On Tuesday, House Speaker Nancy Pelosi announced a formal impeachment inquiry against President Donald Trump, who will likely be charged with betraying his oath of office and the nation’s security by seeking to solicit information from a foreign president against his most prominent rival, Democratic presidential candidate Joe Biden.
“The actions taken to date by the president have seriously violated the Constitution,” Pelosi told the press, declaring he “must be held accountable — no one is above the law,” regarding his “betrayal of his oath of office, betrayal of our national security and betrayal of the integrity of our elections.”
President Trump has not responded directly to the charges so far, but tweeted early Wednesday morning: “They (Dems) are scrambling for a theme and narrative. They’ve gone everywhere from Russian Hoax to Russian Collusion…and now they’ve come to this…they think they should have won the 2016 election, they think in their bizarre brains that they did…”
The core of the Democrats’ justification for the impeachment are allegations that Trump, in a phone conversation with Ukraine president Volodymyr Zelensky (who happens to be Jewish), pressured Zelensky no less than eight times to launch a corruption investigation against former Vice President Biden and his son Hunter. Trump allegedly even conditioned American supply of arms to Ukraine on Zelensky’s compliance.
The phone conversation was reportedly part of a whistle-blower complaint inside the Trump administration, which has been kept from Congress, and which came after Trump had ordered a freeze of about $391 million in aid to Ukraine.
President Trump confirmed some parts of the phone conversation, but insists he acted appropriately. On Tuesday, he promised he would authorize the release of a transcript of the conversation.
This coincided with the Senate’s unanimous resolution ordering the Trump administration to hand over the un-redacted whistleblower’s complaint to the Senate and House Intelligence Committees, a resolution submitted by Minority Leader Chuck Schumer (who happens to be Jewish).
Pelosi directed the chairmen of six committees which have been investigating the president since inauguration day to “proceed under that umbrella of impeachment inquiry” in order to potentially lay the groundwork for articles of impeachment. These include Jerrold Nadler, chairman the House Judiciary Committee (who happens to be Jewish), and Adam Schiff, chairman of the House Intelligence Committee (who happens to be Jewish).
If this were a drinking game where the reader downed a shot each time we mentioned (who happens to be Jewish), the reader would be thoroughly inebriated by now.
The House Democrats will probably introduce a resolution on Wednesday condemning the president’s dealings with Ukraine, as well as what they will call an attempt to cover up the whistle-blower’s complaint, and demand the release of the complaint. House Republicans would have to choose whether or not to follow their colleagues in the Senate and vote in favor. Voting against should prove difficult for Republicans from purple states.
But not all Democrats are necessarily in favor of an impeachment track at this point. The NY Times reported that Representative Elissa Slotkin of Michigan (who happens to be Jewish), a first-term Democrat from a Republican district Trump won in 2016, asked fellow Democrats in a closed-door meeting on Tuesday who was in charge of the impeachment efforts and on which aspect of the Trump presidency would they focus.
There’s another “Jewish angle” in the impeachment issue: a decision to impeach would provide the GOP with a tremendous election-time weapon, since it brings the Democratic mainstream so much closer to marginal House members of the likes of Rashida Tlaib (D-Palestine) , who is notorious for her battle cry, one day into the new Congress, “Impeach the [expletive].”
This should count for one more shot.