IMPEACH: Look at the facts

The House has voted for impeachment along strict party lines; the Senate will undoubtedly vote to acquit along strictly party lines. The public is likewise deeply divided.

I think honest people can disagree about whether President Trump’s actions justify impeachment. I don’t think honest people can disagree about the facts of the case.

Trump clearly did withhold half a billion dollars in military aid from Ukraine (until the whistle-blower emerged) and asked President Zelensky for “a little favor” regarding investigating Joe Biden, a potential political opponent, and his son, Hunter Biden. He clearly sent Rudy Giuliani, a private citizen and his personal attorney, to Ukraine to make this deal happen.

All of this puts the Ukraine government in a very difficult position at a time when they are engaged in a border war with Putin’s Russia. In response, Trump, echoed by Trumpist Republicans, has created a complex counter-narrative that it was Ukraine that interfered with the 2016 election (also Putin’s story), and Trump/Giuliani were doing legitimate investigations of Ukrainian, and Biden’s, corruption.

It is significant that this whole operation was done outside normal State Department or security council channels. If this whole issue is “a hoax, a sham, a witch hunt,” why did the White House block Mike Mulvaney, Chief of Staff, and John Bolton, former National Security Advisor, to testify and clear up the whole matter, and also avoid the impeachment charge of Contempt of Congress?

It is also significant that during the House debate before the vote, no Republican spoke to refute the case on the facts or defended Trump’s actions, but rather attacked the motives of the Democrats and the procedures used during the hearings. I think the congressional Republicans know what the facts are, but chose to justify their vote on other grounds.

RICHARD CRIPE

Coeur d’Alene