(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.)Judiciary Committee Chairman Jerry Nadler’s impeachment hearing this morning got blown up by Rep. John Ratcliffe, who proved it was Barack Obama who had foreign governments investigate candidate Donald Trump. Nadler and his Democrat cohorts’ reaction is priceless. You’ll love this.
Rep. John Ratcliffe (R-TX) pointed out in the House Judiciary Committee on Thursday morning that President Barack Obama’s administration had asked foreign power to investigate then-candidate Donald Trump in 2016.
Ratcliffe was responding to a challenge from Rep. Hank Johnson (D-GA), who asked whether any Republican was prepared to defend the idea of the president asking a foreign government to investigate a political opponent.
I want to recognize my colleague from Georgia, Mr. Johnson’s question, that he asked before. Is it ever okay to invite a foreign government to become involved in an election involving a political opponent? The answer is yes! It better be. We do it all the time. Have you that quickly forgotten how the Trump/Russia investigation proceeded? The Obama administration asked Great Britain and Italy and Australia and other countries to assist in its investigation of a person who was a political opponent from the opposite party. I keep hearing over and over again, “You can’t investigate political opponents.” We have a member of this committee [Rep. Eric Swalwell (D-CA)] who was — as a member of this committee and the intelligence committee, investigating his political opponent, Donald Trump, at the very moment he was running to replace him as president.
My colleague on the intel committee, Mr. [Joaquin] Castro, was investigating President Trump at the same time his brother [Julián] was running to replace President Trump. President Trump is the only one with the really legitimate reason to be doing it. He is the chief executive. We are in the judiciary committee, right? We do understand the Constitution, we do understand that the president as the unitary executive is the executive branch, and all power of the executive branch derives from the president.
And the president can and should ask for assistance from foreign governments in ongoing criminal investigations. There was an ongoing criminal investigation into what happened in 2016. The Attorney General, [William] Barr, at the time of the July 25th call [with Ukrainian President Volodymr Zelensky] had, long before that appointed U.S. Attorney John Durham to investigate exactly that issue. It wasn’t just appropriate, it was absolutely the president’s constitutional duty.
Ratcliffe went on to argue that there was a “prima facie” case of corruption against the Bidens.
Hunter Biden, the son of then-Vice President Joe Biden, was a highly-paid board member of the corrupt Ukrainian gas company, Burisma, when Biden ordered Ukraine’s prosecutor fired. Multiple witnesses described that as a conflict of interest and the real “quid pro quo.”
The other huge factor to this debate in the House Judiciary Committee today has been the Democrats arguing that the president committed crimes like bribery and obstruction of justice, yet they failed to add those charges to their articles of impeachment.
The Democrats settled on two very weak articles which are not real crimes: “abuse of power and obstruction of Congress.”
Speaker Nancy Pelosi got caught this morning by a CBS reporter who asked her why bribery is not one of the articles of impeachment? The Speaker refuses to answer that question. Instead, Pelosi says the articles are “very powerful, they’re very strong, and they are a continuation of a pattern of misbehavior on the part of the president.”
Breitbart’s Joel Pollock makes the point: “Bribery’ is clearly a talking point for all Democrats today because they realize their Articles of #Impeachment are too weak. But they didn’t include ‘bribery’ because there is no evidence of bribery and plenty of evidence against it. They are trying to fool the American people.”
“Bribery” is clearly a talking point for all Democrats today because they realize their Articles of #Impeachment are too weak. But they didn’t include “bribery” because there is no evidence of bribery and plenty of evidence against it. They are trying to fool the American people. https://t.co/68JEfA9eD8
— Joel B. Pollak (@joelpollak) December 12, 2019
The danger of these hearings is that impeachment will become a norm. GOP Minority Leader Kevin McCarthy has something to say about that.
The minority leader told the outlet that he is “fearful” that the unprecedented partisan impeachment process will “become the norm in Congress” but vowed that Republicans are “not going to do this” if they retake the House.
“I am so fearful that this will become the norm in Congress,” McCarthy told Politico. “I’m trying to tell our members, ‘When we capture the majority again, we are not going to do this.’”
Despite the contentious partisan process fraught with political vitriol, McCarthy said Republican members have conducted themselves well. It must be tough to sit there as the Democrats spew lies about the Commander in Chief, lies that have been disproven like the “kids in cages” narrative. We can forgive the Democrats for their lies and this impeachment sham, but we must never forget. This is what happens when one party puts their own sick interests above those of the entire nation.
