(This post may contain disputed claims. We make no assertions as to the validity of the information presented by our Opinion Columnist. We are an opinion blog, not a traditional news outlet, and this post should be treated as such. Enjoy.)Chairman Adam Schiff knows his secret impeachment hearings are not going so well. Reports that Schiff had pressed a witness to lie about President Donald Trump came out yesterday. So, Schiff seized on fake news by CNN, and now he has changed his main “reason” the president must be impeached. Well, that’s when Shifty Schiff got torched. You’ll love this.
Adam Schiff is in search of a reason to impeach President Trump. In fact, Speaker Nancy Pelosi boldly admitted at her press briefing yesterday that “the voters are not going to decide” the impeachment issue.
So, when Trump’s acting chief of staff Mick Mulvaney held a press conference late yesterday afternoon, Schiff seized on something he said and immediately changed his story of why Trump must be impeached.
“CNN claimed Thursday that the White House ‘admits to quid pro quo with Ukraine.’ That appeared to be the opposite, in fact, of what happened during a press conference with acting White House Chief of Staff Mick Mulvaney,” Breitbart reports.
Mulvaney told reporters that there had been no quid pro quo, as described by those pursuing his impeachment — that President Donald Trump had not withheld aid from Ukraine until it agreed to investigate his potential 2020 presidential rival, former Vice President Joe Biden.
What Mulvaney actually said was that the Trump administration had initially withheld funding from Ukraine for a variety of reasons, including the fact that Europe was not providing enough funding for military aid.
Another reason, he said, was suspicion of past corruption in Ukraine — which included Ukraine’s possible role in interfering in the 2016 presidential election, including its possible possession of a Democratic National Committee server.
Mulvaney said: “The look back to what happened in 2016 certainly was part of the things [President Trump] was worried about in corruption with that nation. That is absolutely appropriate.”
When a reporter said that was a “quid pro quo,” Mulvaney objected that it was routine for the U.S. to withhold funding from foreign nations all the time. He gave an example from this week: the U.S. had withheld aid from the “Northern Triangle” nations — El Salvador, Honduras, and Guatemala — until they agreed to help stop migration.
Mulvaney later added: “The money held up had absolutely nothing to do with Biden.”
When another reporter used the term “quid pro quo,” Mulvaney objected and said, “those are the terms you use.” If Mulvaney admitted to anything, it was that Trump was worried about the past corruption in the 2016 election.
However, Shifty Schiff, who initially claimed Trump was trying to dig up dirt on Joe Biden to help him win the 2020 election as the main impeachable offense, is now saying Trump’s interest in the corruption by Ukraine around the 2016 election is the new impeachable offense.
Schiff told reporters about Mulvaney’s comments: “With this acknowledgment now that military aid was withheld in part out of a desire by the president to have Ukraine investigate the DNC server or Democrats of 2016. Things have just gone from very, very bad to much, much worse.”
What? Trump has a duty to make sure the corruption in the 2016 election doesn’t happen ever again.
Last night on Laura Ingraham’s Fox News show, she interviewed Robert Ray, who was the Special Counsel along with Ken Starr on the Bill Clinton impeachment investigation. This guy knows something about impeaching a president.
Laura asked Ray: “I also get the sense that the folks who want the President out of office [Schiff] are going to keep shifting the narrative when it suits them. Am I wrong in the way I’m reading this?”
Ray: “I’ve been looking at bribery and extortion for the better part of 20 years of my professional life and I can tell you that, again, press conference is not the place for you to sort that out. And the Democrats would have to show that there was a personal benefit derived by President Trump in exchange for what was going on here.”
He continued: “That would be the only basis to conclude it was an illegal quid pro quo. And the reason that Adam Schiff is trying so hard to get these witnesses to say that pressure was applied [by Trump to the Ukraine president] is that he’s smart enough to know that unless you had that kind of pressure applied there is [no quid pro quo].
Ray concluded: “Again, this is just another example of [Schiff] trying to search for, like pin the tail on the donkey, whatever set of facts he can come up with that just ring the quid pro quo bell. I’m sorry to tell him that that’s not sufficient. And again, this is after having looked at this stuff for 20 years.”
Adam Schiff’s theory that President Trump was attempting to “dig up dirt” on a political rival to affect the 2020 election has fallen apart. Reports say Schiff can’t get one witness to back up that story. So, he was forced to “move the goalposts” and make up another theory of why Trump must be impeached.
What Schiff should have admitted was there is no “there-there” when it comes to this so-called quid pro quo. Unfortunately, this was never about Trump engaging in any real impeachable offense. This is Schiff searching for any reason to carry on with this impeachment charade. In the end, the American people are the ones who suffer as the Democrats refuse to do the jobs they were elected to do.
