The other shoe has finally dropped. On Thursday, House Judiciary Committee Chairman Jerry Nadler announced that his committee has launched “formal impeachment proceedings” against President Trump.
Nadler’s move comes in defiance of House Speaker Nancy Pelosi, who dismissed talk of moving forward following the disastrous testimony before the House by former special counsel Robert Mueller.
More importantly, they come in defiance of litmus test that has been used without exception in the House Judiciary Committee’s 206-year history. Namely, the full House must vote to authorize an impeachment inquiry. That hasn’t happened and won’t as long as Pelosi is speaker.
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In fact, Nadler states he “wasn’t waiting” for Pelosi’s blessing.
“This is formal impeachment proceedings,” Nadler explained. “We are investigating all the evidence, we’re gathering the evidence and we will at the conclusion of this, hopefully by the end of the year, vote to, vote articles of impeachment to the House floor or we won’t. That’s a decision that we’ll have to make.”
Impeachment, he added, is “exactly the process we’re in right now.”
"This is formal impeachment proceedings."
Speaking with @ErinBurnett, House Judiciary Chairman @RepJerryNadler clarifies the debate of impeachment inquiry versus actual impeachment.https://t.co/dsiXkstqvp pic.twitter.com/UN1SunqjNV
— OutFrontCNN (@OutFrontCNN) August 8, 2019
It takes a special kind of stupid to advance impeachment hearings after the Mueller report cleared the President of collusion and obstruction, and a subsequent hearing — in which the special counsel came off as doddering and unfamiliar with details of his own two-year-long prove of alleged ties between Russia and the Trump campaign — made the case even weaker.
Special Kind of Stupid
If you wanted to order up a special kind of stupid, one couldn’t ask for a better person than Nadler. Even as partisan a Democrat as Pelosi had to apply the brakes on any impeachment talks in the aftermath of the Mueller testimony, insisting the House could not move forward until Democrats had a stronger argument.
Stronger arguments are for the little people.
RELATED: Pelosi Shuts Down Impeachment Push After Mueller Testimony
Chasing Obstruction
A memo sent to the U.S. House Judiciary Committee in late July, features the word obstruction 18 times in a request for “materials to further [the committee’s] ongoing investigation and assessment of whether to recommend articles of impeachment.”
Nadler, in a closed-door meeting with Pelosi last month, vowed to use articles of impeachment already filed by Rep. Brad Sherman (D-Calif.) as a framework.
In them, Sherman accuses Trump of violating “his constitutional oath faithfully to execute the office of president of the United States” and having “prevented, obstructed and impeded the administration of justice during a federal investigation.”
Following Mueller’s investigation, Attorney General William Barr summarized the report indicating there was no collusion and no obstruction. But Nadler would not be deterred from pursuing his dream, explaining in an interview with CNN:
There are articles of impeachment introduced a number of months ago and referred to the committee. As the investigation proceeds, we may want to draft our own articles of impeachment that may more closely fit the evidence.
In other words, they’re molding any impeachment argument to whatever ancillary comments they can find in the Mueller report. They’re doctoring a case for impeachment.
As Bill Maher recently said to the Democrats months ago, at this point “it just looks like you’re stalking him.”
Now they’ve made it official.
Cross posted at the Mental Recession
