(ThyBlackMan.com) Speaker of the House Nancy Pelosi dropped the hammer when she announced she had directed the committee chairmen involved in impeachment hearings to begin drafting Articles of Impeachment. This followed a string of both fact witnesses and legal scholars who testified to acts such as abuse of power and obstruction of congress for which the president should be held to account.
The accumulated evidence has not been disputed. The president, in an abuse of his power, solicited the help of a foreign nation to help with his 2020 campaign, withheld a requested Oval Office meeting to pressure the foreign leader to accede to his demand for an investigation into his likely political opponent and refused to send congressionally approved military aid, even though both the State Department and the Pentagon had certified that all requirements for its release had been met.
Now, the questions before congress and the American people are, is this behavior okay and, if not, what to do about it? Do we really think it’s okay for:
- An elected official to cheat to get into, or remain, in office?
- Congressionally approved funds to be withheld without a good reason?
- A president to deny the legitimacy of a co-equal branch of government?
- Personal desires to be placed above the national security interests of the country?
It’s clearly not okay, and no amount of “explanations” can obscure that for these, and a myriad of other reasons, the current occupant of the White House is manifestly unfit to hold the office of President of the United States.
If you had a chance to watch the impeachment proceedings you saw one side trying to elevate the discourse to principles enshrined in the constitution, while the other side tried to obfuscate the facts by decrying the fairness of the process. One-by-one, however, the purported alibis put forward for the president’s behavior were found wanting.
The argument there was no quid-pro-quo was discredited by Acting Chief of Staff Mick Mulvaney and Ambassador Gordon Sondland; both on live television. The supposition the Ukrainians did not know the military aid was being withheld until it was made public in a news article in Politico was countered by testimony from a Pentagon official that inquiries there about the aid’s status started the day of the July 25th call between the presidents. The alleged exculpatory call where the president reportedly said to Sondland, “I want nothing…” cannot be found in any White House phone records. And, of course, there’s the summary of the July 25th call itself, where the president asked for a “favor though” when the Ukrainian president spoke about obtaining more military equipment.
Republicans demanded the testimony of the whistleblower and cried foul that he met with the Intelligence Committee staff before sending a formal complaint to the Inspector General. If that was improper, why is it okay for Republican Senators, who will serve as jurors in an impeachment trial, to meet with White House Counsel – lawyers for the defendant – to discuss arrangements for the upcoming proceedings?
In his farewell address written in 1796, George Washington delivered a warning about the dangers of political factions, “a small but artful and enterprising minority of the community”, led by “cunning, ambitious and unprincipled men” who will “subvert the power of the people and to usurp for themselves the reins of government, destroying afterwards the very engines which have lifted them to unjust dominion.” Sound familiar? Trump cheated to win the presidency and just got busted trying to cheat to win re-election.
To accept this behavior is to send a message to fu[\]ture presidents, of either party, that there are no rules to which they must adhere, nothing “out-of-bounds.” I don’t think that’s the country we want to live in, nor governing legacy we want to leave the next generation. As Speaker Pelosi said, the president’s actions left her and her colleagues no choice, and for those in office who co-sign this behavior, we should exercise our choice to vote them out next November.
Staff Writer; Harry Sewell