Democrats, in their mindless, vitriolic pursuit of President Trump, have cycled through a veritable plethora of grounds for impeachment. They have settled on the suitably vague and amorphous charges of “abuse of power” and “obstruction of Congress,” a ridiculous charge that overlooks the separation of powers enshrined in the Constitution. The president, they aver, abused the power of his office by using it to dig up dirt on a political opponent, namely Joe Biden.
They insist that he brought up a possible investigation into the Ukrainian energy company Burisma only to help him defeat Biden at the ballot box in 2020. His motive, they likewise insist, had nothing to do with the fact that Burisma is a notoriously corrupt energy company in a notoriously corrupt country.
And of course, it couldn’t have anything to do with the fact that American law requires Trump to certify that any country which receives American foreign aid be corruption-free. And it couldn’t possibly have anything to do with the fact that another country, the United Kingdom, had already seized funds from Burisma on suspicions of corruption, and that the founder of Burisma, one Mykola Zlochevsky, is now being investigated by the Prosecutor General of embezzling state funds “on an especially large scale,” in particular the disappearance of $33 million from the state bank.
Nor could it have anything to do with ensuring that the $391 million in lethal aid Congress had awarded to Ukraine didn’t wind up in the pockets of oligarchs, a distressingly common occurrence there.
And it most certainly could have nothing to do with the fact that Zlochevsky has been the subject of no less than 13 criminal investigations by Ukrainian authorities, including one into whether he awarded energy contracts to Burisma, his own company, when he was the minister of ecology and natural resources.
The indictment against Zlochevsky, according to the Russian News Agency Tass, contains information that Hunter Biden, as a Burisma board member along with his partners, received $16.5 million for their services. This despite the fact that Hunter has zero expertise in the energy field, and to my knowledge, has never even been to Ukraine. According to Tass, the money came from “duplicitous criminal activity” and from “money stolen from citizens.”
Hunter Biden’s name, coincidentally I’m sure, gave Burisma access to higher-ups at the State Department about the time Burisma was first coming under criminal suspicion in 2014. In other words, Burisma got its money’s worth.
And of course, there is nothing suspicious about the fact that investigations into Zlochevsky have been suspended because nobody knows where he is, and Burisma is refusing to say anything to anybody.
The Democrats’ line is that Ukraine’s meddling in the 2016 election, another concern Trump raised with President Zelensky in their July 25 phone call, is a debunked conspiracy theory. But Politico ran a feature article in January of 2017, just after Trump had been inaugurated, detailing Ukraine’s intervention in the 2016 presidential election on behalf of Hillary Clinton and against Donald Trump.
Here’s how the Politico piece begins (emphasis mine):
Donald Trump wasn’t the only presidential candidate whose campaign was boosted by officials of a former Soviet bloc country.
Ukrainian government officials tried to help Hillary Clinton and undermine Trump by publicly questioning his fitness for office. They also disseminated documents implicating a top Trump aide in corruption and suggested they were investigating the matter, only to back away after the election. And they helped Clinton’s allies research damaging information on Trump and his advisers, a Politico investigation found.
A Ukrainian-American operative who was consulting for the Democratic National Committee met with top officials in the Ukrainian Embassy in Washington in an effort to expose ties between Trump, top campaign aide Paul Manafort and Russia, according to people with direct knowledge of the situation.
The Ukrainian efforts had an impact in the race, helping to force Manafort’s resignation and advancing the narrative that Trump’s campaign was deeply connected to Ukraine’s foe to the east, Russia.
Unless you believe that Politico, an uber-regressive publication, was secretly working for the president, the theory that Ukraine meddled in the 2016 election is hardly debunked, which is what the Democrats want you to believe. Quite the opposite. Robotically repeating the phrase “debunked conspiracy theory” doesn’t change the facts on the ground.
The Democrats, after the abject failure of the Mueller investigation, launched the hate-peachment charade in a flailing attempt to unseat a sitting president of the United States. Using their resources as members of Congress they have issued subpoenas, held hearings with no fact witness, and in general acted like insufferable bores, all in the vain hope of finding a crime at the end of the rainbow. From Jump Street, this has been an impeachment in search of a crime.
Bottom line: if anybody has abused the power of office to dig up dirt on a political opponent, it would be Nancy Pelosi, Adam Schiff, Jerrold Nadler, and the gang of miscreant co-conspirators who have foisted this debacle on the American people.
The author may be contacted at bfischer@afa.net
