Washington Post Columnist: The Democrat Case for Impeachment Is Kind of a Huge Joke, Isn't It?

I was not expecting this from Jeff Bezos' Corporate Newsletter.

Ed Morrissey sums up the glaring internal contradiction of the Democrats' "case:" That the "case" is simultaneously "overwhelming" and beyond disputation, and also, this is precisely why Republican Senators must help the House actually do the investigation and establish the case in the first place.

And here we have the basic contradiction of the House Democrats’ case for more witnesses. If it's "overwhelming" as is, then there is no need for more witnesses. If it's "uncontested," which it most certainly is not, then there’s no need for a trial. Schiff likes to throw these words around as though uttering them out loud turns them from argument into fact, but that’s not how argument works, outside of court and especially inside of court. The problem for Schiff is that the House impeachment consists entirely of argument, and entirely lacks direct evidence and direct testimony. That is why Democrats are so desperate to get a handful of Senate Republicans to do the work that Schiff and Jerrold Nadler refused to do, simply because the timing didn’t suit their tastes.

Harry Olsen rips Adam Schiff for pretending that he's a prosecutor.

As he points out: Nothing you're doing is anything like the work of a prosecutor.

The House's articles have been analogized to an indictment, but indictments can only be brought if they are sanctioned by a neutral, disinterested party. A prosecutor must persuade either a judge or a grand jury that there is probable cause a defendant committed a crime to initiate a case. No serious person can call the House Democratic caucus a neutral, disinterested party.

Nor can a prosecutor obtain evidence under subpoena on their whim. Anyone with a subpoena to provide testimony or written evidence can challenge that in court, as many recipients of such subpoenas in investigations supervised by the office of former special counsel Robert S. Mueller III did. That is exactly what the president has tried to do in many instances with respect to subpoenas issued by committees controlled by House Democrats. But Schiff and his colleagues not only chose not to permit the judicial process to play out with respect to those subpoenas; they chose to call the president’s attempt to avail himself of his rights "obstruction of Congress" and an impeachable offense itself. How Orwellian.

The list goes on. A defendant can file a motion to suppress any evidence obtained during an investigation that she believes was illegally obtained. That motion is heard by a disinterested party -- a federal judge -- and that judge's opinion can be appealed to an appellate court before the trial ever begins. Again, the House procedure denied the president that basic right by making the prosecutor, Schiff, the judge.

Good article.

I hope he didn't get himself Epsteined.

posted by Ace at 05:24 PM

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