House Democrats have reduced the serious constitutional tool of impeachment to a “political weapon” to prevent U.S. President Trump’s re-election in 2020.
Democrats are pursuing the impeachment and removal of Trump for allegedly trying to solicit foreign interference in the upcoming presidential election. Meanwhile, however, the real aim of the Democrats’ partisan impeachment probe is to prevent the sitting U.S. president from winning a second term, GOP congressmen argued on the House floor on Wednesday.
“Impeachment was never meant to be a political weapon when you can’t win the next [presidential election],” Rep. Doug Collins, the top Republican on the House Judiciary Committee, declared on the House floor during the impeachment debate on Wednesday.
Rep. Mike Conaway (R-TX) added:
We have forever weakened this body by turning impeachment into a political weapon. This impeachment scheme is nothing more than an attempt to conduct taxpayer funded opposition research to damage the president’s electability heading into 2020.
Many Democrats have been hell bent on impeaching Trump since he took office in January 2017.
In May of this year, Rep. Al Green (D-TX), declared, “Im concerned that if we don’t impeach this president, he will get re-elected.”
House Speaker Nancy Pelosi (D-CA) indicated early this month that the Democrats had to impeach Trump to prevent him from winning the looming election.
Pelosi said early this month:
Today, I am asking our chairman [of the House Judiciary Committee] to proceed with articles of impeachment. The President leaves us no choice but to act because he is trying to corrupt once again the election for his own benefit.
“The weak response to these hearings has been, ‘Let the election decide.’ That dangerous position only adds to the urgency of our action, because the president is jeopardizing the integrity of the 2020 elections,” Pelosi also noted in November.
Echoing Pelosi, House Intelligence Committee Chairman Adam Schiff (D-CA), one of the chief impeachment probe inquisitors, said on December 10 that Democrats must impeach President Trump quickly to prevent him from winning the next election.
“The argument — ‘Why don’t you just wait?’ — amounts to this: ‘Why don’t you just let him cheat in one more election? Why not let him cheat just one more time? Why not let him have foreign help just one more time,” the chairman said.
On Wednesday, Trump became the third U.S. president to be impeached in the history of the United States.
House Democrats approved two articles of impeachment against Trump — abuse of power and obstruction of Congress. The lawmakers approved the articles nearly exclusively along party lines. A few Democrats joined Republicans in voting against impeachment — two against the abuse of power charge and three against the obstruction of congress.
House Democrats launched the impeachment inquiry on September 24, nearly a year before the American public goes to the polls to elect the next president in November 2020.
In October, Breitbart News reported that, ironically, the House Democrats’ impeachment inquiry into whether Trump attempted to influence the looming 2020 elections may interfere with the outcome of that very same presidential race.
GOP lawmakers cautioned that Wednesday’s vote against Trump had set a “dangerous precedent” that will make impeachment a political tool.
Below are some of the comments on the House floor Wednesday by the GOP lawmakers who complained that the Democrats were using impeachment to prevent Trump from winning re-election:
Rep. Vern Buchanan (R-MI): Just because his opponents are afraid that he’ll win re-election [that] is no excuse for weaponizing impeachment.
Rep. Mike Johnson (R-LA): Our Democrat colleges have weaponized the impeachment provision of the constituion to nullify the vote of the 63 million voters who elected President Donald J. Trump.
Rep. Peter King (R-NY): The Democrat majority has irresponsibly turned the impeachment process into a political weapon.
To impeach a president for a phone call through which no crime was charged, never mind a high crime, and asserting his constitutional prerogatives as president is a clear abuse of power by the Congress. It sets a dangerous precedent to weaponize impeachment to undo the solemn decision of the American people.
The Senate is supposed to begin impeachment trial proceedings early next year.
Democrats have vowed to continue their impeachment investigation regardless of whether the Senate convicts or acquits Trump.
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