I am sure that many of my readers have been confused, as I was, about the true issues raised in the U.S. House of Representatives by the impeachment attempt on the President. As hearings grind on and more witnesses testify, I get bogged down in similar claims and accusations to the point that Nancy and I have become bored watching TV reports of the activity on this problem.

Nevertheless, this question of impeachment of the President is a very important one because it may set a dangerous president for the administration of our nation. For that reason, I have set out below what I think is a correct and pertinent explanation of the situation.

In an editor’s op-ed in the Wall Street Journal of 21 November 2019, the editors write: “…readers who have lives to lead can save time (trying to understand this problem) by reading Senator Ron Johnson’s account. (https://bit.ly/2OwBLJ8 Control +click to follow link). The Wisconsin Republican has taken a personal interest in Ukraine since he joined the Senate in 2011. In a November 18 letter to House Intelligence members he explains what he saw and heard at the White House and on his six visits to Ukraine after 11 April 2019.” I strongly recommend that all my readers look carefully at Senator Johnson’s account of his extensive and comprehensive experience working with this Ukraine and impeachment situation.

The essence of the problem was that President Trump was initially opposed to giving money to Ukraine because of endemic corruption there in the government. He also thought that European governments should support Ukraine in its problems with significant financial distributions. President Trump was also concerned that the Ukraine government should ferret out any Ukrainian operatives who might have acted in opposition to his election in 2016. Never in any communication with Ukrainian officials did the idea of “quid pro quo” for cooperation ever come up in their conversations. The quid pro quo question should be expunged from the conversation, now. But…did he abuse his power? That seems to be the problem, now.

 Nevertheless, as Peggy Noonan, a lead opinion writer in the Wall Street Journal notes, it was not necessary for President Trump to specifically call out the Bidens in a conversation with President Zelensky. His position as the stronger of a two-sided conversation might carry the day just by the power of suggestion. It is very possible that Trump might have influenced Zelensky along the mode of the gangster movies of the 1930s in which the suave mobster tells the saloon keeper from whom he’s demanding protection money, “Nice place you have here, shame if anything happened to it.”

In a meeting with Zelensky and high-ranking members of the Ukraine government on 23 May 2019, Johnson and Energy Secretary Rick Perry both reported that their conversations never included any discussion of Burisma or the Bidens. Senator Johnson had not heard that money had been withheld from Ukraine until 28 August.

The President obviously had reservations about Ukrainian corruption and the lack of outside European financial support. However, he was convinced by opposition from the Senate and the House that the money should be released. That congressional opposition was spearheaded by Senators Ron Johnson (R-Wisconsin) and Richard Durbin (D-Illinois). Advocates for release of the money claimed that it would bolster the military stance of Ukraine in its present struggle with Russia; and it would show the world that America is willing to help its allies in practical ways. Senator Durbin introduced an amendment to restore funding on 11 September; the funding hold was lifted within only a few days.

I believe it is incumbent upon anyone who is interested in this impeachment controversy to read the initial report of the “whistleblower’s” statement https://nyti.ms/2pIBZV4. After reading this report, it seems obvious that this whistleblower is a strongly ideologically oriented Democrat with a powerful bias toward impeachment. We can know that from a tweet posted by one of his lawyers, Mark Zaid only 10  days after President Trump’s inauguration Zaid posted, “#coup has started. First of many steps. #rebellion. #impeachment will follow ultimately.”

If the whistleblower’s intention was to improve and solidify the relationship between the U.S. and Ukraine, he or she failed miserably.  Instead, the result has been to publicize and highlight the president’s deeply held reservations toward Ukraine that the whistleblower felt were so damaging to our relationship with Ukraine and to U.S. national security.  The dispute over policy was being resolved between the two branches of government before the whistleblower complaint was made public.  All the complaint has accomplished is to fuel the House’s impeachment desire (which I believe was the real motivation) and damage our democracy as described above. I do not think the President has done anything that rises to the level of “high crimes or misdemeanors,” as required by the constitution in order to impeach. At the most, he might be found guilty of misuse of power.

This impeachment effort has done a great deal of damage to our democracy.  The release of transcripts of discussions between the president of the United States and another world leader sets a terrible precedent that will deter and limit candid conversations between the president and world leaders from now on. The weakening of executive privilege will also limit the extent to which presidential advisers will feel comfortable providing “out of the box” and other frank counsel in the future. 

I have thought that the phenomenon of guilt by accusation, manifested by the McCarthy trials 1954, had been a lesson the American people had learned. But…no, we still seem to follow that line of action, at least in the case of the President. We should learn that lesson all over, again.  

House Democrats would have done better to hold hearings on the question of abuse of power to censure the President. Instead, they have released the dogs of impeachment—I think they have overstepped their procedural boundaries in doing this. If they were to censure the President instead of trying to impeach him, they would have issued the first presidential censure since the administration of Andrew Jackson. President Trump likes to think of himself as similar to Jackson. For that reason, he might even enjoy receiving a censure!