Keeping the Trump Impeachment Cloud Afloat
While Democrat zeal for impeaching Trump may have wained, they are far from giving up.
There is no question that the result of Robert Mueller’s special investigation, in which he found no evidence of collusion between the Trump campaign and Russia, seriously took the wind out of the Democrats’ impeachment sails. However, several leftist freshmen firebrands, who claim they won election for promising to go hard after President Donald Trump, are nowhere near throwing in the towel. They may have just lost, but that was only round one. Cue round two of the Dems’ witch hunt.
On Wednesday, Rep. Rashida Tlaib (D-MI) introduced a resolution in the House Judiciary Committee to investigate whether Trump has committed impeachable offenses regarding his foreign business dealings. Citing the rarely applied Emoluments Clause of the Constitution, which forbids a public official from accepting foreign money in an attempt to “defraud the United States,” Tlaib stated that she was seeking to ensure “we don’t have a lawless society that results in irreparable harm to the American people.” She then bloviated, “Doing nothing when we are seeing blatant disregard of the United States Constitution, to our ethical norms, is dangerous. No one, including the president of the United States, is above the law.”
If anyone knows “blatant disregard” for the Constitution, it’s Democrats.
Tlaib then insisted, “An investigation will take a look at all of these things, with the question [being], are these impeachable offenses?” However, few Democrats seemed eager to jump on board. Only Rep. Al Green (D-TX) voiced support, stating, “There will be another vote on impeachment in the House of Representatives.”
Perhaps, but Democrats are arguably more interested in the mere threat. As Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez (D-NY) commented, “I think what’s tough is impeachment in principle is something I openly support. But it’s also just the reality of having the votes in the Senate to pursue that. And so that’s something that we have to take into consideration.”
House Speaker Nancy Pelosi (D-CA) knows full well that engaging in impeachment proceedings sans any clear and obvious crime could backfire, as evidenced even by Bill Clinton’s impeachment for actual crimes. Republicans arguably overplayed their hand and it proved costly in the following elections. That said, Pelosi and her fellow Democrats would love nothing more than to keep the cloud of impeachment hanging over Trump for the next 18 months.