It’s officially happening. A full-scale impeachment inquiry into President Trump has been launched. It all started with a whistleblower complaint in early August of this year, claiming that there was evidence that Trump had “[used] the power of his office to solicit interference from a foreign country in the 2020 U.S. election.” This groundless claim rapidly escalated into an official impeachment inquiry. No solid evidence was attached or referenced, but still, from this alone, the Democrat-dominated House endorsed an impeachment inquiry. This goes to show the ridiculous extent to which the Democrats are willing to go in order to get Trump out of office. The unreasonable hate coming from the Left, especially directed towards the Right, has gone too far now.
The theory behind the impeachment seems to be that President Trump had engaged in a quid pro quo with Ukraine by means of withholding military aid unless the country reopened a previous investigation into Joe Biden, Trump’s main political opponent in the 2020 election. This past investigation probed into the alleged corruptness of Ukranian energy company Burisma, whose board held Biden’s son, Hunter Biden, but it was shut down by what I believe to be Biden’s abuse of power as then-vice-president of the United States. Biden threatened to rescind one billion dollars in loan guarantees to Ukraine unless they had the top prosecutor of the case fired, whom he believed was ineffective at rooting out corruption. When recently questioned, Biden denied knowing anything about Hunter’s business dealings in Ukraine. However, his son admitted to it in an interview with The New Yorker. Biden himself also bragged about threatening Ukraine at a press conference, saying “I’m telling you, you’re not getting the billion. […] If the prosecutor is not fired, you’re not getting the money.”
As the current President of the United States, it is Trump’s rightful duty to uncover corruption if it exists in people of especially high positions, in this case a 2020 frontrunner. It is thus well-justified that Trump asked Ukraine to reinvestigate the Bidens, and assuming it is completely politically motivated is fatuous.
Still, Speaker of the House Nancy Pelosi announced that an official impeachment inquiry was underway on October 4. No reports were confirmed at the time of Pelosi’s decision, and her announcement failed to articulate a single “high crime or misdemeanor” that a presidential impeachment must be based upon. Granted, if suspicious activity is detected, the House is allowed to push an inquiry for one. However, the Democrats are truly stretching the definition of “suspicious activity” to its maximum, as shown especially in this case.
I question whether the whistleblower complaint expresses something that is truly impeachable. It is most definitely troubling, due to the ambiguity of whether Trump discussed it through a political or presidential motive; and, Trump’s added comments aren’t doing him or his administration any good. But is it necessarily impeachable? I don’t think so.
The very next day, President Trump released a rough transcript of the call he had with Ukranian president Volodymyr Zelensky back in July. Though it was not a “verbatim transcript of the discussion,” as mentioned in a footnote, it revealed the general idea that although Trump had mentioned reopening the investigation into Burisma, there was no aid withheld from Ukraine. After congratulating Zelensky on his presidential win, Trump briefly touched on the Burisma case, saying that it “sounds horrible to [him]” and that “a lot of people want to find out about [it]”. That’s it. It contained no withholding of military or financial aid, just a simple suggestion. Later, House Democrats released texts between Kurt Volker (Trump’s former Ukraine envoy), Gordon Sondland (a US ambassador), and Bill Taylor (a US diplomat at the American embassy in Ukraine) from July 19, about a week before the actual call. But there was once again no clear quid pro quo. In fact, Sondland explicitly stated so in one exchange: “…I believe you are incorrect about President Trump’s intentions. The President has been crystal clear no quid pro quo of any kind.”
So, it seems to me that the Democrats have now reached the end of the road. It’s been inevitable ever since Trump’s election (and Clinton’s loss) in 2016. From the moment this Ukraine story began, I’ve called absolute nonsense—yet another attempt by the Left to deface the Right. It happened with the Mueller investigation, in which Trump was accused of colluding with Russia in the 2016 election, and it backfired. It happened with the Kavanaugh cases, in which conservative justice Brett M. Kavanaugh was accused of sexual assault by college peers, and it backfired. It’s happened countless times, and more often than not, it’s backfired. The reason? The Democrats are willing to take the simplest of issues, usually to do with poor moral conduct but not a breach of any laws, and warp them into legal accusations against the Republicans, with little or no proof.
The bottom line is this: if it happens to be that President Trump did articulate a quid pro quo and threatened Ukraine, then that is an impeachable offense. If it happens to be that President Trump did not articulate a quid pro quo, as the current evidence shows, and that he was just trying to uncover corruption, as he rightfully should, then this just adds on the mile-long list of how the Democrats have clearly lost control of themselves.
The goal of the Left has now been completely skewed. They have shifted away from their original stance of getting Trump out of office because he’s corrupt and have morphed it into a ridiculous “movement” of just getting him out of office. They have taken the most unfounded arguments, like the whistleblower complaint, to use as weapons against the President, and the Right as a whole, like the impeachment inquiry. And the fact that mainstream media has the guts to back them up is truly disgusting, and it exposes bare their so-called “impartiality.” Networks like CNN, The Washington Post, and MSNBC all reported that there was indeed a quid pro quo between Trump and Ukraine, though, to reiterate, there is no proof of that. In general, this whole thing is childish. And it’s silly. But it’s reality.
The bedrock for justice in this country is based on an assumption of innocence until proven guilty. It is not a person’s innocence that must be proven— it is their guilt. There is no reason that President Trump, or any person at all for that matter, should not have this right. However, it seems that certain people, the Democrats in particular, are bending this rule, almost flipping it into its reverse: guilty until proven innocent. As a society, we will break down and collapse if we accept this. After all, it implies that the power of a false accusation is equal to that of a fully-verified one. The only way to keep credibility and power in check is through an “innocent until proven guilty” system.
Whether you’re a liberal or a conservative, a “NeverTrumper” or a Trump supporter, a Democrat or a Republican, I urge you to stop and think. Put aside all your preconceptions of President Trump, whether good or bad, for just one moment, and take an honest, sincere look at the present situation. Because really, I have never seen anything as dishonest and ungrounded as this impeachment inquiry.
