work without being harassed by malicious allegations.
Americans are keenly aware that House Democrats, for months, focused taxpayer resources on reinvestigating the president, even when the Russia investigation — to which Democrats swore allegiance — debunked their own “cover-up” conspiracy theories.
To these efforts, Judiciary Democrats have added two empty-chair hearings, authorized more than a dozen subpoenas, sent more than 80 document requests and issued countless news releases.
House Republicans, though, have been busy introducing bills with bipartisan support — like the Defending the Integrity of Voting Systems Act and the Defending Elections Against Trolls From Enemy Regimes Act — specifically to heed the special counsel’s advice and prevent Vladimir Putin from viewing future democratic elections as his playground.
Instead of considering these safeguards against election interference, Democrats have pursued empty investigations. If they want to convince America their vendetta against the White House is more noble than solving the border crisis or growing the job market, today’s hearing is their last chance — but it’s a Hail Mary that doesn’t have a prayer.
The Mueller report has been public since April, and it’s time to accept it and let Americans live again with confidence that their elected officials aren’t playing Fortnite against one another. Short of revelations that patently contradict the conclusions found in the Mueller report, the Democrats’ insistence on relitigating a closed investigation (against the will of most Americans) must end.
Russia tried to turn our democratic government into a circular firing squad, and we can’t let them succeed any longer. When Democrats fail to prove collusion or obstruction today, they will have made their case for closure, and Republicans will be happy to let them move on so our country can move forward.
Doug Collins is a Republican congressman from Georgia and the ranking member of the House Judiciary Committee.
“The reason that you did not indict the president is because of the OLC opinion that you cannot indict a sitting president, correct?” Rep. Ted Lieu, D-Calif. asked Mueller.
“Correct,” Mueller replied.
Mueller backpedaled on these remarks at the top of the second hearing of the day, saying “I want to add one correction to my testimony this morning. I want to go back to one thing that was said this morning by Mr. Lieu, who said and I quote, ‘You didn’t charge the President because of the OLC opinion. That is not the correct way to say it. As we say in the report and as I said at the opening, we did not reach a determination as to whether the President committed a crime.”
Qrvara nem erdekel mar ez senkit , csak ti , verlibbancsok alltok ott a pocegodornel hogy hatha talaltok egy kitojt gyemantgyurut , de csak a fekalia csorog a fejetekre.
Az Index.hu nem érti a helyzetet. Sosem fogja. Ök is csak kibitzek. Azt hiszik az Orbán ellenességnek a Trump bashing a kifejlete. Fajmagyar ellenzék. Nehogy már ök mondják meg a frankót. A cikk a padnyalás elött iródott.
Breaking news: Former special counsel Robert Mueller affirmed in response to questions that President Trump could potentially be indicted after he leaves office.
