Democrats have, at least temporarily, taken talk of impeachment off the table. House Speaker Nancy Pelosi has given her full-throated endorsement to continuing investigations of the President from her House committee leaders, but she has said that there is not enough legal evidence for impeachment currently.
While her decision has rankled many in the Democratic Party rank-and-file – including several candidates running for president – it is the only one she could make. She knows that an impeachment conviction in the House would only be followed by an acquittal in the Senate, a scene that would set the stage for Trump to win a second term by a landslide. Pelosi may be a partisan threat to everything that makes America great, but she’s no dummy (which is more than can be said for many of the Democrats in her caucus).
In the meantime, the White House is moving on to more important business; i.e., figuring out exactly who was responsible for turning a baseless conspiracy theory – that the Trump campaign colluded with Moscow – into an investigatory witch hunt that lasted nearly three years and cost, at minimum, $35 million. To say nothing of the personal and professional toll it took on many innocent American citizens, the caustic effect it had on the institution of the presidency, and the reputational damage it did to the FBI and other federal intelligence agencies.
“Tables are finally turning on the witch hunt,” tweeted President Trump on Monday.
Advisers to the president are particularly interested in figuring out how and why a now-thoroughly-discredited piece of opposition research was used to form the backbone of the Russia investigation.
“Comey, then-FBI Director, waited 2 months after @realDonaldTrump was elected to pay a visit & brief the President-elect,” tweeted Kellyanne Conway. “While there, he wasted his time on this golden-shower-nonsense-concocted-dossier. Could have been honest about Obama ignoring Russian interference instead.”
The media scrambles to “fact check” any Trump supporter who accuses the FBI of relying on the Steele dossier to gather warrants, spy on the campaign, and initiate the counterintelligence investigation. George Papadopoulos, they scream! George Papadopoulos! We are expected to believe that the FBI initiated a trans-national, multimillion-dollar investigation into a presidential candidate because some low-level campaign associate drunkenly spewed nonsense at a pub in England. Does this seem even vaguely believable? We suppose it does, if you’re the kind of moron who thinks it’s possible that the American President is a secret agent for the Kremlin.
It took a lot of malpractice, partisan influence, and downright malicious intent for the investigation to get to the point that it did. Now that Robert Mueller has delivered his conclusions – that nearly every word of the conspiracy theory was utter BS – it’s time for the perpetrators of this attempted coup to face the music. Whether it’s Peter Strzok, Andrew McCabe, James Comey…or someone higher up the ladder…justice must be served. Let’s hope that it is.
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