Biden Impeachment: A Nothingburger With a Side of Lies
Democracy is hurtling toward a moment of truth; in the coming weeks we’ll be learning whether manufactured falsehoods will dominate our future as a nation.
Americans have been living through escalating chaos for more than a decade, as fears were stoked by politicians who would rather rule than represent. The lies generated with the aim of enriching the wealthy have blended with paranoia, been enabled by alienation, and presented as truth (or one ‘side’) by the media across the political spectrum.
One need look no further than Argentina, which elected a Trump fan boy, to see what “Dictator for a Day” means in real life.
President Javier Milei announces a total crackdown on Argentine civil society, calling on armed forces to break strikes, arrest protestors, “protect” children from families that bring them to demos, and form a new national registry of all agitating organizations.
This isn’t just about the House of Representatives’ authorization of an impeachment inquiry; this reckoning encompasses judicial decisions concerning the actions of a man and his team who are promising to Make America Great Again Again.
Despite mutterings about simply digging for the truth by some so-called moderates, this resolution –based on the reluctance of the White House to accept subpoenas*– puts lawmakers on a glide path toward an actual impeachment.
*Congressional investigators have obtained nearly 40,000 pages of subpoenaed bank records, dozens of hours of testimony from key witnesses, including several high-ranking Justice Department officials currently tasked with investigating Hunter Biden.
The bottom line here is that Republicans contend that Donald Trump is immune from prosecution for alleged crimes he committed while he was the president, but Joe Biden is not immune from impeachment for alleged crimes he committed while he wasn’t the president.
The worst part for Republicans is that even their leadership knows impeachments generally help the president who is being attacked by rallying the base. Impeachments without evidence are even more likely to cause anger and harden Democrats in their resolve.
Why do I think this? Vice President Kamala Harris sent a fundraising email shortly after Republicans voted for the impeachment inquiry into President Biden. It broke the Biden-Harris campaign’s fundraising record this month.
This charade will be impactful in the 18 House districts won by Joe Biden currently occupied by Republicans. It’s a terrible idea politically, but they have to do it anyway because Trump wants it.
From Civil Discourse by Joyce Vance:
Congressman Troy Nehls (R-Tx) was asked by a reporter what he hoped to get out of impeachment. He responded, "All I can say is Donald J. Trump 2024, baby."
In September, Donald Trump told Megyn Kelly in a radio interview that “I think had they not done it to me … perhaps you wouldn’t have it being done to them. And this is going to happen with indictments, too.”
While the House GOP will require near-unanimity in the new year due to resignations and the expulsion of George Santos, the threat of retribution coming from on high could be enough to move to the next phase. Whether or not this will succeed will be influenced by a series of court rulings in the coming weeks.
If former president Trump gets favorable court decisions, various prosecutions will be pushed past the November election and into oblivion. Should he come up short, trials will be occurring during his presidential campaign, allowing negative impressions among voters.
Not-so-coincidentally, House impeachment hearings will provide counter-programming for Trump. Lack of evidence notwithstanding, repetition of terms like the “Biden crime family,” will aim to drown out presentations built around facts.
Here’s Jackie Calmes, columnist for the Los Angeles Times:
House members come and go, but the Biden impeachment effort is brought to you by much the same gang that already made punchlines of a string of so-called Democratic scandals — think Benghazi, Solyndra, Fast and Furious. I won’t bother recalling the details. Surely you remember them, given that the Republicans described each “scandal” in its time as “worse than Watergate.”
We might call the Biden impeachment inquiry a fishing expedition, but that’s been long underway. Even before they won their majority, Republicans were trying to implicate Biden — somehow — for the lobbying sins of his long-troubled son Hunter.
No less than Peter Doocy, the White House correspondent for Faux News who often verbally jousts with the president, told his audience this week, “The House Oversight Committee has been at this for years, and they have so far not been able to provide any concrete evidence that Joe Biden personally profited from his son Hunter’s overseas business.”
Later breaking news: CNN has followed up on testimony before the January 6 Committee by Cassidy Hutchinson, one of Mark Meadows’ top aides, about mishandling of classified documents in the Trump White House:
A binder containing highly classified information related to Russian election interference went missing at the end of Donald Trump’s presidency, raising alarms among intelligence officials that some of the most closely guarded national security secrets from the US and its allies could be exposed, sources familiar with the matter told CNN.
Its disappearance, which has not been previously reported, was so concerning that intelligence officials briefed Senate Intelligence Committee leaders last year about the missing materials and the government’s efforts to retrieve them, the sources said.
In the two-plus years since Trump left office, the missing intelligence does not appear to have been found.
The binder contained raw intelligence the US and its NATO allies collected on Russians and Russian agents, including sources and methods that informed the US government’s assessment that Russian President Vladimir Putin sought to help Trump win the 2016 election, sources tell CNN.
The Associated Press has a story today by national political reporter Brian Slodysko about how Representative James Comer (R-KY), the chair of the House Oversight Committee, has a financial history that looks a great deal like that of which he accuses the Bidens, including a shell company that appears to ethics experts to have problematic connections to a campaign donor.
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GOP Family Values Friday News Clips
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Inside the Troll Army Waging Trump’s Online Campaign Via the New York Times (Family values in action)
Much of the group, which refers to itself as Trump’s Online War Machine, operates anonymously, adopting the cartoonish aesthetic and unrelenting cruelty of internet trolls.
Cheered on by Mr. Trump, the group traffics freely in misinformation, artificial intelligence and digital forgeries known as deepfakes. Its memes are riddled with racist stereotypes, demeaning tropes about L.G.B.T.Q. people and broad scatological humor.
Their most vulgar invectives are often aimed at women, particularly those seen as enemies of Mr. Trump. In one video, the former United Nations ambassador Nikki Haley’s face is pasted on the body of a nearly naked woman, who kicks a man with the face of Gov. Ron DeSantis of Florida in the groin. Another depicts Casey DeSantis, the governor’s wife, as a porn star. Women with ties to Mr. DeSantis are often shown with red knees, suggesting they have performed a sex act.
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Embattled Florida GOP chair demands buyout to quit, party members say Via the Washington Post:
Republican leaders in Florida are expressing outrage over a reported proposal that party chairman Christian Ziegler be paid as much as $2 million before he’ll step down amid a sexual assault investigation.
Ziegler is battling to keep his powerful position despite dual scandals, one of which has also ensnared his wife, Bridget Ziegler, a Moms for Liberty co-founder who sits on the Sarasota County School Board.
The couple, whose political influence has grown along with the ascent of the Florida GOP, have been asked to quit their jobs, even by friends and allies as well as political opponents. Each has refused.
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Read the apology letters from former Trump lawyers in Georgia election case Via Axios
Several Trump co-defendants in the Fulton County, Ga., election-interference case wrote one sentence apology letters as part of their guilty pleas.
Driving the news: The terse, handwritten letters by Sidney Powell and Ken Chesebro, both former Trump-allied lawyers, were obtained by The Atlanta Journal-Constitution through an open records request…
…Neither letter acknowledges the legitimacy of President Biden's win in Georgia, nor denounces the baseless conspiracy theories the two lawyers pushed to claim Trump was cheated, AP notes.