Just two weeks before the Democrats drafted their articles of impeachment, Nancy Pelosi, Adam Schiff, and their media echo chambers were beating the bribery drum. Impeachment was all about bribery. It’s, like, in the Constitution.
However, the articles of impeachment mentioned no bribery charges.
The first article was essentially a recap of Adam Schiff’s shameful rendition of a conversation that President Trump never had with the Ukrainian leader. Then there was a recap of all the secondhand rumor mongering and gripes of bitter State Department witnesses—no proof, just accusations.
The second article is all about the President telling the House committee to pound sand when they demand documents and inside witnesses to dish more dirt on their boss. Schiff could make an argument in court, but there was no time to get all that adjudicated. They had to get this done before Christmas, so they wrote it up as grounds for impeachment.
A reporter questioned Speaker Pelosi on why bribery wasn’t included in the articles of impeachment when Democrats repeatedly accused the president of that crime.
Reporter: You yourself accused [Trump] of bribery. Why did you decide not to make bribery one of the articles of impeachment?
Speaker Pelosi: This was a decision that was recommended by working together with our committee chairs, our attorneys and the rest.
President Trump jumped on this one in what some might characterize as somewhat crass:
President Trump: Because Nancy’s teeth were falling out of her mouth, and she didn’t have time to think.
Representative Mark Meadows was probably closer to the mark: “Because it [the bribery charge] wasn’t true.
Then there was the Mueller Report that Democrats hoped would be the launching pad to their impeachment efforts. Mueller’s report seemed to hint, they said, that President Trump obstructed justice, even though the investigation found no wrongdoing on his part. The President, they charged, used his official power to stymie the investigation.
Some CNN and MSNBC pundits argued that even if there is no wrongdoing, a president still could obstruct an investigation. It is likely, however, that the Democrats didn’t want to try to sell that shaky reasoning to the public.
Returning to why bribery was left out, the three law professors who testified before Jerry Nadler’s hearing said in chorus that President Trump solicited a bribe. The problem here is that you actually have to prove it. The President works on behalf of his country. When he asks someone to do us a favor, it’s not bribery. Bribery has to result in something soliciting a thing of personal value.
President Trump can make a strong argument that he was motivated by a real concern about Ukrainian corruption. The Ukrainians knew nothing about the hold on their military aid package, and not one Ukrainian official has said that they felt intimidated by the President.
So, what is interesting here is that instead of including impeachment charges where lawyers could lay out proof, Democrats described “bad” behavior that could exist depending on the eye of the beholder.
The eyes (or ayes) that count here are the Senate, who will likely ask two questions:
- How can you charge someone with something where there are no firsthand witnesses? Bring the whistleblower up here so we can talk to him.
- How can assertion of executive privilege in the face of harassing subpoenas—a matter still under litigation—be grounds for impeachment.
Smart money is on a final score of Trump 2, Pelosi 0.
