O Say Can You Please Entry 14: Ripe for the Picking
    Remember when I said that more on the inquiry would be coming soon? It turned out “soon” would mean over a week between entries, but I have something really big and really related to the inquiry to talk about today. That story is that the Trump administration has flat-out refused to cooperate with the House’s impeachment inquiry. That’s a bold move to take, especially considering that one of the “high crimes and misdemeanors” that the President is being accused of is obstruction of justice, which is plainly the case here should he have done anything wrong. However, the door isn’t totally slammed shut, as he implored the Speaker of the House, Nancy Pelosi, to hold a vote on formally starting the inquiry, as is usually the case. However, there is no Constitutional requirement for that, but it is still nice to have happen. It would also be nice to have a cooperative President, but that doesn’t matter, right? As long as our “Dear Leader” always gets his way, I guess.
    Anyway, this was all started through another potentially obstructive act of blocking the scheduled testimony of a State Department employee. As a result, subpoenas were issued, and the Democrats marked the incident down in their Big Book Of Bad and Not Good Things President Trump Has Done on page 262. I kid, but this again shows the lengths Trump is going to remain unscathed. Now, I will dissect Trump’s argument as to why this inquiry is being illegally done, and I will spoil that his whole argument is…
Image source: Snopes.com
    Getting back on track, the administration wrote a strongly-worded letter attempting to de-legitimize the inquiry, and that’s how the argument will be analyzed. However, I will not quote verbatim, as that alone would take up way too much space. With that said, let’s do this. The first thing that the letter suggests is that the way the inquiry is executed violates due process for the reasons of denying rights such as cross-examining and calling witnesses, having access to evidence, and having the presence of counsel. If these rights were indeed denied, that’s shady beyond a reasonable doubt, but if not, this part is all wrong and better off ignored.
    Moving forward a few sentences, he says that the House has basically never done this before in this manner, which is misleading because a full vote is not Constitutionally required to start an impeachment inquiry. It’d be nice and proper, but it’d also be fluff. Next, the letter says some choice words about the perception that the House Dems want to “overturn” the 2016 election, which is hilarious for many reasons, but mainly because some of the President’s former associates (mainly Manafort) are in jail for potential conspiracy against the US. Moving on, it is then stated that the President is transparent because he released the Ukraine call memo (which is still not verbatim), even though that was not only a rare event, but also provided way too much ammunition for the inquiry in the court of public opinion. He can’t even get transparency right.
    Finally, he calls the inquiry “unconstitutional” despite impeachment being literally written into the original Constitution, before even the Bill of Rights was added. According to the Heritage Foundation, it reads “The President, Vice President and all civil Officers of the United States, shall be removed from Office on Impeachment for, and Conviction of, Treason, Bribery, or other high Crimes and Misdemeanors.” Nowhere in there does it say anything about a vote. It’s just precedent, and considering that the President routinely discards said precedent, he is not one who should be talking about it. To sum all this up, it’s just Trump’s cronies whining about the President not being treated like a king. These are the ramblings of a neighborhood bully, and one who should really be getting a taste of his own medicine sometime soon. Finally, it shows an unhinged administration desperately trying to save the Titanic after the iceberg hit. My advice to the administration at this point would be to cut their losses, save themselves, and just give up. Let Trump resign and retire in peace and disgrace, and maybe Pence can still clean this all up. The longer they all hold on to Trump, the worse the fall will be.