Economic Collapse

[basserdan]

Jerry Nadler’s absolutely underwhelming articles of impeachment

By Post Editorial Board
December 10, 2019 8:15pm


House Judiciary Committee Chairman Jerrold Nadler (D-NY) speaks to Ranking Member Doug Collins (R-GA) during a recent impeachment hearing on Monday. Getty Images

Just 11 weeks after Speaker Nancy Pelosi announced her “official impeachment inquiry,” Judiciary Committee chief Jerry Nadler released his draft articles of impeachment — remarkably weak ones.

The same day, Pelosi announced a deal with President Trump to pass his US-Mexico-Canada trade deal, replacing NAFTA. It’s a win for him and for her moderate members — yet the speaker is simultaneously treating the president as a threat to the republic and as a man she can do business with.

The reason may be as simple as the polls: The latest Quinnipiac survey shows sentiment against impeachment at its strongest since Pelosi got the ball rolling on Sept. 24, with more than half of voters now saying Trump shouldn’t be removed from office.

Partisan leaks from Rep. Adam Schiff’s early closed-door hearings had shifted public opinion slightly the other way through the end of October, when the House finally voted to OK impeachment proceedings. But the public hearings have since pushed the needle all the way back, and then some.

Why? Well, Democrats have been confused on just what Trump did wrong. All their early talk of a “quid pro quo” in Trump’s July phone call with Ukraine’s president turned (after some polling) into charges of “bribery” and “extortion.” Yet all those terms are absent from Nadler’s articles.

He offers one on “abuse of power,” which covers all the efforts to get Ukraine to investigate 1) 2016 meddling and 2) the company that hired Hunter Biden. But it doesn’t explain how Trump “compromised the national security of the United States and undermined the integrity of the United States democratic process” or solicited interference in the 2020 election.

Schiff contends Trump wanted “sham investigations” from Ukraine. But the inquiry produced not a single person or document suggesting Trump wanted Ukraine to frame his potential 2020 rival.

Nadler’s other article is for “obstruction of Congress,” centering on the White House’s refusal to cooperate with House hearings, ordering various officials not to testify.

Yet the legislative and executive branches fight all the time over compelling such testimony: It’s up to the judicial branch to resolve each battle — but House Democrats declined to go to court this time.

That’s likely why Nadler didn’t even go for an “obstruction of justice” article — one of the main counts in both the Nixon and Clinton impeachments.


Pelosi & Co. plainly figure they have to finish what they started — but they’ve given up on doing more than a slapdash job of it.

https://nypost.com/2019/12/10/jerry-nadlers-absolutely-underwhelming-articles-of-impeachment/