This is not a recommendation based on an analysis, legal or political, as I don’t have enough information, factual or legal, or about actual assets available to the President, the Republicans in Congress, the Department of Justice, or any government body that could hold itself out to a competent court as one having standing, a right to know, to know just what is taking place behind closed doors concerning the evidence House Committees are gathering as part of an impeachment inquiry.
But which, despite the veil of secrecy, select members of the Media are briefed daily about, apparently just to keep the story in the news.
The thought has no doubt crossed your mind that should this impeachment track blow up in the Democrats’ face, as it well might, that they may just fold their tents and go off on another impeachment track, or at least a different “take over the government” direction than the one on which they are now engaged. And when they do, they will feel no legal obligation to provide any of the testimony transcripts to the other 99.9% of the American people. whose only knowledge has been media leaks and outrage by Republicans about the ordinary privileges of House membership they’ve been denied.
Underneath it all, some horrible precedents are being set here should the Democrats ever re-acquire total power as they enjoyed the first two years of the Obama presidency before the Tea Party Revolution. Back in power what we’re seeing in the House today could well be chiseled in stone.
If you haven’t thought of it in those terms, I’m sure Donald Trump and his closest allies have.
No impeachment proceeding has ever been challenged in court, with or without testimony of the participants. So there is no precedence. The Democrats know this. So does Trump people.
In the 1999 Clinton impeachment, the House Judiciary Committee held no hearings as all the evidence was provided by statements (Paula Jones, Monica Lewinsky and others), along with video recorded testimony were submitted. Still. this was accepted as “grand jury” testimony at the Senate trial, so all the witnesses were re-questioned, and cross-examined by Clinton lawyers, and those interviews videos as well as their prior testimony available for purposes of impeachment.
From Blasey-Ford, to John Brennan, to James Comey, to Obama (“you can keep your doctor”) no prominent national figure, esp members of government, like to have to testify today with prior sworn and other public statements sitting in the laps of both their interrogators as well as the public.
Adam Schiff (and others) are no different.
In short, the stunts Adam Schiff are running in these secret hearings would ever pass muster in a Senate trial. Every witness his secret Judiciary Committee has called and transcribed, will/can be made to testify in a Senate trial, with their prior committee testimony, as well as side-bars by Chairman Schiff, will be available for scrutiny by a real court.
That is, unless of course he is given a heads-up and enough advance warning to bury or destroy incriminating evidence, as was given to Debbie Wasserman Schultz when the DNC computers were hacked. and it turns out she’d hired some Pakistani tech specialists to handle most Democrat business. Anyone remember the Awan boys?
This begs the question: Then why do this, Adam, if you know you can’t carry the case forward to the point all the dark testimony will come to light? What other possible motive could the Democrats have since, having this revealed at a later Senate trial, on national television, could only enrage public opinion more? Everything that has been denied the Republican House members’ and the public’s general right to know (transparency) will be forced, and even replayed, at a Senate trial.
We’ve always believed there’s no way Schiff and the Democrats could deep-six this testimony they’ve been gathering, but Wasserman-Shultz suggests otherwise.
My General Rule #1when dealing with the Left has always been to have at least 3-4 ideas of just where they want to take their plan, then throw them off the timing and sequence of that plan, for the simple reason they are history’s worst at fighting and making stuff up on the run at the same time. Even the Germans and Japanese were better, and they miscalculated on the battlefield terribly.
I only have two very general strategies;
First would be a wide-area legal assault from the White House, Department of Justice, and the House Republicans, even in tandem, to get the quickest possible restraining order that none of that evidence be tampered with or destroyed, and that it be secured, catalogued and inventoried by a PriceWaterhouse-type third party…not for the direct purpose of future impeachment of Senate trial witnesses’ testimony, but for the sheer preservation on the basis that it is one element of a Senate impeachment trial there actually is a historic precedence for, but keeping in mind Democrats’ poor track record for files and records they consider exclusively their own, when there is any evidence that may be harmful to its own interests. Under their “l’tat, c’est moi” theory of government, they would argue that all the evidence so-far gathered in these hearings is the sole property of the Party, and not the People of the United States. Adam Schiff’s long and notorious record of making public announcements of possessing all sorts of incriminating, even indictable, evidence about the President but, having never been called to produce any of it by an incurious media, has simply never actually brought any forward, would also be a consideration.
I have no doubt that as quickly as such a lawsuit is brought forward, in one or several courts simultaneously (the Germans hated multi-front counterattacks, especially with Hitler in charge of the map-board, and which cost them Russia) most of the evidence Schiff has gathered will suddenly be eaten by his dog.
Sorting this out could take several days of legal thrust and parry, or a few months, but in all likelihood the impeachment rein of terror will be finished, but with enough time to allow the Democrats to make a lateral move toward holding onto the House by mobilizing that 11 million illegal voters out there waiting for marching orders. Their last hope in 2020.
The second alternative, and one, for sheer spectacle and theater, and which the average American would most like to see, would be a midnight, or pre-dawn Roger Stone or Elian Gonzalez raid on every Democratic office and repository known to the DOJ, including Adam Schiff’s and others’ personal offices and homes, wherever “listed evidence” might be stored. I’ve been involved in such kinds of search warrants, and know that agents can find all sorts of embarrassing things in places not specified in the warrant, and clearly inadmissible, but damned sure embarrassing when the defendants’ attorneys have to make to motions to have them stricken.
Beyond the theater, a full and complete history, the sort that Mollie Hemingway, John Solomon, Sara Carter or Byron York might write, will be forthcoming. There would be at least 20 years of deterrence in those histories alone.
But caution, all those actions that would cause Americans to stand-and-cheer for a few weeks could also have a net negative impact unless some media principles are listed in the warrants, for they will launch an “anti-fascism campaign” against the very same government actions they have actually dreamed about imposing for years (projection).
So President Trump and Barr, and the next, and the next generation of pro-American leadership had better be prepared for what the next 30-40 years of history will portend.
